The End of an Era

I can't believe our time in this program is almost done! The year and a half really flew by, and I really feel like the end is bittersweet! As much as I will be happy to be done, I will really miss seeing all of these wonderful people each week.

I really enjoyed reflecting on my blog postings from the beginning to now. I really have grown a lot, and reflecting on my posts reminded me of some really cool things I've come across and wanted to use, but had forgotten about! I'm going to take some time to revisit those. I have accomplished so much including learning about the inside of my computer and how it works, how to make my presentations SO much better, how to bring authors and experts into my room through Skype, how to facilitate my own online class, and many, many more things. It has been a whirlwind of knowledge!

The only thing I was frustrated in not knowing much about is e-portfolios. I really feel it would have been much more productive if we had learned about those in the first few months and worked on them continuously throughout the program. It was really difficult to have to go back and remember what we did in all of our classes for the first year, in order to pick artifacts for our portfolios. I would have been able to do much better on my justifications for why I chose each piece, if it had been more fresh in my mind.

This program has affected me in many ways, both professionally and personally. It has probably been the biggest accomplishment in my professional career. It has helped me gain status among my colleagues, and I have earned more respect among my peers in terms of technology. Personally, it has been tough, trying to complete this program while continuing to work full time, and be a good wife and mother. However, I really feel the time has been worth it, and it has shown my children that people can be lifelong learners, even if they're pushing 40 years old! I hope it has been a good example for them of what you can accomplish if you really put your mind to it.

CEDO 599 - Week 3

I am a little nervous about the rubric part of my project. Although I've written hundreds of rubrics throughout my career, this one seems to be giving me a little trouble. I'm really looking forward to meeting with my classmate this week to run it by her and see if I'm on the right track with it or not.

The rest of my project is going well, and I can't wait to try the SMART Response system with my students. I had to jump through a few hoops to get my tech person to install everything as quickly as I needed it, but it always help to be able to say, "I need it for my masters class, which ends on October 26th." That really got the ball rolling!

CEDO 599 - Week 1

Wow! The end of this era already! Although it's been a very long and stressful journey through this masters program, it really has gone fast! I can't believe how much I've learned in the past year and a half!

My main focus now is to get my culminating proposal tweeked. I thought I had my project exactly the way I wanted it in July, but I didn't find out until August that I was switching grade levels. This meant changing my project to fit my students. I think I've got it now....hopefully my students make the progress I want in the prescribed time with the new SMART Response technology I'll be trying! We'll see...

CEDO 565 - Week 6

Mostly my definition of leadership has been reinforced. I understand the importance of leadership, and have always tried to be a leader since I was in high school. My parents always taught me, "be a leader, not a follower". However, I think my definition of teacher leadership has changed a little bit. Although I have always tried to be a leader at my job, I have sometimes taken the stance that, "I can't do anything about that. That's just the way it is." I now believe that we can all make more of a difference than I had originally thought. The video we watched the first week with Patrick Awuah really inspired my philosophy about leadership potential. He really made me realize that everyone can make a difference, no matter how small or insignificant they think they are. I do agree with what our textbook said about improving education from within. Although certain things seem to be out of our control, like funding, we can even affect that somewhat, through being informed voters, and contacting our legislatures about school issues. I believe we can improve education from within if we all try to take some kind of leadership role in our schools, which is what I plan to do. Currently I am a teacher trainer for technology, which I will continue to do to improve technology education in my district.

CEDO 565 - Week 5

This week I spoke with my group about data that our schools collect and how it could possibly be done better. Currently, we collect data on our students through state testing, and screeners we conduct for the new RTI initiative. We have a data retreat each year, but only a few teachers are involved. The findings are shared at the first inservice of each new year, and then we collect more data to share the next fall. Even though I truly believe we all try to improve those scores that matter at the state level, there are better ways to collect data that would be more meaningful and drive our instruction better. We've recently implemented CBMs, which are Curriculum Based Measurements, which will hopefully be a better screener for our students and help us meet all of our students' needs better.

