IMPACT Chit Chat Session 1

Our agreed upon meeting of Sunday at 3 pm proved to be a forgetful time for some. Out of the seven people assigned to the discussion group, three people showed up, only one of which was outside the MLS program. I suppose its no fault of the others; after all, they have not even bothered to post in the discussion board.

Let it be noted that it is rather hard to collaborate with people who have busy schedules or perhaps crappy internet connections, of which both reasons I understand.

That being said, the conversation between Tara, Audra and I was a tremendous success. Audra had actually implemented a project quite similar to our proposed logical model a few years back, in the same content area we were focusing on! It was good to hear of the difficulties and success of her project so that we could relate it to our own. Interesting to note is that in her school at the time they had a rather invisible SLMS who did not help much with the program.

It has been agreed that the logic model needs severe tweaking due to the nature of vocational courses in middle school. Not all students in the Social Studies course will have art at the same, and the same goes for music and technology courses because all the vocational classes switch every 9 weeks.

Thus, we will propose to our original logic model group the idea of still incorporating music, art, and technology into the Social Studies curriculum, but have the SLMS bring those parts instead of other teachers. There will still be collaboration (between the SS teacher and the SLMS, with content area teachers as vital resources), but I doubt we can make it work with other teachers if all the students are not in the same courses at the same time.

It will be relatively easy to incorporate all the same areas using technology. For example, the SLMS can introduce digital cameras and photoshop for art projects based on student's chosen country, teach them to download MIDIS for setting regional poetry to music, and incorporate PowerPoints and loads other technology.

The original logic model group has an assigned meeting time of this Thursday; this idea will be proposed and debated. We were originally planning on working on the worksheets, but of course the logic models need ironing out before we can address the benchmarks and such.

IMPACT Panel Reflection

I really enjoyed the IMPACT Panel and getting familiar with AET Zone. While I participated in the LearnNC conference, it did not have the same feel to it. The LearnNC was more formal and regulated, but the IMPACT Panel was fun and exciting--much more exciting because all the participants were focused on one goal / topic rather than several. Although everyone had different backgrounds (MLS, Technology, etc.), we were able to relate to each other more.

I thought Amanda's comment on professional intriguing. I can see how some could take our conduct as unprofessional, but at the same time, I believe the panelists were very good sports (mmm!)and I think everyone got a lot out of it.

What was most surprising to me was the estimate that only 75 - 80 % of IMPACT schools were reaching full potential. Ideally, 100 % would be reaching that ultimate goal, but I can't help be impressed at the 75 - 80 %. Hopefully the model will continue to grow!

Another surprising aspect was that one panelist said that the hardest teachers to pull over were the under prepared teachers that don't know their curriculum and put student activities together at the last minute. While I can see that collaboration in that kind of manner would be very hard, but I still thought the "older" teachers that have their curriculum mapped out day-to-day would be the hardest to convince to try new ideas.

Right now, the hardest part of collaboration is trying to find a time to meet. With everyone's different schedules, there are few times that work with everyone. Not everyone in the group has posted to the discussion board, either, but hopefully they will before our assigned time.

All the same, I look forward to sharing our logic model with others! We'll have to mention the mistakes that were pointed out to us last night (ie, the duplicated strategies / objectives).

Logic Model / ALAR - 2

My group and I visited our chosen school last Tuesday night, and got a feel of the media center. Rather small and supported by only one SLMS, this school has to accommodate a wide range of ages, from pre-k to 8th grade. The SLMS stated that she relies heavily on community volunteers, and that they have no student volunteers. The media center is not completely flexible (pre-K up to 4th grade is NOT flexible) but since our chosen grade level is 7th, it's not too much of a problem.

Some of the aspects that will tie into our project are as followed::

*smartboard located in the MC.
* at least 8 tables for small group work
* 6 computers located in the MC
* 26-29 computers in the computer lab
* Staff frequently have meetings; participating in SchoolFusion where students and teachers communicate.

I also found out that the school DOES indeed have a MC webpage. The reason I could not find it was because the link was a picture of a cat.

They have since updated to include text around the cat that hints to the MC.

The group met last Wednesday to flip the logic model and confirm our decided grade level.

Logic Model / ALAR

As a CTE person, I often forget that other content areas do not have specific objectives written out for their curriculum. In class, we briefly discussed that short term goals on logic models could be referred to as objectives, and written in a way that resembles: The student will be able to ____________. To me, this is second nature and taken for granted. However, I can see where some teachers might struggle with trying to come up with their own, so I think it’s very important as a SLMS that we try to help them when collaborative lesson/unit plans are created.

One problem that my group had was trying to narrow down our ideas. We had several good ideas but they were much too large to tackle all together. I’m especially happy with the objective that we’re focusing on—cross-curricular projects so that we can connect student learning throughout different content areas. I believe the students have more fun with hands-on projects (or project-based learning) that they can explore in more than one class.

After the class, I tried to look up information on our chosen school, but I did not find much. Our chosen school’s website does not have a library page that I could find, nor does their staff page label which teachers/staff are in what department. However, my group will be visiting our chosen school next week for another class, so I am hopeful that we will learn more about the media program at that time.

Last Wednesday, my group met to go over our logic model and to confirm our chosen objective. We discussed what the social studies focus was for each grade level (4 – 8) and decided we will target either 6th or 7th grade. We chose to focus first on social studies because those teachers do not have a specific EOC/EOG so we are hoping they might be more open to collaborative projects.