End of a Journey...The final post for my Instructional Technology Program

When I started this program back in September 2010, I didn't want to work on a masters program that would be done just for the sake of completing my masters.  I wanted a program that would enrich me and would make me feel as if I have learned many practical things I could use in my professional life as well as my life at home.  After looking back from this point in time to the very beginning, I feel that this program has gone far beyond I could have every wished.  As I sit here typing this final blog, I am amazed at the amount of useful information I gained these past two years.  I am so happy that I learned Google Docs and want to continue to use this for myself and my students in the years to come.  I am also very pleased that I was introduced to Diigo, the online social bookmarking website.  I use that daily to access sites I use often as well as share information that I encounter as I am surfing the web.  Before this program, I never made my own website.  I'm excited that I can help others make a site free on Google and can be a reference if people have questions about making their own site.  I have also used a lot that I have learned in my classroom.  My students love to use Animoto as a way to report on books they have read.  I have used Prezi with students as an alternate way of making a presentation.  I also enjoy using Eyejot to give messages to my class if I am not going to be at school for the day.  One thing I would like to use more with my students is Voice Thread.  This year I was unable to use this with my students because we lacked the hardware to make it happen.  This summer our district will be getting all new computers and equipment, so I should be able to have my students use Voice Thread for various projects.  One more thing I am really grateful for is learning about RSS feeds.  I have seen those around for many years, but never knew what they were.  Now I can have various feeds set up for my students and they can get information very easily.  Well, I know I can go on forever, but these were some of the "big rocks" that I learned the past couple years.  I am truly happy that my technology knowledge base has grown so much in such a short period of time.  Though this program was a lot of work, it was worth it.  It kept me very busy, but I will miss it.  I would like to say thank you to all of my peers I have worked with the past couple years and thank you to all of the professors that made this program possible.  This program has had a huge impact on my life and I will be ever grateful for the time I spent in it.

Cedo 599 Digitial Futures Week 2

I'm pretty excited about our final project for this cohort.  I have decided to use a site called Edmodo for my two Civics classes next school year.  Edmodo is a lot like Facebook.  It is basically a social network for students to use around school.  Instead of Friends, Edmodo has Connections.  I can connect to other teachers or with all of my students in both classes.  I can put posts on my wall that can be seen by my students.  I'm really looking forward to being able to put class information on Edmodo as well as assignments for the year.  If anyone has experience using this, please comment on my post. 

Week #6 of CeDO 565 - Leadership and Planning

I really can't believe that I am on the verge of my final class in this masters program!  This past class, Leadership and Planning, has showed me that leadership is much more than just the higher ups in a business and school.  Leadership can take place in many different levels of an organization.  Before taking this class, I always felt that leadership was not for me.  When someone asked me if I am a person who would want to be a leader, I would tell them I have no interest in being a principal or associate principal of my school.  However, this classed showed me that I do not have to have a higher up position to still be considered a leader.  In many aspects, this class has showed me that I am currently a leader amongst my colleagues.  I am a go to guy for technology and special education.  Many people know that I am taking this masters program, and they ask me for ideas that I have found throughout my time taking these courses.  Overall, I still feel that I would not want to be a principal, however, I do feel that my leadership qualities can still be utilized even as a teacher.  I get a long with people very well, and it is easy for me to spread my ideas with others.  As for the textbook's assertion about "improving education from within,"  I think this is very true.  I think the more people can convince others in their school to change or try different things, the better it is for the school and the more able the school will be able to keep up with the challenging times we face today.

Week #5 of CeDO565 - Leadership and Planning

As I finish my work for this week in CeDO565, I think the biggest thing I have taken out of this weeks class is that I am glad that I am a very flexible person.  For the most part, change isn't very hard for me.  I see it as a challenge that needs to be overcome and most of the time, it is for the better.  I currently have a lot of change going on in my life.  I will be moving out of my house I have lived in for 7 and a half years and moving into a new town and much larger house.  My wife has a new job she will be starting in a few weeks and even though it isn't me getting the new job, I know I a lot of what she will be experiencing will be a new experience for me as well.  I am also getting very close to finishing up this Master's program and I am working on my first casino party tonight that I have supplied all of the card dealers.  A lot of change, but I like it and look forward to it.  I think the biggest obstacle I have now and would like to work on in the future is helping other people with change.  I know it is hard for a lot of people, but a lot of time they just needs someone to help them through and know that there is someone who has got their back.  I feel I will be doing that a lot in the next few years at my school as more technology is being introduced as well as different work conditions are implemented in my school and district.  I am glad that this class has opened my eyes up to different ways of working with change, and I hope I can use some of what I learned to help others. 

