CEDU 527 - Week 1

Technology Leadership

What I learned and how I can apply it:

Patrick Awuah's presentation - First of all, I learned about TED - a website dedicated to "riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world". Love it. Regarding the speech itself, here are some ideas that are worth remembering:
1. Reach for perfection and you will achieve excellence.
2. Africa needs enlightened leaders to transform.
3. The 3 major problems are corruption, weak institutions, and weak leaders.
4. African education puts little emphasis on ethics. There is more of a sense of entitlement by the educated than a sense of responsibility.
5. New leaders should be taught integrity, ethics, and how to tackle problems.

The articles we jigsawed -
I read "Leading Change From The Classroom: Teachers As Leaders" and found it to be interesting and informative. The article not only discussed the skills needed by teachers to be effective leaders, it also discussed the conditions necessary in the school to nurture leadership by its teachers. Those four conditions include: vision, structure, time, and skills(training).


The Four Frames of Leadership - The idea that a leader has a dominant style and that a good leader possesses qualities from multiple styles is a concept in which I am familiar...my first degree was a BBA in Business Management from UW-Whitewater. The terms may be different, but the descriptions are essentially the same as other models I have seen. I really enjoy learning about management, probably because I am passionate about psychology and so much of management is related to psychology and how you can motivate the employee/student to achieve a goal. :)


How I currently lead at my school:

1) In charge of board games for "The Games Club"...a very rewarding volunteer position.
2) Currently creating a "Basic Technology" proposal for a class I intend to teach next year.
3) A member of our district team of special education teachers working to improve the transition process for our students.
4) Step in to help throughout my department as needed when technology issues arise.

CEDU 533 - Week 6

Hooray!!! I am thrilled to have a created a website! I used the program, TeacherWeb, that Ryan recommended. I found it to be very user friendly...which is what I need. They even offered a webinar on how to use the features available on their site. It lasted 40 minutes, which is a bit longer than what I anticipated to spend, but it provided me with lots of useful information that helped me to more efficiently navigate through the process of creating my own page.

Here is the address for my site:
http://teacherweb.com/WI/PortWashingtonHighSchool/MrsRoss

Also to note...FINALLY the steps to embed a YouTube video and widget have been demystified! It's actually very simple, but one of those things that seems difficult until you complete the task on your own.

Lastly, the site that I found to be most helpful for getting widgets is www.widgetbox.com.

Thumbs Up to CEDU-533.

CEDU 533 - Week 5

During class this week there were many points that proved to be interesting and will be beneficial to use in the classroom.

The first was shown in Brian's project in which he used the site Voki and projected his voice through a snowman animation. I would like to try this site and put the end product on my website.

The handout on Web 2.0 Technology Selection Criteria was a thought provoking look at how to select 2.0 tools. Here is the criteria summary to find the "perfect" Web 2.0 technology:
Criteria 1: Access
Criteria 2: Usability
Criteria 3: Privacy & Intellectual Property
Criteria 4: Workload & Time Management
Criteria 5: Fun Factor

I also appreciated Kristine's comparison between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. It really helped clarify how to differentiate between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. Essentially, Web 2.0 tools emphasize collaboration, have interactivity in them, are sent out to an unlimited/undefined audience, and include blogs/social networks.

With the money in my budget, I would like to purchase a video camera similar to Kristine's "Flip Video by Pure Digital" that can easily connect to the computer and upload to U-tube. I think it looked simple enough to handle - even for me. :)

Finally, I loved the visual web Kristine created "Technologies that Support Strategies that Work". How great to have a visual of a variety of resources. In an ideal world, I would go back through all of the tools we learned about throughout this program and are scattered about in my notes/blogs and create my own web as a reference guide.

Overall, despite the snowy night - good burrito from Qdoba and beneficial class.

CEDU 533 - Week 4

This week in class we spent some time reviewing Internet terms and checking out a variety of sites that offer assistance in creating our own websites. We also took our Mid-Term exam which provided an opportunity to show our knowledge in HTML.

The on-line website creator that I chose to make a classroom website is Weebly. I was excited by the simplicity of the process to set up the site and enjoyed trying out different features. My intent is to create a link from my webpage that is on our school site to this page. Unfortunately, the contact person at our district office that would be the person to go to for assistance was in a snowmobile accident over the holiday and will be out for the next 4-6 weeks. As a result, I may wait to update my school site and add this feature. Regardless, I will share my new web page address with my current students and teach them how to access the information on it.