Change Game

Last week in the 5080 class we played the "Change Game". It was kind of hard to understand at first, but once we got going with the process it all started to make sense. I still think it's kind of funny that our last class all we did was eat Olive Garden take out and play a board game! But the board was definitely about what we've been reading about and the role of Media Coordinator's. The way the game worked was we were split into three groups. On the game board we had a list of names ranging from school board peopoe, elementary teachers/personel, to highschool personel. We were trying to make a committee that would help with more equality within schools and to teach children about this subject...I think... Like I said it was sortive of confusing at first... Anyways, we had to earn "student benefits" and well my group was the group with the least amount of student benefits, so we didn't win that part. The game made us all realize how hard and time consuming it is to make changes with any areas in schools. There is a lot of "red tape" to crawl through before you can ever make any progress. The game was set up to be played with a time limit. The first time limit represented one year, the next timer was for two years. We finally began making progress with our committee at the end of year two. I think my group listened to each other and our ideas pretty well. If something didn't work, we would try something else. As a whole the entire class voted that Dr. Nita should play again once she teaches this course for another semester!

Interview Paper

This past saturday I finished my paper/ reflections on all of the interviews that I had to do for class. I also was able to do post my comments on the topic cards in Qwaq. The paper wasn't that difficult once I got started with it. We were to look at some the text information that we've read and compare that information with the analysis of our interviews. I felt like a had enough information to compare to the IMPACT Model. That text was the main text I used in my paper. I sortive felt as my "aha" moment was when my principal felt that a media coordinator should not be doing much technology. I'm not sure if he realizes that is major part of being a media coordinator! That's why we have technology graduate classes in our program! He also wasn't so keen on flex scheduling for the elementary level. He was once an elementary principal. The teacher that I interviewed feels like by teaching math/science it is harder to collaborate with the media coordinator, but hopes to more in the future. I interviewed a media coordinator that is at the local elementary school where I live and she works on a fixed schedule. She would like to have flex for the older students 3-5, and fixed for K-2 if it were possible. This was an interesting assignment to get different viewpoints.

Just getting the ball rolling again!

Well last week I emailed the three people I want to interview. For one of the people I had to send the questions home with them b/c an appointment was made during our original meeting time. And I'm meeting my principal Thursday morning before school and I'm going to an elementary school near my house to interview a media coordinator. Tonight I was able to get on the Qwaq program. The program actually worked pretty well for me. I hope it continues to work well! I read a chapter in the School Reform book and I started to do the topic card but I wasn't sure if I was at the right one since it had Dr. Sanders name on it. So I'll have to check on that, but answering the topic card won't take that long. I hate that I have to put off the "paper" about the interviews until the weekend, but I'm kind of late getting to all of my interviews. OH well, at least it still won't be last minute!! Until next time....