Week #4 of CeDO565 Leadership and Planning

This week, we continued to investigate the effect of change on ourselves as well as the people we work with.  During Tuesday's class, we started a simulation game where our goal is to set up a school change plan and convince as many people as we can to go with the change and make it happen.  We are given "three years" to do this (which is actually 3 hours).  After the end of year one, our group did ok.  We got a few of the people of the game moved over to the 2nd stage of change, which is preparation for change.   However, for a years worth of work, this was very hard.  Our group felt that we should have moved people further than that in one year, but we had no such luck.  I am looking forward to what the next year does for us, but I am expecting many challenges as this game isn't very easy.  I guess it is supposed to mimic real life change!   In addition to this game, I just finished an individual assignment which I picked a time when I had to make a change.  I picked the way I am currently running my Civics class.  In the past I had the students use books and take notes from power points I made.  Now the students are using Moodle and looking for there own information and then coming to me with it. This is a huge change, but it is working great so far and I feel it is a huge benefit to the students as they are learning much more than they would from hearing me lecture on a daily basis and take notes.  I do still do quite a bit of talking, but it is when students have questions on what they have found or if I see that they are working on something that I want the whole class to be aware of and investigate.  I look forward to seeing the many more change based activities we will be working on for the remainder of this class as they are interesting and make me think!

Week #3 of Cedo565 Leadership and Planning

The big idea that I enjoyed learning about this week was the ability to change.  After reading the articles and watching the videos, I think that I am doing very well in this area of my life.  I don't love change, but I am very good at being flexible and moving on when I do need to change something in my life.  I currently have two huge changes happening in my life.  My wife and I are going to be moving to Appleton from Oshkosh so our son can be in the same school district as me.  We put our house up for sale 3 weeks ago and thought we would probably be waiting a few months before anyone would put in an offer.  To our surprise, we got an offer last week!  We are now looking through many homes and trying to figure out what would best fit us when we move to Appleton.  This is a HUGE change in my life, but I am hitting it head on and I am trying my best to find something that will best suit my family.  I feel that my wife and I are like Haw in the video because we were thrown something that we weren't expecting, but we are not hiding, but looking and trying to find our next piece of "cheese".  In addition to that, I am currently looking into helping a friend expand a casino party business in North Eastern Wisconsin.  He said that he would provide me with a trailer and equipment, but I would have to find a way to tow it and I would have to find casino game dealers who can help me run the parties.  I decided to take this on and find another huge piece of "cheese" in my life.  I also daily run into change at my job.  I tell people that every day I go to my school, I don't know how the day will end because so many factors come into play.  I need to be flexible to change or my job would drive me crazy!

Week #2 of Cedo565 Leadership and Planning

This week we looked at data from our school we teach at.  I actually enjoyed this a lot.  I wasn't sure if looking at data would intrigue me much, but it really opened my eyes to how my school has changed in recent years.  The school I teach at is Appleton West High School.  One huge change that has been happening to my school is a change of demographics.  As recently as 1995-96, West had a minority student population of 5%.  Most of these students were Hmong students who live in Appleton.  However, if you look at our demographics of current students, we now have 30% of our population who are minority students.  We have many more Hispanic and African American students who have moved here from other parts of the country.  Although are demographics have changed immensely, our performance on state tests scores aren't much different than they have been in the past.  They are lower, but most categories are 2 to 3 points lower than they were 10 years ago.  Act scores really haven't changed at all, still scoring, on average, around 23 points.  It really is amazing to see how diverse our school is now and I really enjoy the challenge of helping all different types of students and learning about their back grounds and ways that help them succeed in school. 

