Culminating Proposal Assignment

My focus has temporarily shifted in the last few days away from my portfolio, to the culminating project proposal that we have recently been assigned to write. My sense initially is that I'm pushing myself, but at this point I don't really really know. For the project I'm planning on trying to start the roots of a network of teachers for my subject area. I know there are already these networks out there, but for the most part what I've seen are big discussion boards for lesson plans and resources. I want to create a network of collaboration. I'm looking for a small group of teachers to occasionally plan with, have students partner with students, and function as an audience for our independent work. My goal is to get five teachers and their students to join and participate in this network.

This is the part where I feel I've bit off more than I can chew. First, I don't have any contacts. For me right now I'm a bit unsure of how to make them. The second part I see as a challenge is that some place is going to need to serve as our networks hub, and I'm guessing a big part of that is going to fall on my shoulders.

I have a couple of leads:

1. Langwitches Around the World in 80 Schools
I'm going to need to scour this list for potential contacts and perhaps send out some emails.

2. I take students to D.C. at the end of the year, and the company I travel with also employs a lot of teachers of middle school students, so I'm hoping they can help me out, but we'll see.

3. I know a few people in schools in the area, who can hopefully point me in the direction of teachers of like mind and curriculum.

By a few people in schools in the area, I'm mostly talking about my wife and you, reader. If you know a teacher of social studies in your school with maybe 7th or 8th grade students, I would appreciate your help. Or even if you have a cousin who knows a guy, who gets his hair cut by a lady, who has a son, who goes to a school with a social studies teacher who would be interested I would still appreciate the lead.

You could email me any information to jmsymes@wolfmail.stritch.edu

Thanks for your help, or at least reading.

555 Portfolio

My biggest question that I've had with this project is what am I going to do with it, when I leave the friendly confines of Cardinal Stritch? I'm assuming that I'll be able to transfer it to my regular home version of Google Sites, but that's an assumption, and we all know what happens when you assume. Can I save it, move it, use it, because if I can't then that's going to put a serious damper on my enthusiasm. I say that honestly, because I am pretty excited about this idea. Especially after seeing that all my artifacts don't have to come from my Stritch work, they can come from my work work. I'm excited to share and put out some of the work that my kids have done. I'm proud of the products they have created with me. This year I've enjoyed, perhaps more than ever some of the new ideas we've worked on. I'll show you one here,

www.7oreligion6.pbworks.com

www.7oreligion4.pbworks.com


It is a wiki that each section of my class worked on after our religion unit. WARNING: It is not perfect, it is clearly the work of 7th graders, who were new to religions, wikis, and deadlines, but it is still pretty cool how they came together to create something. While there are things I'm not particularly pleased with how each wiki turned out. I am happy with their effort, and I'm convinced that this was a good first step for them to take in this area of content and delivery.

I have some other projects that I'm excited to share on my portfolio, but I haven't gotten permission yet from some students.

Final Note: I have some pretty good luck generally, things typically work out for me in the long run. This year I've been pretty down on myself because I started a Ning with my class, we were enjoying it, the kids were excited, but I've failed as a Ning master. I guess I wasn't quite ready or prepared to implement it, then today this link came across my Twitter page. Ning is no longer going to offer free sites. While I still consider this a failure on my part, I don't feel so bad about it, because I wasn't willing to pay for it. It feels like I'm even Steven.

The Portfolio Continues

I'm on spring break this week, but in my own self interest I've been trying to move ahead with the portfolio project for my most recent class. This week I've created vision and mission statements, as well as identified standards that I will be holding myself to. The mission and vision were difficult in that I'm pretty comfortable with the values that I aspire to in my class, but finding a concise, less than cheesy way to communicate them can be hard. I spent the better part of an afternoon writing, watching a movie (Ali), then going back to do some editing, more Ali, and finally finishing up the assignment. If you want to take a look at what I finally came up with, they are here. I would appreciate any feedback. If you could care less about my portfolio you can watch a great movie intro to a period in history. Even after this exhaustive editing/movie watching experience, I'm still not 100% comfortable with the writing.


The second part of the project has been to identify standards that you work with, then supply artifacts that demonstrate your competency in them. I went with the NETS standards for both students and teachers and I'm beginning to have my doubts. The problem I'm having is I view these standards as a goal for my classroom, so as a result I don't yet have artifacts to demonstrate some portions. Or the artifacts I do have are from my class, and not so much the Stritch program. I need to get in touch with the professor to check on the status of moving forward in this manner. I'm hopeful, because as I mentioned before I really like the NETS standards and feel they offer me more guidance and support than my curricular state standards.

Finally, I'm looking forward to Easter and the end of Lent. This year for Lent I gave up sweets, with mixed success if I'm to be honest, which I think I should be on the topic. I have however done very well in giving up Cadbury Creme Eggs, which are by far, without a doubt the greatest little treat out. Needless to say on Sunday morning and throughout the day I plan on downing quite a few of those delicious little eggs.

Professional Portfolio

Looking at the professional portfolios this last week was an interesting exercise.  It is amazing how like kitchens many of them don't age well unless they are regularly updated.  I'm hopeful that during this process of portfolio creation I'm able to find pieces or components that I can take a regular interest in updating down the road.  I feel like the classes during this cohort that I've done the best in are projects that I find meaning with, so I'm happy to have the portfolio to work on. 

I'm excited to work on Google Sites.  We have it in our district connected with Google Apps so this will be a great experience that I'll be able to translate into working with and assisting students on their sites. It also suits my need of enjoying fiddling around with new tools and troubleshooting.  I did take some time to set up my portfolio skeleton last week and the Google Sites do seem like they will be very easy to work with and allow for a high level of customization.

Back to the portfolios from last week.  I noticed that the best ones do seem to follow the skeleton that has been created for us from this class.  I found some portfolios that had organizational systems, but none of them worked from my point of view.  The key I see to the portfolio is that when faced with the front page you ought to know what you are looking for, and exactly where you are going to find it.  That wasn't always the case in some portfolios that I came across.  That would seem to be a pretty obvious lesson, but one that some have apparently missed.

I'm feeling pretty good after week one of the portfolio progress, we'll see how it goes down the road, but I'm optimistic, which is good.

30 days, 1 year, and Learning More

In the next 30 days, I am going to make a real effort to jump start some of my classes asynchronous discussions and when I do I want to be a better facilitator.  I know I can't respond to every post, but I can give some recognition and work to summarize the key points of discussions.  I think that by just doing these two things the quality could be improved. 

Over the next year I would like to have more online materials, work, discussions, and submissions.  Reduce the paper that gets pushed around my room.  I would like to have my class go from 85-15 f2f-online to closer to 70-30.  I think that is a better balance, and would allow some students to take the balance further, if they were comfortable in that arena. 

What I would like to learn is, would my students be interested in a synchronous discussion that would take place outside of the school day and online.  It would be a unique opportunity to discuss items that were tangents to in class discussions.  I might also be a way to involve new groupings and some students who aren't comfortable in the in class environment.  I think it would definitely have to be casual and enjoyable to be anything a 7th or 8th grader would be interested in, but it would be an interesting experiment.