Wrapping Things Up

  I spent a great deal of time yesterday uploading documents into my portfolio.  I was using Scribd, and it worked well for most of my documents.  I never could get two documents to process, so I tried Slideshare and was finally able to get them into my portfolio.  Then I worked some on the layout of my portfolio and tried to polish up the front page.  Tomorrow, I hope to work on adding my reflections to the artifacts.  I just totalled up my practicum hours so that I can add this information to the portfolio.  I am so glad that I worked on the practicum activities and portfolio throughout this semester.  I am still a little nervous about getting everything done as I want it to be before next Monday night when we have a practice session for the presentations.  This Thanksgiving break has given me time to work on my portfolio, and I am very thankful for that. 

System Technology Meeting

  Yesterday I attended a system technology meeting at the middle/high school.  The middle/high school media specialist attended as well as teachers from both elementary schools, the middle school, and the high school.  The technology director and the technology specialist directed the meeting.  The technology specialist discussed the changing of our school e-mail from GroupWise to GoogleMail.  He explained that the switch is being made due to better pricing, better filtering, and archiving with GoogleMail.  The technology director introduced the Georgia Student Learning Data Survey (or System) feature that has been added to our PowerSchool program.  This system keeps a record of students' past test scores and attendance.  He also asked for input about the SMART Boards, slates, and student response systems that we have in our schools.  Once again I was reminded of how things will continue to change in education.  We've had Group Wise email for several years, but now a new system is being implemented and everyone will have to learn the workings of this new email program. 
  After the technology meeting, I stayed at the middle/high school and discussed various topics with the media specialist.  She explained how she concluded her book fair and how she decided to use the earnings from the fair.  She also showed me some supplies and furniture that she has ordered for the media center to make the middle school area more inviting for students.  We discussed time management issues and different projects that we would like to complete during this school year in our respective media centers.
  Tonight I began uploading documents into Scribd so that I could embed them into my portfolio.  I was able to embed a few things, but I realized that I need to re-think the items that I had planned to list under each standard.  There are a few assignments that could be listed under two different standards.  I hope to get the other documents uploaded and embedded this weekend so that I can work on my reflections and fine-tuning the portfolio. 

Hours Spent in the Atkinson County Middle/High School Media Center:  2.5

Pulling Out My Notes

    Last week was so busy that I wasn't able to spend much time at the middle/high school after Tuesday afternoon.  My children had parent-teacher conferences after school on Wednesday, my school had parent-teacher conferences after school on Thursday, and my school's fall festival was Friday night.  I was able to get in one hour at the middle/high school on Friday afternoon before our fall festival began.  I checked and straightened all of the middle and high school fiction shelves, and I straightened the book fair display area in the media center. 
   I spent most of Saturday afternoon working on the online tutorial for the staff development assignment.  I had to pull out my notes from previous classes to refresh my memory.  I was able to narrate my PowerPoint presentation, convert it into a video, and get it embedded into the wiki that I am using for the online tutorial.  I also wrote the script for my screencast video.  I worked on the wiki itself, and I think the only thing left to do is record the screencast video and embed it into the wiki.  Then this assignment will be complete. 
   I still need to check back over my blog posts and add some pictures and links.  I also need to start adding all of my assignments to my portfolio.  I have saved them on my computer, flash drive, and CDs in an effort not to lose anything before I can get it all put in the portfolio.  My computer has been acting weird lately, so I am a little nervous about something happening to all of my documents.  This week I hope to get in a few more hours at the middle/high school and make some headway on my portfolio. 

Hours Spent in the Atkinson County Middle/High School Media Center: 1
Hours Spent Working on the Staff Development Online Tutorial: 3

Preparing the Online Training

    I have spent a good bit of time in the last few days working on the online training component of my staff development lesson.  I have decided how I want to structure the online tutorial, but it is time-consuming to put everything together.  Even though I presented the training to middle school teachers, the online tutorial will be for middle and high school teachers.  For this assignment, I am using skills that I learned earlier this year in some other courses.  I'm glad that I kept my notes and handouts in separate notebooks or folders for each class. 
   Over the weekend I was able to start checking the various assignments required for the practicum.  I made some changes and finalized most of them, but I still have a few that I need to edit and complete. 
   This afternoon I spent some time with the media specialist at the middle/high school.  She is having a book fair this week, and she walked me through the process.  We discussed how she set up the displays, and she walked me through the steps of using the cash register.  I have a book fair scheduled in December, so I was very glad to see the layout of her book fair and have her share suggestions.  We also discussed how she will be evaluated this school year.  She showed me how she is documenting various services that she is providing.  She has the same problem with time management that I seem to be having.  There are so many things that need to be done each day and not enough time to do them.  I'm sure that we'll settle into these positions more and more as the year goes on.  This first year is full of learning and finding your way, but I'm still smiling.