Week #1 of Cedo565 Leadership and Planning

Before this week in this new class, I often though of leaders as those who are in the public eye.  The people everyone knows and goes to for things they need.  I didn't really consider myself a leader.  After reading the 1st chapter in our book How to Thrive as a Teacher Leader , watching Patrick Awuah's TED talk, and doing a few leadership surveys, I realize that I am somewhat of a leader.  In my job as a learning disabilities special education teacher, I am often taking on leadership roles.  I have taken on the responsibility to help others around me, whether I'm working with students or peers.  Although I don't get in front of the whole staff and "lead" very often, I am a go to person in terms of personal issues, work related issues and technology issues.  I have many people that value my input and turn to me if they need something.  I think this week has shown me that those virtues that I possess are very powerful and important to the people in my life and I am a strong leader because of that. 

Cedo 555 Blog #3

The past couple weeks there have been no classes, but I have to say, I was far from bored.  I have been hard at work setting up my portfolio for everything I have been doing up to this point in the cohort.  I didn't feel that the work these past few weeks was hard, however, a lot of time was needed to look back at what I did and determine what I was going to include in the portfolio.  I enjoyed looking back at my old work.  It really made me realize how much I have done in the past year and a half.  I can definitely say that before I started this program, I was unaware of a lot of educational technologies available.  It has been well worth my time to discover the new technologies taught in this cohort as it has helped me in my teaching career as well as my personal life.  I am looking forward to finishing my portfolio and sharing my portfolio with others.  I'm hoping the information I have learned can be shared with many other people.

Week 2 of Cedo 555

On to another week and now we are starting to get into the nitty gritty of the class.  This week we had to set up a Google site page that will act as our portfolio site.  It has been a while since I have worked on Google Sites, so it took a little time to play around and set up my site.  After a while, it wasn't too bad and I got my site set up with a home page and sub pages which will be used for sharing my work, my vision and mission statements, standards my work follows, as well as a page sharing a little about myself.  I am excited to see the end product, but know it will take a lot of work and time to make this site look good and be user friendly.

In addition to starting our portfolio site page, we also had to come up with a vision and mission for our site. I Googled to find examples, and that did help me, however, it was not an easy task to think of a vision and mission statement.  I made mine short and to the point, but I felt it was actually pretty hard to get a perfect statement down.  I felt myself brainstorming a lot. I honestly thought it would be easier to think of these statements than it actually was.  However, I am happy with what I produced and think both statements are powerful and do what they are intended to do.  If you would like to see my site and my mission statements, please click here   https://sites.google.com/a/wolfmail.stritch.edu/bill-raudabaugh-cedo555-w2012/home/my-vision-and-mission

Week 1 of Cedo 555

It has been a while since I've last blogged and now it's time to get back to work.  The new class I am starting is called Professional Portfolio Experience.   I honestly wasn't really sure exactly what I would be asked to do for this class.  Obviously, I have to make a portfolio, but I have never made an online portfolio before and was unsure of what it would look like.  The first assignment I had to do for class was to look for and describe online portfolios that would be close to something I would make for my professional life.  I think this assignment was very worth while because as soon as I looked at some of the examples, the goal of what I need to do in this class clicked with me.  I found four portfolios that covered a variety of subjects that I now teach.  I discovered that these portfolios typically shared the persons philosophy, and introduction of themselves and their work and examples of work they have used in the classroom.  After thinking back on all of the work I have accomplished in nearly a year and a half in this cohort, it looks like a portfolio would be the perfect way to share everything I have done and categorize all the work I have done in this short time.  I look forward to putting this portfolio together and looking at my peers work as well.

Week 6 of Cedo 550

This week concluded a very interesting class.  I have to say I most, out of everything we did,  enjoyed teaching an online course.  I feel confident that I could do this if I wanted to change what I am doing now.  It is a lot of work, but I think it would be fun and engaging as well.  As for this week in class, I really enjoyed the video called "Shift Happens".  It is a true wake up call as to where are country and children are at this point of time and it shows the importance of being technologically knowledgeable in the 21st century.