CEDO 565 - Week 4

This week I learned about school climate, environment, and morale, and how it affects teaching and learning. The school I work in now has great morale, and my colleagues and I work together very well as a team. I have worked in schools with terrible morale in the past, and it made me want to stay home from work every day. I know it affected my students, because I'm sure they could sense my unhappiness and it stunted their learning. The building of community and positive morale has to come from the leadership, and the school I was in with bad morale had very poor leadership. Our principal was not a strong leader, she did not work at building community, she pitted people against each other, and she did not support her teachers to the parents. All of these things combined made for very poor working conditions and a staff that could not work as a team or trust each other. I'm very grateful to be at the wonderful school I'm in now.

CEdO 565 - Week 3

This week I learned a lot about changes in systems and changes in thinking. I've always been a person who embraces change. I thrive on it, so I've never had a problem with new ideas or new systems. However, I have worked with several people who really dig their heals in and feel very uncomfortable with change. They are comfortable where they are at, and have no intention of changing without a fight. I really feel sorry for those people; life just keeps evolving and moving along, and they are missing it, all because of a fear of change. Everything we read and discussed this week made me think about my job. I can see the people I work with as Baby Boomers, Generation Xers, and Millenials. I could actually picture specific people while I was reading the articles. I think these two articles (Tune In and the Beloit List) would be very helpful for all teachers and administrators to read at the beginning of each new school year, just to give them some tips on how to deal with others and just as a reminder that each generation has very different ways of viewing things. That might make for a much easier working environment for everyone.

CEDO 565 - Week 2

This week I have learned a lot about data retreats. Every year my school has a data retreat at the beginning of the summer. Honestly, I don't usually sign up to participate because it's always the day after school gets out, and my brain is so fried by then that I can't possibly consider mulling over data for two days. I wouldn't be much of a contribution to the team. So, with that said, I think the first weakness we have with our retreat is that it's not a consistent group of people. Each year my principal asks for volunteers to be on the team. They do evaluate data, but as far as I know it's pretty much achievement data from state testing and demographic data. I don't believe program data is looked at much, and I know perception data is not formally assessed. The committee consists of classroom teachers, reading specialist, and the principal, and the superintendent. Then the information is taken back to the district level and it's presented to the staff at one of our inservices. We do look at the strengths and weaknesses and see what areas we need to focus on for the year, but I don't see a lot of goal-setting that can be monitored or much overview of programs that are working or programs that need to be changed. I also think we could use some perception data to drive some of our direction. Of course we worry about the perception of parents, students, and community members, but we don't formally survey them to get specific feedback about what we are doing. When I meet with my principal this week to get more specific answers to some of the data answers for my assignment, I will discuss some of these other aspects with her.

CEDO 565 - Week 1

This week, I was asked to blog about how I currently lead in my job. First, I have been a leader in my grade level. Since I started teaching third grade in my current school six years ago, I have had a different group of teachers in my grade level every single year. This situation has led me to become the leader in my grade level, as I am the only person who has worked in this grade every single year. Therefore, I have the greatest knowledge of the curriculum and procedures for third grade. Next year will be very interesting, as I just found out this week that I will be moving to second grade. Although I am very excited about the move, it will be very interesting being the "newbie" in a grade level again.

I am also a leader in technology in my school. I have always been tech savvy, and I love finding new programs and websites to share with my colleagues. My principal looks to me when she has technology issues, since our district IT person is spread so very thin (she is responsible for K-12 all by herself). I have also done a lot of work with piloting our new online gradebook program and our news standards-based report cards. I am always willing to attend professional development workshops to continue learning all I can to improve in my profession, and to bring the information I learn back to my school.

CEDO 555 - Blog Post 3

Creating my own e-portfolio has been quite an experience. I was so nervous to even attempt to start an e-portfolio, but I must say, I really enjoyed it. It was much easier than I expected, and it was very therapeutic to look back over all we've done in the past year and a half.

