Session 7

I just submitted my portfolio and I definitely feel excited about being done. Overall, I think this was a really great experience for me, especially in establishing professional relationships with some of the other members of the class. I know that I'm going to have more ideas about reflection in the next few weeks, but in the meantime my overall feeling is one of relief.

Session 6: almost finished!

Wow, the last two weeks have been super stressful as far as this class is concerned. My school ended earlier than most schools in Vermont, so the two weeks of session 6 was the last 2 weeks of school. I was glad to see that we would be looking in-depth at Acceptable Use Policies; I've been spending some time beating my head against a wall trying to make changes to our current AUP. As a colleague explained to me, it seems like the school's lawyers would like nothing more than to wrap the children in bubble wrap and seal the school from any possible technological changes. I have several administrators on my side and I think that we've made a compromise on where "personal electronic devices" can be used and the ways in which they can be used. Of course, since the lawyers have not yet approved the changes, it's still an informal compromise. But at least it's in the right direction.

As for equitable access, that's a problem that I've been struggling with all year. More than half of our students qualify for free meals at the school, which tells something about our poverty levels in the Northeast Kingdom. Many of these students don't have access to computers and/or Internet. The Director of Technology and I have been discussing this problem and we're tentatively looking at starting a 1:1 program with Google's new Chromebooks, which work solely on the cloud and can connect with 3G capabilities. This might be a solution to our digital divide.

Session 5: A little late

I just finished session 5 last night, but completely forgot about doing my reflection blog until I woke up startled in bed around 2am and realized I hadn't done it. Of course, I went back to sleep so only just now remembered to finish it.

Session 5 ended up being a tough two weeks! It was really hard trying to finish up my lesson plan with Tim Sanborn's students and to also try and reflect right away on how the lessons went. I'm always so self conscious about the fact that I'm not a "real" teacher, so it was tough to have to go through all of the rigamorale that goes along with teaching a lesson plan. One of the aspects that I thought I covered best was the assessment portion of the lessons. Tim shared with me his working knowledge of assessments and how to best use them with his students. I really picked his brain a lot about what many of my colleagues refer to as "edu-speak". He was able to better explain formative and summative assessments, which I will definitely need for next year, when I have my own class to teach.

End of Session 4

I really enjoyed this session's practice with virtual world collaboration among peers. I'm finding myself enjoying and appreciating Google Docs the more that I use them. Eric took the initiative and signed us up for a trial version of Webspiration and while it was useful as a graphic organizer to plan out the research process it was honestly more of a pain than a benefit. I had to keep struggling with it to find the right section where we had saved our collaborations.

One aspect about this course that is still bothering me is how many of our portfolio entries have to do with actual teaching. Since I'm in the library and don't have the same classes and students each day it makes some of the entries very hard to complete. I don't have any lesson plans past the one I've created for Capstone I and I don't have the chance to work consistently with the same students on technology based tools that will help support and aid their creativity and innovation. Next fall I will have an actual class that I can consistently work with and I think that will help greatly for when I take the Capstone II.

Session 3: Reflection

I unfortunately didn't spend as much time on this session as I should have done. Spring Break was right smack in the middle of it and I went to Tennessee to visit my family sans computer and Internet! While it was nice for me to be disconnected, I obviously didn't participate in the discussion forums as well as I normally do. Luckily, the other 3 students in the class were also on Spring Break and getting posts in at the last minute as well. I had a great plan to work on my discussion posts and my portfolio entries when I got home on Sunday night-- but instead I was stranded at the airport in Baltimore and didn't get to Manchester, NH until midnight. Needless to say, I didn't get any NETS work done that night!

Overall, I thought this session was really helpful with the information and examples of rubrics for teaching lessons. One of the biggest points that has been reinforced for me is that a rubric is only as strong as the person who created it. In other words, if the teacher doesn't have much experience in writing rubrics, there's a chance that the rubric won't give firm ideas about what makes an exceptional project. I am still a little confused about summative and formative assessments, and I plan on asking one of my mentors at school for some real classroom examples for further understanding.

Here's hoping that next session will be a lot calmer!

Session 2: Reflection

This session, although it taught me a lot actually made me feel a lot more frustrated about my lack of teaching experience and knowledge. Plus, since I'm a librarian I don't have access to a traditional class; instead I have many different classes and students throughout a week. This makes it hard for me to describe classroom practice or even to know developmental levels or various work strategies of different students. Often, when teachers bring their students to the library it is for a specific project and I don't get a run down on the individual students in the class. Also, many teachers only use the library for a one class period project, which not only doesn't allow for a great deal of critical thinking but it also doesn't give me a chance to get to know students really well.

Another reason that I'm feeling frustrated is because I feel like I'm playing catch-up to other teachers. I have a Master's degree in Library Science, not in Education and I also don't have a teaching credential. Many of the concepts that are being explained are completely new topics to me. This is actually the first time that I felt overwhelmed by the teaching concepts that I think i should know. And if I were a traditional first year teacher, I would have a greater opportunity to know my students very well and to actually have a classroom practice.