Saturday, July 24, 2010

CED 599 Week 3

I remember being 8 years old and knowing I would get a Master's degree. Both of my parents have them and I knew I would too. I thought I would have it by the time I was 25, but a divorce put everything on hold. Much of my aspirations in life have focused on this. I can't believe it's over.

Now I have an opportunity to move forward, using what I've learned to help my district and myself. What new goal should I have? I haven't figured that out yet. It certainly won't be anything academic. I plan to learn how to knit and do more gardening. Oh ya, maybe I'll finally be able to catch up on my housework too.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

CED 599 Week 2

I've learned a valuable lesson about Moodle - it works best on Internet Explorer. Not all of the editing tools are available when accessing Moodle from Safari or Chrome. I finally figured this out after a 10 minutes freak out session trying to figure out why Moodle looked different at home than it did at work.

As my project progresses I've discovered that I should have written my rubric differently. I wrote the rubric to say that I would write 8 training documents. That was a little short sighted. It's more important that I find the right documents and design them when needed. In some cases, another staff member may have designed something that works well or there may be some documents that the software vendor created. The most important thing is that it is clear and meaningful for the user.

Monday, July 12, 2010

CED 599 Week 1

Last week I got a Moodle account; we've only had the server about a week. I've decided to do a different project for 599. I manage Skyward, our district's student information system. So I've decided to put Skyward related professional development materials on Moodle.

I downloaded the Moodle handbook. Right now I'm doing a lot of exploring on my own and when I get stuck, consult the manual. I hope I learn a lot more in the next two weeks. My course looks very bland. My boss has put together a Moodle course before. I'll ask for his guidance. It will be nice to complete this project this month. I'll be introducing the course to staff when they return in fall.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

CED 565 Week 6

I really enjoyed the simulation game in this class. I liked the fact that there were no easy answers and no "end" to the game. Very reflective of real life. Playing the game has caused me to pause when I'm dealing with change situations at work and try to identify where in the game the current situation would fit in. Whoever designed the game had obviously done a lot of research and was very clever.

I've enjoyed this class and it has definitely made me think about the character traits that make a good leader. My new boss has been with us a year now. During my year end review I told him that I was very happy with how the year had gone. He seems to strike a great balance between being involved and in charge with letting people do what they do best and give them the decision making authority that they need. I was on the interviewing team and we were required to take notes. On the top of my paper for my now boss I wrote the words "Put me in coach." His interview made me think of a coach and not of a boss. I'm happy to say that I have the same feeling today. We work together well.

Contrast that with some former co-workers that my husband has had. One supervisor was so concerned about rules that she had a tendency to be a minute muncher. If you were one minute late or left one minute early, she'd give you a hard time. This applied to everyone, not just her direct reports. She also tended to act like she was spying on people, but it was all under the guise of being efficient. This supervisor doesn't garner much respect. The bottom line is that people work harder for people that respect them. Sometimes you just need to cut people a break.

Friday, June 18, 2010

CED 565 Week 5

I've been pursuing additional leadership opportunities within my district. Luckily, the administration seems to be responsive to this request. I'm hoping to be able to create a long range plan to implement new efficiencies within the district. I know that I'll need to work with departments throughout the organization in order to be successful. I'll focus on building relationships and consensus. I'll solicit the feelings and needs of others. Wish me luck!

Saturday, June 12, 2010

CED 565 Week 4

I found the leadership came very interesting. Coming to consensus on how to move forward through the game was challenging in of itself. It'll be interesting to see how we do next week. It was kind of to read the descriptions of the characters. I can see some of them reflected in those at my district. Maybe I'll pick up some pointers from the game!

Sunday, May 30, 2010

CED 565 Week 3

How to Thrive as a Teacher Leader is the first book that I've read about leadership in schools. There are lots of books on leadership in general, but I haven't seem many about leadership in schools. Many elements of leadership are the same no matter what environment you're in, but schools are a unique environment.

Leadership is largely about people skills. The author relayed a story where a leader attempted to solve problems immediately instead of thinking carefully. As a result, the leader portrayed an image of not considering teammates thoughts or alternative solutions. I've been very guilty of the same thing. Early in my career I thought solving problems immediately was the right thing to do. Solving problems quickly - isn't that what leaders do? I've learned that most situations don't need to addressed immediately. It generally bodes well to consider alternative solutions and if appropriate, consult multiple perspectives, and then make a decision.

Friday, May 21, 2010

CED 565 Week 2

What can I say - I love data! I love to collect it and look at it in many different ways. Still, data is only valuable if it's being used to help kids. We should never lose sight that children aren't numbers. Data should be used for their direct benefit.

Our district is working hard to put more data in the hands of teachers. Our district hasn't always had a strong data culture. The conversation has begun to turn. I'm now having more frequent conversations with administration to co-ordinate the integration of data into our culture.

Friday, May 14, 2010

CED 565 Week 1

Leadership in my position can be varied. I'm currently the Data Manager for my school district. When I came into the position, I discovered that we were duplicating data entry and people weren't able to obtain the student data that they needed in order to accomplish their daily tasks. Access to student data was kept under very tight control and people had to constantly go to a select few people to get what they needed. I carefully reviewed what needed to be under tight control and what didn't. I strongly believe in building capacity in others. So I give up control of what I can and support others in learning how to make their own tasks easier.