In light of what I've learned through this process, I definitely plan to continue using an e-portfolio in my career. I would like to eventually add anonymous student work samples as exemplars of what I'm teaching my students with technology.

As much as I'd like to say I will have my students create one, I'm just not sure that's very realistic for my third graders just yet. What I would like to talk to my administrative team about is starting an e-portfolio for each student in kindergarten and continue through twelfth grade, so each student has a stunning e-portfolio of their 13 years of schooling when they graduate. I think that would be an awesome thing for them and their parents to be able to keep forever.

CEDO 555 - Blog Post 2

This week's question is "What big picture issues related to e-Portfolios are you still missing?" For me, my portfolio has gone pretty smoothly, for the most part. I feel good about what I've gotten done in it so far, but I'm still feeling very overwhelmed about coming up with an idea for my Culminating Experience. I am at a complete loss, and hoping to come up with something really inspiring really soon.

As far as the portfolio itself, the only thing that's frustrating me is some formatting issues. For instance, I really like the format I have for my resume, but when I upload it to Google Docs so I can use it in my e-portfolio, it goes to Google format and loses its whole look! Why is it that we can only insert documents to Google Sites if they are Google Docs? I don't like that feature at all.

The other thing I'm struggling with is being able to include pictures of my students working, since I don't have permission to use their pictures. I'd like to include pictures, but I obviously have to wait until I get permission.

Other than that, I think I've got everything else under control. Any advice on my aforementioned issues would be greatly appreciated!

CEDO 555 - Blog Post 1

I was amazed at the online portfolios I looked at this week. I personally have never done an ePortfolio, and my school has not used them at all, as far as I know. It's amazing to me how much things have changed since I finished college in 1998. The ePortfolios were almost exactly what I created for my job interviews as far as including artifacts, sample lesson plans, teaching philosophy, etc., except mine was all in one big binder. I am very anxious to work on my own ePortfolio during this class, and see how much has changed since doing my hard copy portfolio in college.

CEDO 550 - Week 6 Reflection

My students are gaining 21st century skills by working on online projects, creating projects on Powerpoint and Windows Movie Maker, and communicating with their penpals around the world through e-pals.

I understand the Virtual School Legislation in Wisconsin and am concerned that there may not be enough teachers certified to teach online. I do believe that this certification will help me hold onto my job, even when students are moving more and more toward online learning instead of traditional face-to-face learning. If an online teaching position opens up in my district, I am only the second person on staff who is certified to teach online.

My district's involvement in online learning includes online AP classes, and NovaNet for credit recovery. Some of the high school teachers also use Moodle and Edmodo.

During this module I was excited about learning how to teach an online course! I had never really considered how that would be before this class, and now I feel like I could be really prepared to go ahead and teach one. I can't wait!

CEDO 550 - Week 5 Reflection

In reflecting on my teaching experiences to date, I would have to say the proportion of teacher centered versus students centered lessons has been 80/20. Although I thought I used a lot of student-centered lessons, this course has shown me how far I have to go. Hopefully as I integrate more and more technology into my curriculum, I will be able to modify my lessons to make them more student-centered.

The rubric I created clearly stated expectations and scoring so that my students could be aware of what I expected while they were working on their projects. Having a concrete scoring guide in front of them makes it easier for them to reach the expectations I have set.

While working on this module I had success with working on the differentiation piece of the lesson. I have had a lot of experience working with special ed. students in my classroom, and it's fairly easy for me to imagine what accomodations they might need to assist them with new technology.

CEDO 550 - Week 4 Reflection

I can relate the examples of online learning to my own experience because I have used some of the sites they listed in the Online Gallery Tour. I like using online sites with my third graders, and it really motivates them to learn!

