CEDU 534 Week 3

As compared to the other online class experience over the summer I like the dim dim a bit more than the other one that was used (educator?) I think that it was refreshing to see a face on the other end of the "line." The main experience from the week was all about RSS. I'm finally beginning to "get it" and like anything it was beneficial to experience it first hand with actually using an aggregate to subscribe to blogs. Sure I had read it and written about it before but it's not until I did it myself that it sunk in. I think that RSS feeds are a new way to experience the web and in a way make it "custom made" for each user. The biggest application that I could see for classrooms are first, teachers learning from other teachers. By subscribing to other teacher's blogs for example through an RSS feed the teacher uses less time and learns more in a more efficient way. Of course research (particularly at the high school level) would be greatly improved by RSS technology

CEDU 534 Week 2

Week 2 was an interesting one. For one it became clear to me that social networking sites and the corresponding technology in general are/have been completely adopted by the youth of today. It seems to me that there are certain duties that come along with our profession of teaching. One of them is to adapt to serve the needs of the children that we have in our care. Their world is changing and to not address that is in essence educational malpractice. A school district that has a blanket policy brohibiting many parts of the web runs the risk of also neglecting to teach our our students how to be safe and responsible on the web. Lets be careful as educators to work with our district administrators to provide the best online saftey information we can.

CEDU 534 Week 1

It was a nice to be back and get right back into the swing of things with web 2.0.

Hate to get philosophical but. . .

I really like the concept of web 2.0 being an interactive - dynamic - back and forth- web where anyone can contribute. There's something democratic and egalitarian abut it. The flip side of course is the other edge of the sword. Since everyone is on the same playing field, the moron who tells you that the Holocaust never happened is right there getting their message out with regular folk. But . . . I think in a way there's more personal responsibility with web 2.0.

Now on to the teaching applications. . .

There's no doubt in my mind that this is the future of teaching. The textbook will become an accent to curriculum and will be replaced by a plethora of 2.0 possibilities. The classroom itself will be transformed with interactive web experiences replacing the paper and pencils of today. That can start today with blogs wikis and podcasts used in my classroom. Personally this year the easiest one that i'd like to start with is podcasting constructed responses for math

It's exciting to be learning about this now - ahead of the curve.

CEDU 527 Educational Leadership in sum

Truth be told one of the reasons I got involved in this program was because of a friend and fellow teacher at my school. He finished up his accelerated program at Stritch in Educational Leadership last year. While I had no interest in being a principal I did want a masters and he spoke highly of Stritch and the accelerated program. He will be getting a position as a principal next year and leaves a void of leadership in my school. He was a key player and got a lot done at the school. Well, I've been thinking of how and in what capacity I'll fill in at some of the leadership roles that he left behind. This class comes right into play with that. To quote John Gabriel "most teachers accept leadership as a reward in itself: they derive a sense of self worth from having their voices heard. . . " I'm looking forward to making a difference this coming year not as an egomaniac but as someone who is legitimately interested in making the lives of children better.

Educational Leadership week 4

I enjoyed playing the game "systems thinking Systems changing." I got the feeling that it was a reasonably accurate portrayal of several key personalities and players within a school district. It was clear after reviewing the biographies on the people that we've all met people exactly like these before. From the eager go getters to the sullen nay-sayers it was an accurate portrayal. The thing that I was struck with is that influencing certain people effected others around them and moved them along with the person. I believe that that is accurate. So it lead me to ask which one am I, the one leading or following. It's my goal to be more of a leader this coming school year.

CEDU 527 Educational Leadership Week 3

There was one particular anecdote that I was reminded of as we were in our chat rooms for the breakout sessions online. The topic was: What are some of the advancements in different fields of society over the last series of years. The anecdote popped into my head related to the topic of telephones and deals with my grandfather and his proud LOTI level of 0.

Some time in the 1980s the Ohio telephone company was doing a major overhaul on it's phone lines presumably to modernize them in some way. One day they stumbled across on old "party line" that was still in use. Yes, that was my grandparents phone line. Of course all of the other people on the party line had long ago gotten their own private lines so that only my grandparents line was left connected. When the telephone company called my grandfather to inform him of this they seemed to assume he would be happy to switch over to their new and improve technology. They didn't know my grandfather very well. "If it ain't broke don't fix it" was a life philosophy for him.
After multiple dead ends trying to convince him over the phone they actually sent someone out to his house to "sweet talk" him to switch over. He was offered new phones, free long distance for a period of time and so on. Although my grandfather was the farthest thing from a sell out, he finally agreed.

The application of this anecdote to the broad topic of educational leadership is this. Maybe you have to do the sweet talk to the level 0 teacher and visit their classroom one-on-one to get them to come around. And all the while respect them and their views. The tools for schools article was extremely insightful on the Millennial generation but one thing I liked about it was it never ridiculed the older generations but merely pointed out the differences. As I'm more of a Gen-Xer myself I appreciate that view.

CEDU 527 Educational Leadership Week 2

I was very impressed with the format of last weeks online class. The "eluminate" online site is a great idea. I was impressed with how dynamic and interactive it was. With the written chat feature, the lecture, the slide show and of course the audio contributions it was enough to keep you busy the whole time and yet somehow pay attention to everything. Oddly enough there was no difference in my urge to contribute to class discussion as compared to a regular face to face class. I was a little unsure about my internal microphone and would have liked a "sound check" before the session began in order to confirm it but got just as much out of the written text and following along.