Hours Preparing the Online Staff Development Training:  2
Hours Spent in the Atkinson County Middle/High School Media Center:  .75

Making More Progress

  Well I finally feel that I am making significant progress on my assignments again.  I was able to get more hours in at the middle/high school level this week through my work on the staff development lesson and putting the display up in that media center.  I was anxious about teaching the technology lesson because I have been in the participant role many times in the past.  I tried to think of ways to keep the teachers' attention and keep the lesson moving at all times.  All in all, I think things went very well.  There were 15 participants including the principal and assistant principal.  I had to set everything up in the computer lab, teach the lesson, wait for everyone to leave the lab, and then shut everything down in the lab.  I now realize how involved such trainings can be. 
  My display for the ACMS/ACHS media center is complete and in place.  I focused on the middle school's theme and tried to prepare a display that can remain in place for several weeks.  I took pictures of my display and made a wiki about the project.  The wiki can be accessed at http://mediacenterdisplay.pbworks.com/ .
  I was also able to get pictures of the plagiarism posters that were made to accompany the collaborative lesson that I taught with a third grade teacher.  She hung the posters on the wall in her classroom for the students to use as a resource during the writing assignments that will be done during the rest of the school year.  The poster is a reminder of the points that we covered in our lesson on plagiarism and note-taking.
  This weekend I plan to start checking the various assignments to make sure that I have included all of the required elements.  Once I have checked them, I will start adding them to my portfolio.  I also need to begin developing the technology lesson into a self-instructional tutorial.  There were actually a few middle school teachers who asked how they could get the information since they weren't able to attend the training due to after-school classes or duty.  I told them that I would be preparing an online version of the training, and they seemed glad to hear that.
  There's one more thing that I needed to include in this post.  In a post on October 14, I gave a link to my Personal Learning Network, but I did not realize that was a private page until some time later.  I have made some changes to the PLN, and here is the new link that should allow anyone to view it:  http://www.netvibes.com/adeems#Media_Specialist_Info.

Hours Spent Delivering the Technology Lesson at ACMS:   2
Hours Spent in the ACMS/ACHS Media Center:    4.75

Preparing for the Staff Development Lesson

    Since my last post, I have spent a lot of time preparing materials for the staff development lesson that I will teach this week.  I created a PowerPoint to introduce the topic of blogs and their use in education.  I also created a wiki of resources for the participants to use for more information on blogging and using blogs with students.  I developed a training evaluation form for participants to complete at the end of the session, and I made a "Ticket out the Door" prompt for them to turn in as they leave the session.  I had not thought of a sign-in sheet until today when a fellow teacher mentioned it, so I came home and prepared a form for that.  It crossed my mind to have some candy (miniature chocolates, peppermints, etc.) on hand during the training.  Even the smallest gesture seems to set a better tone for a meeting after school.  Right after school today, I went over to the middle/high school computer lab to practice using the SMARTBoard to show my PowerPoint.  I wanted to make sure that my PowerPoint would work, and it did.  I hope things go as smoothly on Thursday as they did today for the dry run.  One kink that I was able to work out during practice was finding out how to type in the colon in a URL when using the keyboard on the SMARTBoard.  It took a few tries to learn how the shift key operates. 
   After working on my staff development lesson, I went down to the middle/high school media center to put in some more hours.  I worked on the artwork for my display, and I hope to get it put up this week.  I was using the theme of football, but due to the late hour of getting it up and football season coming to a close I changed the theme to basketball which will be starting soon.  I worked on putting the non-fiction shelves in order, and I pulled some fiction books that need new spine labels.  As I was working with the fiction books, I noticed some books that looked new in terms of the cover and pages.  When I looked in the back of the book, however, sometimes there would be a stamped due date of 2005.  These books have obviously had very little use, and I wonder why. 
    I've also been working on the memo for the evaluation of the media center and some plagiarism posters to share with the teacher and students from my collaborative lesson.  I summarized the important points of our plagiarism lesson and included some examples of plagiarism.  I plan to laminate the posters and give them to the teacher to display in her room for the remainder of the year since the students will be conducting research for various writing projects. 

Hours Spent Planning the Staff Development Lesson:  2
Hours in the Atkinson County Middle/High School Media Center:  3

Staying Busy

    I've been trying to make a lot of progress on my required activities this week.  I have scheduled my staff development lesson with the principal of the middle school.  I emailed him a flyer and an agenda to present to his staff.  The training will be next week, so I am working on preparing all of the materials.  I will be using the new computer lab at the middle school, so I plan to go over well in advance and find my way around the lab.  I am creating a PowerPoint to use as well as a hand-out for the teachers to take with them.  My topic is how teachers can use blogs.  I'm pretty sure that most of the teachers are not familiar with this content.  Now that I am the presenter, I find myself thinking of my past experiences in different types of trainings.  I definitely want my lesson to be informative and interesting for the participants. 
   I have been weeding during the day at the elementary media center.  There were years and years of old periodicals stored in a back room of the media center.  Some dated back to the early 1990s.  I decided what to keep and then put all of the discarded items out on some tables for the teachers.  After three days, there are some periodicals that have gone untouched.  I guess that speaks volumes (not an intentional play on words, but it was what came to mind).  I've also been processing some videos that were in the media center but not cataloged.  Since I learned how to use ZMarc for processing books that had no Marc record, these videos seem to take so much time. 
  This afternoon after school, I worked in the middle/high school media center.  I shelved some books and straightened all of the fiction sections and some of the non-fiction section.  I also spent some time working on the display for that media center.  I wanted to focus on the middle school students since the media specialist reports that they are the most frequent patrons.  I'm still working out some parts of the display, but hopefully I can finish it soon and post the results in a few days.  

Hours in the Atkinson County Middle/High School Media Center: 2.75