EDLD 5397 Internship to Supervision Web Conference Week 5

Wow--final week already.  I have caught up a lot in this course and now hopefully I can keep up with courses and activities as they happen in order to not be so overwhelmed at the end. 

The conference was pretty short.  We were reminded of where to get our forms for our papers that have to be submitted to TK20 this week.  She covered the professional development plan at a greater depth, since this is something new we have to do this week.  We were given some examples (scheduling, budgeting, integrating technology in the classroom, implementing a technology project).  The plan does not have to be very detailed, but it must have at least three objectives, how we plan to accomplish them, who will help us, and how it will be evaluated. 

Questions were pretty much about the PDP and then about how to add our papers to the assignment (cut & paste).  The assignment will be pretty lengthy this week with our vitae, professional development plan, and internship plan.

EDLD 5397 Internship in Supervision Web Conference Week 4

I got caught up with supper and cleaning up that I was late for the web conference this week.  I did attend the last ten minutes for the question /answer part.  

The beginning was a reminder of our four documents needed at the end of the master’s program and the seven documents needed in TK20 for this course.   Professor Borel reinforced the need to get things done early next week.  The course ends on Friday instead of Sunday.  She also suggested reviewing the Professional Development Plan that is due next week before the conference on next Tuesday.

 

Questions were asked at the end. There were student specific questions that didn’t really affect me about field supervisors, problem with opening assignments, blogs.  Someone asked about the practice exam and it was suggested that we continue doing it throughout the rest of our courses, so that we are ready for the real exam at the end.  Professional Development plan was discussed a bit also.  It is want some students have a lot of difficulty with.  We need to come up with 3-5 objectives to accomplish over the next few years.  She explained the exams we have to take and the order to take them in (LCE, ILD, TEXes).  The action research plan is a template of what we need to write.  We are to answer the nine elements in the section that the element applies to. 

EDLD 5397 Internship in Supervision Web Conference Week 3

What a week!!  I don’t feel like I will ever catch up on everything that I need to do these days. 

I watched the recording on the website this week, since I didn’t have time on Tuesday night to participate.  The conference shared what the focus of weeks 3 & 4 will be (action research project) and week 5 (reflections on courses and internship plans).  Professor Borel then shared what needed to be uploaded to TK20 and that we should have received the email from them that our binder is ready.  We have seven documents to upload that we are working on in this class.  She informed us that we can change our plans if needed based on what we have been doing.  There was a question and answer session that several bits of information that I needed.  It was shared that there is no link on the Week 3 board for the discussion board so we have to go to it from the side bar (which I prefer using anyway).  Someone from another state asked about taking the TEXes exam.  Dr. Boral said it is not required as part of the program (only the LCE is), but it is transferrable to some states, so I need to check into it and see if it will count in Louisiana.  She also pulled up the LAMAR website that has all our forms to show us where they are, so that we can have the current one when we do our documents for Course Embedded and Internship Plan reflections.

EDLD 5397 Internship in Supervision Web Conference Reflection Week 2

            Professor Borel does an awesome job of keeping us informed of what needs to be done for the week and upcoming weeks and courses.  Information was shared on the practice exam we are to take this week.  We can take it as many times as we want (the more the better to prepare for the “real” one in the final course).  We also went over the upcoming weeks, so that we can prepare for them.  We went over the forms that must be completed by the end of the program and she reminded us that we need to have the three field supervisor conferences done also.  Questions were answered for those that had any and she reminded us that week 5 is a short week due to the holidays.

EDLD 5362 Assignment 2

We had to review educational networks this week and create a presentation that we could use to share the information with our co-workers.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4BpLaGnjjd3RTlBemZtTERmNlk/edit

EDLD 5364-Teaching with Technology Week 5 Reflection on Videos & Readings

Videos:  The videos this week were discussed using gaming and virtual worlds to teach and test students.  Students become productive and empowered participants in their learning this way.  They get to practice the skills using games and virtual worlds.  This helps with problem solving as students are learning and being tested at the same time to get through the game/world.  If they don’t pass, they have to restart and try again.  According to Barab, teachers need to be given the correct tools in order to get this done.  Gee stated that we need to “reprofessionalize teachers” to allow teachers to come up with the curriculum and how it is taught in their classrooms and make teaching a “sexy or cool” job for people to go into.  Gardner shared his “Good Play Project” which deals with the ethical sense of young people today to make them more responsible when using these digital tools. 

Edutopia.org (nd). Big Thinkers: Howard Gardner on Digital Youth. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/digital-generation-howard-gardner-video
Edutopia.org (nd). Big thinkers: James Paul Gee on grading with games. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/digital-generation-james-gee-video
Edutopia.org. (nd). Big Thinkers: Sasha Barab on New-Media Engagement. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/digital-generation-sasha-barab-video
Youtube.com (nd). Vision for 21st Century Learning. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mirxkzkxuf4
Youtube.com (nd). Vision for Technology in K-12 Education. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhoOG5Kf1w4

Readings:  The assessment explanations in Web 2.0 were very helpful.  I liked how the author explained that we can use authentic assessment and still “prepare students to success in the standardized testing.”  (Solomon & Schrum, 2007, p. 168) I agree with the authors that assessment should be formative (ongoing throughout the unit/lesson).  They also suggested, “if educators work together to plan their instruction and simultaneously plan ways to evaluate throughout the unit, they will develop a wide variety of interesting models.” (Solomon & Schrum, 2007, p. 170) 

In Using Technoogy with Classroom Instruction that Works, the authors recommend to “explicity teach students about the importance of effort and have students keep track of their effort and achievement.”  (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, Malenoshi, 2007, p. 156)  I am actually doing this they year in my classroom.  Students will be tracking their progress toward their goals.  We are supposed to begin it this week, but the software is having printing issues and I may not be able to get them the information they need in order to track.  I have notice a change in the students and their performance since I started showing them their class charts at the beginning of each class period.  I can’t wait to see the progress once they get their individual charts to start recording. 

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 155-164.
Solomon, G., & Schrum, L. (2007). Web 2.0: New tools, new schools. Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology in Education, 168-176.

EDLD 5364-Teaching with Technology Week 4 Quote

“Furthermore, professional development efforts will be undermined if the computers or infrastructure are not adequately supported.”  (Ringstaff & Kelley, 2002; Fabry & Higgs, 1997)

I choose this quote because this is what we have dealt with on a daily basis this school year.  The district decided to change the grading software (among other software) this year with consulting with the IT department.  Therefore it has been a huge headache getting the software to work correctly and the teachers comfortable using it.  When they “trained the trainers” who would train our teachers at school, they didn’t even want the network manager from the school to go.  Thank goodness my principal pushed for me to go along with the two classroom teachers she was supposed to send.  The day of training for the teachers (which was the first day of school), we couldn’t even get the software to work correctly in the training mode where the teachers could “play” with it without fear of messing something up.  I finally gave up on that and had to have them do it in their real roll book.  The kinks are finally getting worked out and the teachers are liking the software a little more, but the beginning of school is always crazy enough without throwing new software into the mix that doesn’t work like it supposed to.  All this did was cause our teachers to start off the year frustrated and stressed.  This is the main reason many teachers don’t like technology in their classrooms.  As I have heard them say, “It never works when I want it to.”

Pitler, H. (2005). McRel technology initiative: The development of a technology intervention program final report (Contract Number ED-01-CO-0006). Aurora, CO: Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED486685) Retrieved from http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED486685&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED486685