So far, I haven't had any problems navigating the discussion boards or the CMS, but I'll be sure to ask if something comes up! :)

I can imagine using Elluminate Live for a web conference in order to collaborate with teachers from other districts. In the past, when we want to learn about something another district is doing, we put in for a school vehicle and take a van full of teachers to a different school to check it out. With Elluminate, I could do a presentation for teachers in other districts to share what we've been doing with standards-based grading, SMARTBoards, or many, many other things, and we could save the cost of gas and substitutes to cover classes.

The new thing I tried while working on this module is being the facilitator! I had only done that one other time on Elluminate when I set up a vroom to do group work for this cohort. It worked marvelously and the first time I did it I really felt like I had the power! It was a lot of fun!

CEDO 550 - Week 3 Reflection

This week has been an interesting experience, switching my focus from student to teacher. Although I'm a teacher every day, I've been a student throughout this cohort, and I've had to really think about how to turn around and be the online teacher. I think the greatest challenge for online teachers/facilitators would be keeping up with students in such a wide area. It seems very overwhelming to me when I think of our online facilitators for this course and how they keep up with each person's blog, discussion submissions, assignment submissions, etc. I know blogs can be kept track of with RSS, but I'd love to see Ken's side of Brainhoney to see what he sees when he logs in. Is there a spreadsheet that pops up to say what each person's submitted and how many responses, or does he have to read them all and count them up as he goes? It seems like it would be really hard to keep up with, but I'd definitely like to learn more about it.

As I've been working on my threaded and web conference discussions, there are a few things I feel are really important to consider. First, it's important to consider the audience, especially when creating the rubric. I would obviously grade a third grade online class completely differently than I would a tenth grade online class. Second, I think it's really important to be prepared and have things ready ahead of time. Third, I think that first initial contact is really important in order to develop positive student rapport and classroom climate right off the bat.

I chose my topic, "Competency Based Education" because I've done a lot of work in my district this year with standards-based grading, which goes hand-in-hand with competency based education. Every day in my own classroom, I see students who are struggling to keep up because we need to move on with our curriculum before they fully understand what they've just learned. Then I see the other end of the spectrum, which is my students who are "held back" from achieving as much as they can because they already know what I'm teaching. It's up to me to create enrichment opportunities for them so they can move ahead a little faster than everyone else and not get bored. Technology would be very helpful in implementing competency based education. That way, they could move ahead at their own pace as they master each topic.

One thing I thought about when developing rubrics for the two different discussions is what I thought was important for the students to know. I tried to reflect things that we learned about when discussing synchronous and asynchronous discussion, and chose the most important things to include on the rubric. Being a teacher who likes simplicity, I also decided to grade on 5 things at 2 points each in order to simplify grading. With as many papers as I have to grade, my motto is the quicker and simpler the better!

CEDO 550 - Week 2 Reflection

My experience with online communities has been positive, for the most part. I have participated in Facebook, Twitter, and of course, Elluminate, Skype, and the other forums we've used for class. I have found them easy to use, and although some of them are asynchronous, I'm usually able to get feedback pretty quickly. I believe the biggest benefit of collaborative groups is the knowledge we gain from each other. Most times I think I know exactly how I would answer a question or solve a problem, but then I collaborate with the people in my group and almost always realize, I've never thought of it that way! I think the biggest challenge of collaborative groups is trying to schedule online time to work together as a group. Especially for a master's program. We aren't in high school anymore, so we have spouses, children, jobs, and other responsibilities that it is sometimes very difficult to schedule around. As far as social development and socialization issues go, I think it's very possible to be social online. However, I do think you miss some of the social cues like facial expressions and body language that you would get in a traditional classroom. For adults it's not such a big deal, but for students I would have to say the younger they are, the more important it is for them to have those social cues to rely on and learn from in the traditional classroom.

