Penultimate Daily Log

It is so hot in our room that we changed the schedule so that researcher's chair can be over by 12:30. No air conditioning in our room makes for a warm day.

Morning Pages: Renee; Wisdom from the I Ching
Write from a point of view you've never tried before. Focus on the demo--what will it be like for the person sitting in the audience, what do they want? What will they get from it? Pretend you're an audience member at your own demo.


Renee: I've realized that I'm negative (or paranoid, I don't know which). Renee wrote about the perceptions of audience members and how they might respond. Conclusion: If things aren't going well, just keep going and don't make a face.


Stacey: I went a totally different direction. I figure there is always going to be someone who has more experience, and someone who has less experience than I do.

Natalie: I liked this activity. Made me think of some things I wouldn't have thought of. I guess I would have htem go through the activity. Smiling face. Something on the chairs. Sheet of paper, 3x5 card, art people always expect free stuff.
(All teachers like free stuff, added Steph)

Steph: I wonder if someone in special ed would think "we've known that for years." Other teachers would say, "no way am I teachingpoetry, I hate it and the kids do too. Who does she think she is? But ideally they'll think: Wow, this is interesting to think about the way kids think. If she were up for Miss America I would vote for her.

Malone: I immediately started thinking about what I would do. Creating the documents, thinking about waht I have to rework for my kids. Started going back and thinking about it from the a different perspective. Looks great to me, but I need to back off and think, how does this look to kids. How does this look to parents?

Cindy: Wrote about the Administrator's conference. Very preliminary. Wound up writing about the disappointments. If admin. do decide to come, they may be expecting one thing, and that's not what we do. It needs to be interactive, to get the administrators writing. They are conditioned to think in terms of boxes and binders, and we just don't do that. Professional development like the WP is complex, more than just handouts and worksheets. We want them to write and share their writing so that they can see from the inside out how WP feels and looks. We want admin. to see that WP is not about one person standing in front of the room going through a binder of curriculum materials, it's a more professional life-span approach.

We also talked about the impact of the WP on people, and how to communicate that feeling to administrators. Perhaps a Q&A panel? Cindy also mentioned that we can perhaps co-opt the terminology of the "look for" as in, these are the some of the things that you can look for in a good writing teacher's class.

Rebecca: Good idea for morning pages Renee! I wrote from three different points of view.
First pov: Anti-touchy-feely anti-groupwork teacher might think that it sounds like a "more work for the teacher idea," they hate those.
Second pov: Questioner: How do you actually pull it off? Lots of questions, how do yo make it work? Money? Choices? Groups? How do you set it up?
Third pov: I've tried book clubs, but didn't find it succesful. It seems like a lot more work than just having everyone read one book.

Jason Clarke: I wrote questions for the quick write at the beginning of the session, what would get people writing and thinking:
What is technologies' place in the classroom?
Is technology a revolution for teaching, or just another tool, basically a glorified overhead projector?
Should teachers be on MySpace?
Is the internet making kids smarter and more knowledgable or is it just causing more ADD and creating students who can't and don't think critically?
Which is worse for education, the invention of the television or the invention of the computer?

As we talked, the group pointed out that because my focus is class blog discussions, these discussions should be on a blog as well, which is a great idea--thank you everyone!!!

Inquiry Groups:


Steph: I finished that endless article!
Also found some more articles, but haven't read them yet.
I've also been Gathering information from colleagues over email. My question is more in-depth than I thought. Not caught up with my question yet.
How can I frame questions so that sped kids can get a better sense of what they are able to do?
Survey/questions about reading and writing.
Past experiences with poetry?

Stacey: I think I want permission slips to record the discussions? Other permission slips?

Jason: Blog log, way to track participation in the blog. Each week one student hosts the blog, and then responds to what happened that week. They have to post a question and then answer some questions: I expect them to connect the "four ways of knowing" to the blog; how was it discussed on the blog?

Hopefully they'll use the skills from the class in the process. The blog log will help to track data. It will help to show the connection between the blog activity to grades on papers and grades in the class. It's pretty obvious to me that people who participate in the blog have written better papers. Then we talked for a while about the four ways of knowing and how they work in Malone's "Theory of Knowledge" class.

Open Activity: (Natalie and Stacey)

They started off wearing "WTF necklaces", which concealed the "Hidden agenda".

Asked us to look at three audiences--how would you adress your research to this audience?
1. Define your audience.
2. Identify the data that would be of interest to this audience.
3. Secondary components that would be of interest.
4. Where might you present this information to this audience?

Audience 1: Frazzled, wants everything handed to him/her,wants to be shown, not told, lot's of preconceptions about what is and is not good.
This audience Needs:
Examples
Variety/Handouts
Student Samples
Mini Paradigm-shift
Your Credentials
Secondary Components:
Videotape/Pictures (Visuals)
Related books,
Annotated Bibliography
A disclaimer? What I'm not doing.

The T is removed from the necklaces so we can see "inat."

Audience 2: Super-organized, logical-sequential thinker, who hates touchy-feely stuff and wants data and an explanantion of how that data influences your teaching.

This audience Needs:
Facts
Bibliographies
Statistical data
Quantitative data
Prove that your data is triangulated
Confidence/Attitude is important for the presenter
Show it's tested and "proven" to work
Credentials are important
Want a copy of your paper, including a citation list
Power Point must look like a research report
Context, lit review, research methods, analyze data, findings and implications slide.
CSAP data--numbers on achievement (be careful, they will grill you)

The F is removed so we can see "ion"

Audience 3: Magazines/Journals (Trade Magazines vs. Academic Journals)

The W is removed so we can see the whole word "dissemination"
The "hidden agenda" question is, how do we disseminate our research?

Then they presented us with guidelines for submission from a number of different journals, Steven Church's "Submitting your work," and a "Prospectus Planning Guide."

Researcher's Chair: Steph

After researcher's chair a few of us met at the Pickle Barrel for sandwiches.

Happy fourth of July, see you Thursday everyone!