It is countdown time for me now...

It is Sunday July 8th 2007 and I am meeting my group tomorrow to go over our strategy, thoughts, reflections, layout of what we have accomplished this past year and a half. Honestly? I am scared. I can't even get my head around what we have learned--it has been so much. I have never worked this hard for anything in my life and had so much fun doing it. I am waiting for the day that Bill (aka Dr. Warrick) has been telling us about. It will happen about six months from now. I will be sitting there doing my lesson plans and BOOM it will hit me! All the stuff Vygotsky taught us and Pink will come flooding in and I will see clearly all that we have been working on. Ahhhh, I wait with baited breath. Back to my ellusive activities....

June 23rd

I wrote this post on June 11th, where I posted two times. Maybe it was missed...then again maybe not.. I would love to have your thoughts from your experiences and how you have dealt with these issues. So....I am posting again.

I wonder if it is a better idea to blog often or blog long.... Tonight I will blog long since I have had four days to reflect on our class last Wednesday. The intense storms on Friday evening kept me off line and I had time to do some reading. This in turn prompted many diverse connections in my head about how all this is connected; The TLA course, the new technologies we are learning about, the group work we are experiencing with our advocacy. New understandings have surfaced this week. In reading Davidson's case study on developing the role for an Educational Technologist (ET) I am transported to previous conversations I have had with our school's ITRT (Instructional Technology Resource Teacher). The issues that were faced by Davidson's subject Kevin McGullivray mirror issues that our ITRT and I discuss. "What is my role?", "How is it defined by the teachers and the administration?", "How can I get teachers to make use of my talents?", "How will others view me as part of this school if I do not have my own office space?" and "How can I get the school team to support my efforts?" are questions often discussed. It was very helpful to read this study in that it helped me legitimize what might be construed as complaining by our ITRT. Defining her role is critical--how teachers view her position and her role in the school is equally important to her effectiveness as a technology guru, as is how she views the role herself. With all the emerging technology and the integration desired by the school officials it is imperative that she is seen as a comrade, a liaison, a co-teacher, and a collaborator. What I have realized is hat this all takes time an doesn't happen during the first year. The second year is better. People need time to internalize change and process what it means to and for them. Teachers roles, themselves, have changed--we have been required to adjust to changing curriculum, standardized testing, ever-widening leadership roles and continually asked to incorporate new technology. There doesn't seem to be the luxury of the process time needed to easily incorporate all these changes. I can sometimes comfortably sit back and look at the big picture. It is not productive to view a week's, a month's, or even a quarter's progress or lack there of, to determine success or failure. Brown and Moffet's discussion of the hero's role is apropos--it is not enough to look linearly at cause and effect....sometimes the seeds we place take time to grow.

June 19th reflection

I am really enjoying this semester. I am learning so much and know that I will miss this when it is over. I need the forced participation and love the energy that our cohort has.

We finished up a lot of work on Tuesday and it felt nice to really work together as a group. In the beginning of this cohort Dr. Warrick would change our groups as often as we met. I kept getting thrown out of my comfort zone and have really learned the value of that. When I chose to work with Joe and Marc I chose mostly unknown personalities. I had worked briefly with them on one project before but never together. I have very much enjoyed how we have meshed all of our talents. Through the past year and a half we have learned to trust ourselves and others in the group. This was important for me because in the beginning I felt I was so new to this and now I see my confidence has grown by leaps.

I looked at all the stuff we had to do Tuesday and honestly did not feel overwhelmed. I trusted my group and new that we could tackle it. That was an awesome experience. I know this is what I will feel during the exit experience. At least I hope so. Our group is strong.

I love the whole idea of a podcast to streamline to just the basics. It reminds me of our 25 word Happy Hour Summary--short and to the point. I can see the use of these in class, too and look forward to next year implementing what we have learned.

I talked with my department chair (trying to step into the extra large shoes of a teacher leader) and had a surprisingly great conversation. We talked about having a geometry, and Algebra retreat, at the end of this summer for the teachers in our department. I am going to have a department get-together at the end of July. Any ideas for activities for these two events are greatly appreciated and welcome. The door has been opened and there are willing allies, it is time to move in. Thanks to everyone for what they have shared with me and helped me to become a better person.

