Filed under: educational technology
Five conferences, changes in the season , Fridays, 10/27-11/3, 2006
The falls in the Quiet Corner are busy as people prepare for the winter and get in their last outings before the snows fall. This week was one of conferencing, thinking about travels, and, changes in the season. I participated in the CT-CEC conference at Eastern on 10/28, a Minority Teacher Recruitment conference at Central CSU on 10/30, a virtual conference on eportfolio.org – online computer and telephone connections – on 10/30 in the afternoon, a videoconference organized by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities – http://www.aascu.org – about efforts on CSU, Long Beach and CSU, Northridge to “Build Evidence Systems for Accountability and Improvement in Teacher Education” on November 1, and the New England Educational Assessment Network conference – http://neean.southernct.edu/ at the College of Holy Cross in Worcester, MA on Friday, November 3. Three local conferences – one on campus with people, one on campus in the Child and Family Development Resource Center using the videoconferencing facilities, one on campus in my office using the web and a telephone conference, and two regional conference – 35 miles still in Connecticut, 60 miles in Massachusetts. One travels before the snow falls.
Here are some of my notes from the week of Friday, 10/27 – 11/3/06.
Friday, 10/27 – Sabbatic leave letters came out this afternoon. Four of 5 applicants from Ed Dept were ranked below 10. President Nuñez confirmed at her last small group reception – based on alphabetic order – that CSU system allocates 64 sabbatic leaves, with Eastern CSU assigned 10.
10/28 – Connecticut Chapter of the Council for Exceptional Children conference at Eastern CSU, organized by Delar Singh, CT-CEC Chapter President and Associate Professor, Special Education, and Ann Gruenberg, CEC Division for Early Childhood Representative and Associate Professor, Early Childhood Education.
Terrible rain storms had people worried about the roads and flooded basements.
The keynote was presented by Dr. George Sugai, fairly new to UCONN and the east coast, leader of the Positive Behavior program used at Windham Middle School. Project website is at http://www.pbis.org/ . He discussed research measures – RTI – response to intervention, results that are similar to pandemic triangle from public health – most are successful, some will succeed with some intervention, a few will need intensive intervention. Other interesting points – tracking referals in urban schools suggested growth during periods when public assistance checks are distributed, school intervention plans have been successful in changing triangles.
Afternoon keynote – Dr. Kathleen Whitbread, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, UCONN, Center for Development Disabilities, who discussed the PJ case in Connecticut
P.J., ET AL Plaintiffs V. STATE OF CONNECTICUT, BOARD OF EDUCATION, ET AL Defendants http://www.simsbury.k12.ct.us/boardofed/specialservices/pdf/SA_Synopsis02.pdf
and implications on policy. Interesting changes in terminology from mental retardation to ID – intellectually deficient, DD -developmentally disabled?, parental rights for placement in general class, bicultural wedding of DS couple – http://www.sujeet.com/
10/30 – Connecticut Regional Educatonal Service Center (CREC) Minority Teacher Recruiting (MTR) Alliance, at CCSU – keynote – Chancellor David G. Carter, CSU – need for mentoring, making education more accessible and responsive to learners’ needs and stage, troops to teachers programs. Panel – alternate route to certification, preschool initiatives in Hartford Public Schools, Southern CSU’s mentoring project with students from New Haven. Breakout – articulation between community college and 4 year universities – need for online resources like SDE list of courses for US history 50-year survey. Mentioned Eastern’s ECE program articulation agreement with state’s community colleges. (Need to research # of transfer students in teacher education.) Lunch speaker – Calvin Hudson, soon to retire as Executive VP, Claims, The Hartford Insurance Group- diversity led to greater productivity, recruiting required diverse pool on short list for hires.
3:00 – Back at Eastern – Diane Goldsmith, CTDLC – online meeting/demo of the eportfolio program – http://www.eportfolio.org/ – using Breeze & speaker phone, may have 25 to offer to graduate students
Right after this online conference, I received an email from fulbrightteacherexchange@swiftpage4.com pointing to an added 6-week international work shadow opportunity for teacher educators. I spread the word in the department and to other chairs and received informal support from Dean Kleine to purse the adventure
5:30 – Windham Community Memorial Hospital Board of Directors meeting – flu shot, presentation by Essent president – http://www.essenthealthcare.com/
10/31 – Halloween in Willimantic – Our 6th grader has learned to use the telephone and went with some girl friends trick or treating, while their mothers shadowed them, in the neighborhood. The businesses and organizations on downtown Main Street again offered candy to trick or treaters and there was the annual flashlight candy egg hunt in Jillson Square, the site of the immigrant community that was urban renewed in the 1980s into an open green. At home, the woman of the house, dressed as a clown, gave out candy to the young kids that came by until 8:30. My custome for Halloween – a cowboy shirt that I inherited from my father, a poncho from Juarez, and a blue felt hat from Peru.