Week 5 of Cedo 550

This week was a fun week in Online Facilitation.  I was able to teach my 15 minute lesson on "Qualities of a Successful Online Student."  I felt I did much better than I thought I would do.  I asked many good questions and got my class to share some very good points.  I planned it as an interesting class and got a good grade on it. I think it gave me some very good experience for if I ever teach online in the future.

We also discussed social networking this week.  Overall my feeling of social networking is very positive.  I am part of an online community every day and have been for many years.  I  have been on Facebook since 2007 and really enjoy the opportunities I have to share my personal information and look into what is happening in other people's lives.  As a member of this Stritch Cohort, I also feel I have been in an online community that facilitates learning and sharing of knowledge.  I am very happy with my experiences so far.  


We also investigated the positives and negatives of working on a project collaboratively.  I feel a positive is the ability to bring many ideas together.  When you are only working by yourself, you are limited by your own experiences and ideas.  Have a group to work on a project together really opens up doors and makes your project the best it can be.  On the other hand, the greatest challenge of working collaboratively are those instances when team members do not work together well or there are personality conflicts.  Time is wasted because the members cannot come to a consensus and the product is not developed to the fullest extent.  


This week was a very interesting and useful week, and I continue to enjoy this online facilitation class.  

Week 4 of Cedo 550

This week we have focused on student centered instruction and differentiation of assignments.  Up until this school year, my teaching was very teacher centered.  I did a lot of lecturing and sharing of notes.  After going through Stritch, however, I have picked up a lot of strategies and have been changing the way I have been teaching to a more student centered approach.  I am putting most of my time into switching from teacher centered to student center learning in my Civics class.  The students are given a scenario and are expected to investigate the information, instead of me sharing every little bit of information with the students.  We still hold discussions, with me as the facilitator, but after the students have investigated the information asked of them.  I have also helped my team teacher in Life Science do teaching in this way as well. 

We were instructed to make an authentic assessment for our newly differentiated lesson.  I found that rubrics  really rate what the student is learning.  This works very well with the assignments I give in Civics class. I can honestly show where the student is based on what is expected of the student and what type of input the student put into his/her assignment.   I like the rubric I made because I can accurately see where they did well and were they were lacking.  It also shows them that I am stressing that they learn the content.  I do grade on spelling and grammar, but for many of my students this is a very difficult thing for them to master and I think it is a good thing for me to show them that their content is worth more than a few spelling errors. 

I really enjoyed learning about more differentiation strategies.  For example, for my civics assignment, I am now going to allow students to share their ideas in pictures and video rather than just text.  This small thing can help many students who tend not to be very skilled in writing.

This week has been very informational and I am looking forward to Tuesday when I can present my class discussion on qualities of a successful online student. 

Week 3 of Cedo 550

For the second half of this class, I will be acting as a Facilitator/Teacher. We were asked what challenges we see we will have as an online teacher.   I have not been an online teacher to this point.  However, I think a huge challenge will be to read all of the postings and assignments the students submit.  As I have been working as an online student, I have submitted a lot of ideas in each of my classes.  I can only imagine what it is like for the instructor to go through all of the comments.  I would want to designate a large amount of time in order to give quality feedback to my students.  

During class we were discussing facilitating asynchronous and synchronous discussions.  When posting an asynchronous discussion, I want to make sure that the questions that I post are clear and concise and my students will understand what is exactly expected of them to share.  As for the synchronous discussions I will be facilitating in the future, I think that the questions I ask as well as my ability to quickly react to anything that is brought up will be a challenge when I first do this.  As with anything, I belive I will get better at it as I do it more.  However, the first time doing this will probably be harder than I anticipate. We were given the option of what topic we would like to teach in our synchronous discussion.  I picked "The qualities of a successful online student" because it fits very well into what my class and I have been doing the past year.  I think it is a topic that will generate a lot of good discussion and opinions. I am looking forward to holding my first online teaching experience.  I am nervous, but I think this will be a great opportunity to practice and see if teaching online is something I would like to do in the future.