June 14th reflection--Bulk of the PSA

Thursday night was so much fun. Joe and I had to do our PSA together. We had the storyboard completed and ran into a glitch when some footage that Joe had taken did not come out. What to do, what to do? We discussed several options, one of which consisted of meeting outside of class to use the actors we had previously selected, and we finally came to the conclusion that the project was not how well the acting was but how we put together the announcement, was the message portrayed as we wanted and could we edit it so that it all came together in an effective PSA. I enjoyed this whole process. Coming up to the roadblocks, rerouting our intentions, changing our path was...well...liberating for me. I get stuck sometimes with activities and miss the opportunities to try them in a new way. Thanks to Josh and Cheryl who came to our aid and did a great acting job for us. Joe was a great director. It was so much fun to play with it afterwards and see how detailed you could be with the time frame, and how you could add the transitions and the voiceovers. The saving of it was a little stressful but with Dr. Warrick's help that was accomplished successfully. I, too, am looking forward to everyones finished project on Tuesday. Happy Weekend.

June 12th reflection

Tuesdays night class was very enjoyable. I liked working on the PSA (Public Service Announcement). I thought the video clip with Katie Couric was fascinating. I was totally enthralled in the amount of work that goes into a 30 second PSA. She certainly demonstrated on a much larger level what we are reading about how teacher leaders should behave. Looking and seeing a job that needs to be done and advocating for it. She was instrumental in getting those three commercials produced but was by no means the most important of the group. At our schools the importance of the teacher leaders goes without saying but I think we sometimes lose hope thinking that we have no power and that what we do doesn't matter. Couric's role was empowering for me to see.
I look forward to the filming and the editing of our PSA for ITS for Motivation. We worked on the treatment and the story board and are ready to film. I enjoyed the back and forth discussions on the importance of the right word choice and what message exactly did we want to portray. The dialogue and the unspoken expressions all need to say what we want.

I altered my choice...posts that are too long, are just that.
I wanted to share my experience with two teachers this past week. I have been doubting my ability to be in a leadership role at my school. There seems to be so many other teachers that are smarter than I, have more experience than I, have the ability to articulate what needs to be articulated....but this week I may have found what I do do well, and that is sharing what I love to do. I started my end of year wiki with my last class of the year (check it out coopsgeometry.pbwiki.com) and showed it to another teacher in my department and she now has her own started for next year. She does so much more techy stuff than I have ever done so I didn't need to help her much but in the coming months I think she will be a great advocate partner for implementing more of this type of technology. The other teacher I had fun with is in the English department and I went to her in search of a donut. Yes, food brought me to the right place at the right time. I asked her how she was doing--an innocent question--and she held up the "goal sheet" and said she was stuck on what to put. She wanted to incorporate more technology like doing a web page but was told by others that we all had to do that next year and she was now stumped on what angle to shoot for. I showed her my Wiki and my blog (this one) and answered her excited questions about the pros and cons of each. We discussed backgrounds, layouts possibilities, limited access, editable content--it was very exciting and she was thankful to have the help. She had not gotten much this past year. I realized that it is unfair to say that the teachers that have not incorporated techno-stuff are resistant. There just may not be help available when they are asking for it. I left her with ideas that i could see buzzing in her head and the URLs of the sites to get started. It was fun and I even got my donut!

June 11th

I wonder if it is a better idea to blog often or blog long....
Tonight I will blog long since I have had four days to reflect on our class last Wednesday. The intense storms on Friday evening kept me off line and I had time to do some reading. This in turn prompted many diverse connections in my head about how all this is connected; The TLA course, the new technologies we are learning about, the group work we are experiencing with our advocacy. New understandings have surfaced this week. In reading Davidson's case study on developing the role for an Educational Technologist (ET) I am transported to previous conversations I have had with our school's ITRT (Instructional Technology Resource Teacher). The issues that were faced by Davidson's subject Kevin McGullivray mirror issues that our ITRT and I discuss. "What is my role?", "How is it defined by the teachers and the administration?", "How can I get teachers to make use of my talents?", "How will others view me as part of this school if I do not have my own office space?" and "How can I get the school team to support my efforts?" are questions often discussed. It was very helpful to read this study in that it helped me legitimize what might be construed as complaining by our ITRT. Defining her role is critical--how teachers view her position and her role in the school is equally important to her effectiveness as a technology guru, as is how she views the role herself. With all the emerging technology and the integration desired by the school officials it is imperative that she is seen as a comrade, a liaison, a co-teacher, and a collaborator. What I have realized is hat this all takes time an doesn't happen during the first year. The second year is better. People need time to internalize change and process what it means to and for them. Teachers roles, themselves, have changed--we have been required to adjust to changing curriculum, standardized testing, ever-widening leadership roles and continually asked to incorporate new technology. There doesn't seem to be the luxury of the process time needed to easily incorporate all these changes. I can sometimes comfortably sit back and look at the big picture. It is not productive to view a week's, a month's, or even a quarter's progress or lack there of, to determine success or failure. Brown and Moffet's discussion of the hero's role is apropos--it is not enough to look linearly at cause and effect....sometimes the seeds we place take time to grow.

