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.

CEDo 555 - Professional Portfolio Session 1

Our school district does not use professional profolios as this time, however, after my performance evaluation I was asked to put together a document simular to a portfolio. I am planning on utilizing what we are learning in this class to put my eportfolio together and using it for administration in my district. This could be a good example to them what can be accomplished and how it could benefit students as they proceed through school. I will be using Google Web and that is what I am promoting at work at this time. We are educating staff more on how Google docs can create a new way to work collaboratively for staff and students.

CEDo550 Week 6

The final week of class is here and WOW what a class this has been. I have learning much about the online learning not only the skills to educate students with online learning but also the laws and requirements.

My students are gaining 21st century skills by our school district taking on virtual school learning but doig an online pilot program for the 2011-12 academic year. The virtual class will be in classroom instruction but with technology learning.

I understand the Virtual Schools Legislation in Wisconsin and am concerned really about the law concerning the attendance issues. Students do not have to follow the laws completely...there are still expectations, but the students are not held to the standards as all other students.

During the module I was excited to learn about how to create an online class and use the tools to be successful.

CEDO 550 Week 2

This weeks work was so helpful to make me more comfortable with online learning and the tools to be used. Eluminate is a tool that we have used since the beginning of this Masters degree, however, with the tools learning and the breaking in groups has helped me feel more comfortable with online learning. I can see how breaking students into small groups helps people feel more comfortable. Online learning and facilitating can be intimidating because of the fear of what others think of something that you say, even though you cannot see them face-to-face, you are still speaking to individuals. The one good thing is online learning can also give that "shy" student the opportunity to speakout. I am getting more comfortable with this.

When implementing a new program of online learning, I am learning that there are many steps that must be thought through before the program goes into effect. Topics such as cost, who would benefit from online learning, educating facilitators to be successful, and having the technology to support the courses. Students must be motivated and disciplined in order for them to be successful and they will be missing the social aspect of having peers and students on-hand. If all these are taken into consideration, an online learning program could be extremely effective. I am excited about the new learning ways of the 21st century, I hope I am one of those successful facilitators one day.

CEDO550

First week of Online Facilitation and I am so excited about this class. The first session was learning tools that have always been in the vitual classroom but never shared with us what they all can do. Elluminate has so many options to facilitate. I am very happy to learn how we can use them as facilitators when the time comes. Breaking participates into small groups and interacting with eachother on assignments with the instructor jumping into help is a great way to have students learning with each other and get familiar with interacting with sharing screens.

All through the sessions I am more of a quiet student who doesn't jump in a lot, but now with this class I can tell I will be more comfortable with this type of learning. This is where I am hoping to take my career with online learning and facilitating...after all it is the learning style for the 21st century learning. Learning tools and dos and don'ts of elearning is going to be exciting!

CEdO540 Week 5

Well...this week has been filled with lots of reports. I would much rather continue writing reports and incorporating statistic graphs than sit and figure out problems which involved mean, median, etc. During my job I am continually researching data and I do enjoy this this portion of my job. Though a lot of work is involved and users need to understand the data they are looking at and/or comparing, it is interesting to learn how different websites show different statistics.

I am still fearful of the formulas involved. Thank goodness for Microsoft Excel, the program makes things so much easier when it come to compiling data, formulas, and graphs.

CEdO540 Week 3 Statistics/Surveys

I am enjoying this course because of the surveys. It pertains to so much of what we are working on in my position. It is so important to get information/feedback about how our school population. In order to achieve school improvement the community population is important. At work our current project is to assess individuals to see how our school improvement team can meet the needs of the school.

The part of this class I am struggling with is the statistics part of this. I understood during my undergrad but this one is throwing me for a loop. Watch out Bill, I will be tapping into your knowledge this week during group. I know I know it, but just to remember it is driving me crazy. Probably doesn't make sense stating it that way, but that is how I feel these numbers are making me feel...no sense. HELP!

Week 2, CEdO540 - Surveys

After researching the amount of programs that are offered for surveys, it is interesting to learn the difference between them. I am a bit familiar with SurveyMonkey because that is what our school district utilizes for many different types of surveys. They produce surveys to the community to find out what they are seeking from the district, performance evaluations for administrators, parent surveys for ways to have school improvement.