Sometimes we find that our student information system and grade books don't have all the functionality that we need. I often have to look 6 months to a year into the future to obtain the functionality. I use my strong relationship with the company that makes the software to get what we need. This often involves visiting the company and working with higher level executives. The administration and teachers don't often see the results until a year later. In order to obtain what our teachers and administrators need, and avoid paying for it, I have to be very persistent and work well with others.

Friday, April 30, 2010

CED 555 Week 3

Time has gotten away from me with this blog post. The month of April just seemed to slip away.

Going through the process of planning my culminating project has helped me feel better about being able to complete it successfully. I've begun to collect resources. As part of the project I'm going to include the project lessons in my portfolio. Making the portfolio part of the project will help break additional focus to it's design. I recently went to a job fair where young hopefuls had portfolios two inches thick. While I'm not sure that more is better in the case of portfolios, I would like to bring some more strength to mine.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

CED 555 Blog 1 April 15

I've started to consider the elements that I'll use in my on-line portfolio. As I go through the list of classes that we've taken it's difficult to believe that we're almost at the end of the program. I've chosen to focus on the Wisconsin teacher's standards. By focusing on these standards I'll be able to see the work that we've done in the program through a different lens. Everything that's done in the classroom should be directly tied to the standards. This exercise will be good practice for me.

I've also been reviewing the requirements of the culminating project. One of the steps is to design a rubric with which the project will be evaluated. This makes me consider designing the rubric first. What should be the criteria for demonstrating mastery of the topic that I'll be working on? Perhaps if I focus on what constitutes acceptable evidence of mastery, the process will become less intimidating.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

CED 555 Blog 1 March 25

It's still difficult for me to believe that the end of the program is now in sight! What will I do with myself when school is over? Perhaps I'll finally be able to keep a decently clean house!

I'm thrilled that this class was created in order to help us get through our final project. I've been considering what I should do for my project. I've become particularly interested in how technology can be used to differentiate instruction. This is what I'm considering doing my project on. Does anyone has any thoughts on this?

This weekend I'm going to sit down and write my vision and mission statements. I admit that I'll have to do some thinking on this. As we've gone through the program, I've been pulling out some of the projects we've done, knowing that we would be doing this portfolio. I hope that I'll be able to integrate most of them.

Monday, February 15, 2010

CED0550 Week 3 News Aricle

On February 10, 2009 vitual schools made front page news of the Waukesha Freeman. Joe Petrie wrote an article called "Virtual Schools Virtualy Full." The article cites the fact that in 2008 an enrollment cap of 5,250 students was placed state wide upon on-line schools. The number of enrolled students is quickly approaching the cap. According to the article, a state audit found that open enrollment is fuelling much of the boom in on-line schools. Enrollment was capped by the state until research on the effectiveness of on-line education could be performed.

The questions surrounding on-line education are not just a manner of it's effectiveness though. There are financial considerations as well. I'd like to understand more about the financial side of the matter.

I will be watching the issues surrounding on-line schools closely. I suspect that there will be many developments within the next few years.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

CED 0550 Week 2

Last week we used the break out session more. I think that was my favorite part. To anyone that says on-line learning doesn't allow for students to collaborate easily, I would show them the break out function in Elluminate.

My manager once ran a cyber school and is becoming a great resource as I work my way through this class. Today he let me borrow a book called "What works in K-12 On-Line Education." I skimmed through the table of contents and the book looks very interesting. If I have any Aha moments, I'll post them to this blog.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

CED 0550 Week 1

We've used Elluminate a couple of times in the program, but there are so many tools we hadn't explored yet. Just for fun I signed up for a "Three for Free" account. It'll be fun to place around with it.

As I have mentioned in a class post, I can't believe that more teachers don't take advantage of Elluminate and LMS. I seems like a great way to engage students in a different way.

I think it will be nice to just concentrate on learning a couple of tools during this class. In so many of our classes we look at so many tools that we don't have a lot of time to investigate them thoroughly.

Monday, January 25, 2010

CED0540 Week 5

Through this class I've had an opportunity to explore how data is gathered and reported on. However since I handle the data for a my school district I also know that the data is only as good as those who input the data. Garbage in - garbage out. It's really important to gather data from sources that are reliable. Even then there can be inconsistencies. We in education have only started to maintain large amounts of reporting data since the advent of NCLB. Many states and districts are still working out the kinks.

I've found a couple of good data sources for classroom use. I would like to know more about how data is used in classrooms to inform instruction. There is a lot of information contained in teacher's grade books and other records. Teachers should be encouraged to explore this information and use it to enhance student learning.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Ced0540 Week 4

I was fancinated by Bill Tancer. It's amazing how much data can be collected online.

I want to explore more about how I can use data in my future classroom. We are currently reading Courageous Conversations About Race in our district. As part of the work, our district has pulled a lot of information on our students of color. Are they performing the way we think they are? How this data inform our efforts to close the achievement gap? This work will be a process.