Week 2 of Cedo 550

This week, I got the opportunity to see what it feels like to be the facilitator and reporter of an online class.  It was intense yet enjoyable to take the role as the teacher in the online class setting.  I learned that you have to be on your feet and know how to direct the class and keep them interested.  I also discovered the importance of asking open ended questions that can get a dialague going. 

As a class, we also looked into some of the facilitation skills that are necessary to carry out a successful class.  I will make sure that I include as many students as possible in a web conference.  It is important to get various viewpoints shared and it helps the class open up when you have many opinions to work off of. 

Another important point to remember is the vvalue of a proper initial contact.  When starting an online class, I will always make an email invitation that is clear, precise, and provides a warm welcome to the class. 

Overall, this week seemed to be of real value to me.  I'm not sure if I will every teach an online class, but the tools provided the past week have helped me feel I could do it if it is something I do end up doing during my career. 

Week 1 of CeDO 550

This week I started a new course called Online Faciliation.  During this course I will be learning about instruction classes online.  I am excited about this opportunity because it will give me yet more tools that I can use after I am done with this program.  The first activity we did this week was too look at the positives and negatives of online education through the eyes of parents, teachers and students.  There is a lot to take into consideration for each of these groups of people.  Cost and quality of instruction are very important to parents.  Students are looking for flexibility in their schedules, but also looking for classes that are interesting and interactive.  Teachers tend to spend a lot of their day working as an online instructor, but they can do it with a flexibility that they do not have when teaching in a typical brick and mortar building.

We also looked at online tools that can be used with our students.  There really are a countless amount of activities available for use, but I found that you need to study them closely and see if they fit well with what you are trying to do in your class.  It does take time to figure out what activities should be used and when you will use them.

Overall, I enjoyed this first week of class and felt I gained some useful tools that I could use in my current classes I teach as well as some tools that may benefit me in the future.

Week 6 of Cedo 535

The item that I have decided to use fully in my professional life is a class wiki.  I am going on my 3rd week of using this now, and it is working very well.  The students can easily access this and enjoy having a centralized place were they can see what we have been doing in class and have the opportunity to edit any information they feel needs to be changed.  Since I have already started to incorporate this in my classroom, it is very easy to measure how well it is working for me.  I can look at all of the edits made by the students and figure out how much participation the students are having within the wiki.  I feel that this experiment will turn into something I use as a full time tool not just in my current Civics class, but in other classes I teach in the future.  It really does make teaching easier and learning for the students a more interactive task.

Week 5 of Cedo 535

This week, I started a Wiki and used Eyejot with my Civics class.  My wiki coincides with the work that my students are doing in class.  After a week of using it, I would say it has been a success.  The students have enjoyed entering their thoughts and what they have found for their assignments.  I have seen a lot of great collaboration with the students and they have done a fine job of fixing mistakes that students have entered in the wiki.  It really has helped take my class to another level of thinking.  I now plan to use this wiki for the rest of the year and years to follow.  I would also like to start a wiki for other classes I teach.

Eyejot has been really fun.  I have sent two Eyejot messages to my students the past week and posted them on Facebook.  The messages relate to our topic in class The Articles of Confederation.  I have got positive responses from my students.  They said it's fun and also makes them think more when they can see and hear me on the computer asking them about what we are learning in class.  Eyejot is yet another great tool that I wish I had years ago.  It's so easy, yet so useful!

I really can't believe this class is almost over.  We have gone through five weeks already and learned a ton.  I think this class has been one of my most beneficial in the whole program up to this date.  I look forward the last week and any new tools that I will be learning about.

Week 4 of Cedo 535

This week we had to work on a podcast or screencast.  As decided to do a podcast using a site called Eyejot.  Eyejot is very easy to use and is free.  It's a great way to record your self as a video message and either send that message to someone via email or post it somewhere someone can see.  As I was doing this, I came up with a great idea.  I currently have a Facebook page for two of my classes.  I typically post questions on the page for students to answer.  I think I'm going to try to post some Eyejot messages that the students can watch then respond to.  This may be more interesting for some of the kids rather than just responding to some written questions.  They seem to like to see me on video when I share videos of me in class, so this may be a way of extending their learning.  I will have to try this and update at a future time.