May 30--More on Wikis

My, my, my. I just keep learning more. I had an idea tonight about a use for the Blog in the classroom. I wish I could get it up and running before school lets out. I would like the students to reflect on the year and pass on advice to the next ninth graders. What they learned, what they would do different, what they wished they could do more of. I had a student who remarked the other day "If I knew I would be using algebra again, I would have paid more attention last year" We all had a chuckle at this and then a serious discussion about how often we hear people say that. MY 30-ish cousin had the same sentiments. I shared with my student that he was ahead of the game and that I hoped they all would take that with them next year and wake up a little more. I think I will share with them a new blog I can create and invite them to join in for the summer...............hmmmm.....we will see where this goes.

I have been thinking since Wednesday evening of the implications of Wikis and Blogs and how they can affect our use of the Internet. I asked my friends who are immersed in technology for their jobs if they use Wikis and/or Blogs and they all responded with negatives. They did not use them in their professional or personal life. They had heard of Blogs but not Wikis. I was surprised at this. I question myself about the importance of these two pieces of technology and why we are spending time investigating them. For me, I see how easy it is to create this Blog. For the uninitiated techy it was very easy to learn how to maneuver through the steps and pages. I was awed Wednesday evening when we were looking at Google Reader and EduBlog. The use of Google Reader was fascinating. To be able to compile the blogs you are interested in onto one site was a very useful tool. This one tool makes blogging practical for me. I know I am a baby in all of this and I sit in class and try to wrap my head around all the implications of what we are learning and I know I will be sitting six months or a year from now and it will start to hit me. Looking at the Wiki that Bill created in class showed me that this tool can be used for my school website or my neighborhood school site. I don't know if this is incredible to anyone else but as I work on the site for my children's swim team and realize all the limitations that the host site (that we pay for) has built-in I am excited at the prospects of creating a Wiki with limited access. And it is free, and easy. What does this imply for Abundant Hosting (our domain name) or ETeams where our site is created?

refelctions on discussions about motivating

I was at school early last week and ran into a teacher that will be working on the ANGEL project with me this summer. I asked her what she thought of it and how she thought it would be useful in the classroom. She was excited at the prospect and her previous experience is going to be very useful. She was involved in the pilot program this year. She voiced some areas where ANGEL will be very useful and also voiced some concerns. The possibility of connections with parents and students is mindboggling. I was reminded of my groups advocacy idea--how to get students, parents and teachers motivated--and thought that ANGEL will be a great tool to help with this. One of the concerns was of the teacher that did not participate with ANGEL and how parents might react negatively to their non-participation. This in turn might cause disharmony within the teaching staff. We also discussed how the implementation is going to happen and how it could be done so that teachers would get on board. Her fear, and mine, is that it will be introduced at the beginning of the year--such an overwhelming time anyway--and through a quick inservice the teachers are supposed to incorporate it into their planning. We both know that the teachers that are techno savvy will be engaged, but the others will do their best to ignore it. She had some interesting ideas coming from the business sector to implement this new technology so that all teachers will be engaged but I'm afraid that the ones in charge will not heed her ideas. I am very excited at this opportunity to be involved in this PD. More to come I am sure.

Hi from me. It is now 10:40 pm and I just figured out how to post on this thing. I feel accomplished. I am nervous about Saturday. I don't like all the excitment, but wouldn't miss it. The last week in June is going to be a nightmare for me. A week that was planned a year ago for vacation with family is now all taken up with school. Nothing to do about it and I will get over it but I hope I don't miss the wedding..............off to do some more work. Later...