A new way of a survey so we can collect additional data, the district set up a Blog. It allows the team of our school improvement to evaluated comments made by individuals and allow for a collaboration time for community members, parents, students, and staff. It has created interesting information for the team to evaluate. Also having a Blog allows for vital information to be posted to the team so they know agendas, tasks that need to be completed prior to a meeting, etc. It has brought a new view to survey for me.

I look forward to venturing further into what surveys offer and how many more there are out in the cyberworld.

Week 1, Statistics

Statistics...not so scary. I use data each day of my job, the scary part is learning how to pull the correct data from the systems where our student data is collected. The challenge I face in my job is knowing where the data is stored in which "tables" and then knowing how to tell the computer to pull the correct information. I am looking forward to learning how to present data in more than one way such as the different graphs, reports, etc.

Week 6 CEdO540

WOW this class was full of applications that can be used both professionally and personally. I am so excited to begin utilizing tools we learned during this class in my professional life. I already recommended applications to our staff to help them with the instruction within the classroom. Once application that really stands out is the Podcast.

S = Teachers will learn Podcast and how they can create was to present to their students using the SmartBoards within their classrooms.
M = As more staff begin to use the Podcasts I will see how they are seeing the benefits of utilizing the application.
A = I will be able to organize inservices during inservice times to educate staff on the benefits of using Podcast and how it could benefit students and their instruction techniques.
R = This task would be completely realistic because teachers are already seeing the benefits of creating Podcasts to be used among their students. Especially students who are educating more than one class of students.
T = In order to get all teachers on board it will take time, however, if we were able to offer the classes and have all staff trained by the end of this academic year, teachers could start their 2011-12 academic year utilizing the Podcast for all units throughout the year.

Week 5

This week we were learning about social networking. I am completely on board that social network within the schools can be positive. Thought there will always be those students who over step their bounds and abuse the fact that they are being trusted, however, the learning opportunity and connections students can make with peers can offer a different perspective. Students can have the opportunity for peer feedback, suggestions, and recommendations. We were using social networking in a language arts class for students to take surveys and it is interesting to see how interactive the students where. Of course, we had the few that did go beyond where they should have been and post things on their networks. It was interesting to see the student's reactions (i.e. shocked) to know that school personnel can actually view Facebook posts and they can get in trouble for what they posted. Lesson to be learned.

I am completely for students to have an opportunity to express themselves and using technology promotes that for students these days. Allowing them to express themselves and give peer feedback is the way of the future. Why not promote this even in the in younger children.

Week 4

WOW what a week...Go Pack...Superbowl...couldn't be happier!

This weeks studies were so helpful...we just opened up the board policy because cell phones were not allowed in the middle school. However, there was a texting project that we wanted to complete in the language arts classes. We allowed students to use their cell phones to respond to a "quiz". The kids were so excited, but then...two decided to take it further and investigate their social networks...Facebook. Thought the social networking is okay, they were doing it during class and they were posting not appropriate tasks. Kids don't understand, staff can view Facebooks and therefore, not so cool to be on staff Facebooks for this reason. We caught the two girls and serious ramifcations happened.

It was exciting for our school to take this on with the texting test, however, even with firm warning, students thought it was important to by pass the "law" and venture to their social network.

I am a user of Facebook and find it is a great way to express my feelings and get opinions of my friends. It is fun to connect with individuals from past years and reconnnect. There have been many lost friends that have been found. I love Facebook!

Week 3, CEdO535

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) was the topic of the week. I never did know what that RSS was on websites that I was viewing, however, now I do. Setting specific RSS for my specific needs has made my life, work and personal, much easier. I find is amazing that we can now set RSS' on my computer to access information on a daily basis. This allows me to keep up with news, updates, interests daily without having to seek constantly through the web.

RSS will allow educators to set up current events with classes daily. Individuals will not have to set up apps on their technology tools, all they have to do is set the their RSS and then select from those lists specific to users interests. I am curious how many of our teachers use this tool.

Post 2 CeDO 535 Week 2

During the reading regarding Wikipedia, we discussed previously in another class and after research Wikipedia has information that could be used for research, however, it is important that the user is aware that not all information if factual and they should research beyond Wiki. During a few classes that I previously have taken, the instructor would not allow Wiki to be a soul reference while writing papers. It is interesting how individuals have different opinions about Wikipedia. I just wonder how true Wikipedia is when anyone can edit information. Instructors need to inform students of the possibility of non-accurate information.