11/1 – Dean Kleine hosted a videoconference on “Building Evidence Systems for Accountability and Improvement in Teacher Education” using the videconferencing facilities in the Child and Family Development Resource Center. The videoconference organized by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities – http://www.aascu.org about efforts on CSU, Long Beach and CSU, Northridge featured the CSU mosaic
http://www.nctaf.org/documents/CSUHandout.pdf that focuses on graduate & supervisor surveys and data from classroom; the Teachers for a New Era project at CSUN – http://www.csun.edu/tne/ discussed by Beverly Cabello at CSUN, and the Urban Teaching Academies project at CSULB -
http://www.nctaf.org/resources/demonstration_projects/urban_teaching/index.htm. Our group at Eastern wanted to learn more about the connections of these projects with NCATE standards and accreditation and were interested in hearing that the use of a raffle for several iPods did result in about a 50% return rate on surveys.
11/2 Received trees in mail from Nat’l Arbor Day on 11/1. Felt need to plant in the rain – building a Japanese lilac hedge to edge of forest, cutting away at thorned vines
11/3 New England Educational Assessment Network, Goddard lot for a 7:15am departure – Peter Bachiochi, Jian-Zhong Lin, Jaime Gomez, David Stoloff, met Kin Chan, Riette Pranger, Robynn Shannon, Rhona Free – 9 rep, ~118 institutions, Johnson & Wales – 12, Keene State – 10
Dick Gerber – NEean President, greetings, future academic budget based on assessment
Keynote -Susan Hatfield, Winona State Univ. , MN – measure what you value, valuing what you measure, closing assessment loop, NESI & ESI – student engagement, look at budget to determine what valued, components – primary traits, students will be able to <<action verb>> <<something>>, use of
Bloom’s taxonomy verbs
Breakouts – From Shoebox to Showcase!! E-Portfolio Management System, UMaine @ Augusta – student, faculty, employer access, email contacts, asked about interface with course management systems
Southern CSU presentation – improving student engagement, technology, and faculty development, Joe Polka – use of BCSSE & NSSE (shops?) – engagement models, 2-yr survey – ~80 of 360 not retained, nsd in GPA or persistence – working with classmates; David Petroski – use of a Wiki – Papert background, syllabus with blank calendar & no textbook, student select textbook, group structure course, class-wide project, individual projects; Ellen Beatty – satisficing – admin concerns, SCSU – not best liberal arts, strengths in grad studies, faculty development – 50 stipended “good teachers” faculty in August; Summer Tech – $499 allowance, 25 faculty with 5 star student assistants – diverse learners, use of 7 principles for good practice – may be starting point but doesn’t include tech changes since 90’s
lunch with Framingham State – Bridget Galvln, critical thinking presenter at Eastern – Aug ‘06
Johnson & Wales Univ. – 4 US campuses, professional college, session on critical thinking, ethical responsibility, & writing competency – assessment cycle, essay with ethical issues written in course, instructors have originals and may not be volunteer readers; training for inter-rater reliability & uniformity of method – developing, validated, master writer, developing writers can’t graduate, not assess own students, same prompts at same time of semester – reading 250 essays – $500/reader – structural, transitions, most hand written; skills in ethics course – essays assessed for critical thinking and ethics, hired part-time faculty coordinator for fac dev for critical thinking, support – Plato’s Café – students only, panels, faculty dev, post ethical assignment – topics – Zimbarbo experiment, electro-convulsive therapy, Bill Gates; grad writing requirement, essay contests/academic fair, D=developing – must pass a tuition-free workshop – 11 weeks, can test out, intensive training in grammar, mechanics, and sentence structure, must pass to graduate. faculty in-service on writing across curriculum, guest speakers, writing intensive course – at least15 pages, 10 by first half of the semester.
The Fulbright opportunity reminded me of an opportunity I saw on a bulletin board to join the Peace Corps College Degree program. These days an email may change the course of one’s life. Notes on applying for this opportunity will be featured in other weekly essays in November.
There is still some color on some trees. The weather has turned cooler. Hope that you have warm home to rest in as the season changes.
Create a free edublog to get your own comment avatar (and more!)
No Comments so far
Leave a comment
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
