CED 527, Week 1

Wednesday night's class helped me to see teacher leadership through a new eye. I have attended many workshops on leaderships skills; however, I've never truly considered what sets a teacher leader apart from other leaders. As we discussed the materials, I thought about the skills that I already possess as well as those which I need to continue to develop. Throughout this process, I was thinking about the two main leaders in our school - our principal and our reading specialist. Additionally, I was considering our cohesive staff and how many of us share a common drive and willingness to problem solve and share resources and how this has worked to help us increase our test scores (9 pts last year!!!). As we go throughout this course, I'm hoping to gain greater knowledge about how to be a more effective teacher leader as my responsibilities will again be increasing this year.

CED 533, Week 5

I found it interesting that the majority of us chose the same CMS system. It's always interesting to hear different people's take on the same system. Even though we all teach in a geographically small area, our experiences with the same technology tools is often vastly different based on the support we receive from our district. I can't wait until Tosa upgrades their bandwidth. Some of the work that Toni showed was truly impressive. If only we could get greater bandwidth in our school! I'm a little limited right now in terms of what I can do since our district blocked so much after the system crashed a few months ago.
Learning a little about Java was interesting. I've always wondered how date stamps work. Now I know!
I just finished my final project and am happy to have that behind me! After Mr. Sklar helped me through some CSS challenges last week, it was smooth sailing. I should have called or e-mailed instead of getting so frustrated last week!

CED 533 Class 4

I've officially found my learning disability. Part of my challenge is that I don't see the relevance of this material to teaching K-2 students with disabilities. While it's nice to have the background, I don't know if 3 credits worth is truly worth it. (Please don't take it personally Mr. Sklar). I would like more guidance on the artistic aspects to webpage design than the actual code. We've definitely found ways to beat the system - Dreamweaver, NVU, Front Page, etc. I just don't understand why one would write code rather than type it into a wordprocessing style document? Then again, people don't understand why I write my own curriculum when you can buy stuff. I guess it's a matter of opinion.
My other frustration is the number of group presentations that repeat the same thing over and over. I understand that presenting information is a part of the program; however, maybe we'd more interested in others' presentations if each group was assigned one presentation throughout the course (doubling up would be ok). It gets to a point where its extremely redundant. Again, not the fault of the instructor, but rather the design of the program.
To be fair to this negative rant, I have to apologize for my current frustration. The demands at the end of the school year are intense. To be handling the rigors of this program does not make it any easier. I'm sorry that my frustrations with "school" and "life" are an underlying tone to this blog, but sometimes, you just need to get it off your chest.