CEDO 550 - Week 1 Reflection

This has been a very interesting first week for me. Throughout this entire cohort, I have been taking what I've learned in online classes and applied them to my third grade classroom. Now, I'm having to find myself in a new role, considering how I would do things as the facilitator of an online class. It's really made me think a lot about switching roles. The most difficult part of this has been when an assignment says to think about my "targeted online learners". I can't picture doing this with my students I teach every day, because they are in third grade. They don't have enough computer experience to be able to take an online class. So, I have instead decided to think about my colleagues as my "targeted online learners." Two of the synchronous online learning tools that would be appropriate for my targeted online learners are web conference and chat. I really think the teachers I work with would enjoy taking a class that utilized these two tools. Two of the asynchronous online learning tools that would be appropriate would be e-mail and wikis. We already use both of these at school, so anyone I work with would probably feel very comfortable using these online learning tools as part of a class. I think my initial contact was warm and inviting, but I haven't received any comments on mine from classmates yet, so it will be interesting to see everyone else's comments. I also hope it was clear, concise, and user friendly. I think it was, but I will be interested to see what other people have to say. I think one strategy in formatting your contacts to make them clear and concise is to make sure you stick with one font and one size throughout the letter. It's very distracting when I'm trying to get information from an initial contact and I can't stop looking at all the different colors and sizes of text.

Statistics - Week 4

I thought our assignments this week were really interesting. My group enjoyed doing the survey assignment. We created a survey relating people's ages, income, and occupations to their views on the Budget Repair Bill. We had fun putting all we'd learned about statistics to work, and applying it to a real world problem.

I also really enjoyed the videos on Bill Tancer. His methods were very interesting to me. I never gave much thought to anyone researching my search methods just for fun or to study trends. Usually if I think about someone "watching" what I'm doing online I think of stalkers, not researchers! Bill Tancer was fascinating to listen to.

Statistics - Week 3

Well, it's been another interesting week. Z-scores are very confusing to me, but the leader of our group is doing his best to walk us through it!

The survey was interesting to create. With everything going on in our state government right now, we decided to do a survey on people's opinions about "the bill". We all learned that SurveyMonkey is a very user-friendly tool to use. Most of us had taken surveys created with SurveyMonkey before, but had never created our own. It was a great learning experience, and now that I see how easy it is, I think I will definitely use that tool again in the future.

Statistics - Week 2

Wow! Another week of so much information! It was interesting learning about survey software. Although we had learned about sites like SurveyMonkey in the past, I really didn't think of it at statistics! It's pretty amazing to see all the different survey sites that are out there that let you use them for free.

Once again, I have to give credit to Andrew. This stuff is so easy for him, yet he takes the time to explain it to the rest of us in his group who are usually totally lost! Yay Andrew!

Week 1 of Statistics

Wow! What a week! I have to admit, I am scared to death of this class now that I know it's about statistics. However, I am very glad to have Andrew in my group. Being a high school stats teacher, he is able to "dumb it down" for the rest of us in the group so we can begin to understand it a little bit. It's been a rough week, especially with everything the governor is throwing on our plates! Yikes! I have to confess that has been stealing my attention away from class a little bit, and it's been very hard to concentrate.

With that said, I'm hoping I will start to see how this class will impact what I do in third grade, since that is always my focus. I understand the importance of statistics in life, but I need to find out how it applies to me in my little corner of the world.

My new class wiki

I now have a SMART goal for my classroom!

S: I would like to incorporate a class wiki which my students can access daily for assignments,
class news, etc.
M: I will prove it is done by assigning my students usernames, clearing it with my principal, and
using it in my classroom.
A: I definitely have the resources and time to do this, since my wiki is already complete. The
only hurdles I may have to tackle are clearing it with administration and getting parent
permission.
R: It is definitely doable. My wiki is very third-grader-friendly, it may actually save me time
because my kids will do some assignments online instead of turning in papers I have to
correct.
T: This will be done by February 18th. This will give me enough time to get it back after I've
submitted it for this course, talk to administration, contact parents, and introduce it to my
students.

I am so excited to start using a class wiki with my students! I had a lot of fun creating it, and I think it will really motivate my students.

