CEDo 599 Classes

Week 3
This week was wrapping my head around how I would set up training for staff to present the tool Thinkfinity. I did a lot of research on what would be the most beneficial for staff to learn the tool and build their knowledge. I decided to incorporate traing tools, videos, and presentations into my website that would be distributed to staff. The website is built as s demonstration of what would be presented as an inservice tool for staff. Though Thinkfinity is a tool for students, parents, and teachers, I directed my tool for teachers only. It is beginning to come together and I feel this tool could be very beneficial for staff.

Week 2
After meeting with Louis (instructor), I felt better about what my goal was for the project. I began to research more about Thinkfinity and talk to staff about what they would like to know about. I felt a bit lost prior to meeting with Louis. Wish me luck because I am feeling a bit stressed about this final project.

Week 1
WOW my whole project is taking a different turn...let the nerves begin. I met with Louis (instructor) and we decided to take my project to a different direction. Initially I was going to create a website that demonstrated Web 2.0 tools for teachers to learn how to effectively teach online courses. Now I was introduced to a great tool that easily helps teacher teach to set State Standards. This tool has everything teachers need to complete assigments, projects, and tests/quizzes all based on specific state standards. I am excited to begin my research in order to help our teachers and save them time. Off and researching.

CEDo 565 Final Week...Week 6

My understanding of leadership has changed since this class. I understand the meaning of leadership, however, to understand the importance of creating an environment of continually learning not only for students but also for the educators. It is important for the leader to create a good work moral in order to create a better work environment. It is so important to make the staff feel valued and supported. After this learning about leadership and how to be an effective leader, it has made me want to develop more into a leader. I will most likely re-read our textbook in a more indept understanding in order to grasp the concepts. It is imporant even if not a leader of the entire staff, there is always leadership happening within a workplace so I find it extremely important for all staff to understand leadership skills.

I completely understand with improving education from within. It is so important for staff to continue their learning to improve student learning. There is so much more put on educators these days to assure all children are learning and in order to achieve this, staff need to continously learn how to accomplish this goal. Having a leader lead continuous learning is so important so staff can all be "on the same page" with education.

CEDO 565 Week 4

The readings have been so interesting and I can vision things that we are learning that are happening...or not happening within our school. Learning the leadership skills and/or further expanding my knowledge is allowing me to apply these things to my position and understand better what the leader of our building is attempting to do. Great leader in expanding learner of staff and holding accountability, however, the climate of the building is so low as so many staff members feel they cannot do thigs right. It is ashame to see staff moral so low as the staff we have is so good and want the best for our children. After reading Chapter 5 and learing about climate, it makes me want to share information with our leader so the moral of the building can be where it could be. The staff are so strong, however, have the feeling they are not adequate. I wonder how sharing things we are learning would be receptive from the leader. It would help even if the slightest changes would be made.

CEDo565, Week 3

WOW what a week, the simulation game was so much fun. It was interesting put the pieces together and learn about involving key players into a committees to make tasks successful. This week we will be doing it again and hopefully we can move our tasks faster. I enjoyed this game and believe it would be a great staff development game for teachers to see how a leader struggles to pull the appropriate individuals together in order to make a district/school successful with change. It is not as easy as one my believe.

CEDo565, Week 2

This weeks reading was extremely interesting is the portion about administration and interviews. We are in the heat of the time of hiring and I found that teachers are backing out of "volunteering" to be part of the interviews because they believe they are not heard anyways. I have heard numerous times "I am not wasting my time, they have their people picked out already". After this weeks readings, I found this to be very true, but distrubing to find out that it is the teachers that should be heard because they ware aware of what is truly needed in the department. Does anyone else see this happening in your district? What would you do to change the format of the hiring if you were a leader?

CEDo565 Workshop 1

This week lesson was on leadership and what it means within the school system. I personally found the jigsaw article The Many Faces of Leadership to be very interesting as it explained the two different types of teachers within a school. There are the teachers that continually do "their job" the same way each year and there are the teachers that take the intiative to go beyond just being in the classroom. Teachers continued desire to develop skills, support other teachers, and improve student learning are the traits of a teacher that wants to go beyond the classroom teacher. This is important because the administrators are not the only individuals within a school that continually instructs teachers, teacher need to support eachother and assist each other. Administrators have additional duties and commitments.

We have a saying in our school district "if you have the will but not the skill, what can we do to get you the skill. But if you have the skill but not the will, how can we help you get the will". Getting the will is more difficult because it has to come from within the staff member to pursue achievement.

Professional Portfolio Post 2

Well...the portfolio is complete, waiting for instructors feedback. I struggled on this project as I am not a classroom teacher. The biggest struggle I had was how to approach the project that I will complete for our capstone to the program. I decided to approach it with not students being the primary focus but keeping staff at the primary focus. Of course, students will be the end result because they will be getting the instruction from the teacher who will be knowledgeable with e-learning through the use of the website that I will be creating. My project is to educate staff on Web 2.0 applications (Google Docs, Blogging) and then teach them how to take a Google Doc and upload to Eluminate (e-learing tool) to have a successful e-learning classroom. Hopefully staff will find this a very useful website.