Elementary School - Twitter for Teachers

Elementary School - Twitter for Teachers

CEdO 535 - Week 5

This week I learned about Yacapaca! Yacapaca is a Web 2.0 tool that can assist you with making your classes paperless. You can create quizzes, tests, and online assignments which are automatically scored for you. After they are scored, you can use the data from the scoring to drive your instruction for your next lessons.

I would love to use this with my students! I constantly feel buried by the amount of paper I collect and score. Yacapaca could help me change that, while encouraging my students to keep learning from technology. I am so excited to try it!

Week 4 - CEdO 535

We used two things this week that I think would be very beneficial to me in my career. First, I was very surprised to learn that social bookmarking is something I would use with my students. I've had my own diigo account for a long time, but I was always of the opinion that that was for older students, not my third graders. When we were talking in class last week about having a diigo group for my class, where I could bookmark all the sites they could easily go to, it was like a lightbulb went on, and I was wondering, "why didn't I think of that?".

The second thing I can't wait to get started with is a wiki. Instead of starting one for my class, I would like to start one for the staff at my school. I was telling my principal about this the other day, and she was all for it! My plan is to finalize everything with her tomorrow so I can do the staff wiki for my project this week. I can't wait to get started!

CEdO 535 - Week 3

I have learned SO MUCH this week that I will use with my class. First, I loved the RSS reader assignment. That feature is going to save me so much time that I used to spend going from website to website to check things. I linked the Iditarod news to it, because I want my class to follow that for a project this year, so now my students can see daily updates from the Iditarod that come right to us!

Second, I really like the photo sharing sites. I have to admit, I've been reluctant to upload my photos to an online storage site because I never thought it was really safe, and I didn't want any Joe off the street to have my personal pictures. But now that I've learned more about it, and the fact that photosharing doesn't mean all your pictures are fair game to anyone, I really like it. I started by uploading pictures I've taken of scenery and animals and put them on a site I plan to use with my students. That way, my students have a site geared to them that has pictures they can use for their technology projects in class.

CEdO 535 - Week 2

There are two things we did this week that I can use in my job, and they are photo sharing sites, and wikis. The photo sharing sites I would use with my students when they are doing projects. They tend to Google a subject, and then attempt to copy and paste each and every photo they find to use in their projects. My job then is to teach them about copyright laws and creative commons. I would encourage my students to use the Flickr Creative Commons site to find pictures they want for their projects.

The other topic we covered this week that I can use at work is wikis. In my case, I would like to use the wiki for staff members, not students. It would be a great way to collaborate with colleagues, without e-mailing back and forth all the time. Everyone invited could see and edit the pages, which would make a great tool we could all learn from!

Facilitating Collaboration Using Web 2.0 Tools

Wow! I really needed that couple weeks of holiday break! Now that I'm rested and refreshed, time to get back to work. I'm really enjoying reading Richardson's book, "Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms". As I've been reading, I keep coming across things that I can use right away, as well as sections I want to give my principal to read about how to use these tools in the classroom.

The first tool I want to use in my classroom is e-pals. I talked to Mary during the last class in this cohort and she gave me a lot of information about e-pals from her personal experience. I've always done pen pals with my third graders, and I really think they're ready to start e-pals, so they can collaborate and learn from other students across the globe. The part I didn't realize until this week is that they can use e-pals for blogging! Since I mentioned e-pals to my principal, our tech person has set up a school account, so I think I could be well on my way to doing blogs with my students. I REALLY liked the idea mentioned in Chapter 2 of Richardson's book about students using blogs as an online filing cabinet from kindergarten through twelfth grade. They would have a complete collection of their work when they graduate! How awesome! This idea I'm going to mention to my principal right away tomorrow.

This book has opened up a whole new realm of ideas for me. Before I always thought of blogs and wikis as something for much older students. After doing this week's readings, I realize there is so much I can do with my third graders, and I can't wait to get started!