Monday, September 14, 2009
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Special Project
May 2, 2009 -
Since I am currently working in a media center, my adviser asked me to do a special project to make up for the practicum hours that the other students in our class had to complete. I did full-fill the requirement to visit other grade level media centers, but I did not spend as many hours as the others did because I work full-time in a media center already. You can read about those visits under the section called "Practicum Journal".
For my special project, I decided to develop a teacher resource addition to our media center web page. One main area on which I wanted to focus was helping teachers use wiki pages with their students. I conducted two staff development sessions to help teachers and then I updated our school web page so that they could get much of the information directly off the school web site.
The teacher resources web site can be found at the following URL:
http://www.ccboe.net/lhs/media/teacherresources.html
Since I am currently working in a media center, my adviser asked me to do a special project to make up for the practicum hours that the other students in our class had to complete. I did full-fill the requirement to visit other grade level media centers, but I did not spend as many hours as the others did because I work full-time in a media center already. You can read about those visits under the section called "Practicum Journal".
For my special project, I decided to develop a teacher resource addition to our media center web page. One main area on which I wanted to focus was helping teachers use wiki pages with their students. I conducted two staff development sessions to help teachers and then I updated our school web page so that they could get much of the information directly off the school web site.
The teacher resources web site can be found at the following URL:
http://www.ccboe.net/lhs/media/teacherresources.html
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Preparing a Professional Portfolio
April 28, 2009
Preparing the Professional Portfolio has been an on-going task this semester. I feel a bit overwhelmed right now trying to keep up with what is a portfolio requirement and what is a practicum requirement. It seems that many of the practicum requirements will fit in my portfolio, but not all of them.
I hope that I'm on the right track with my portfolio...right now I've got the wiki page set up and I've got most of the evidence uploaded to the page. I need to work on the reflections, my resume, and my philosophy between now and the due date (May 4th). I like the wiki format for this portfolio. I've been using wikispaces.com and it has been going smoothly, so far! I hope it continues :)
Preparing the Professional Portfolio has been an on-going task this semester. I feel a bit overwhelmed right now trying to keep up with what is a portfolio requirement and what is a practicum requirement. It seems that many of the practicum requirements will fit in my portfolio, but not all of them.
I hope that I'm on the right track with my portfolio...right now I've got the wiki page set up and I've got most of the evidence uploaded to the page. I need to work on the reflections, my resume, and my philosophy between now and the due date (May 4th). I like the wiki format for this portfolio. I've been using wikispaces.com and it has been going smoothly, so far! I hope it continues :)
Monthly Report for Principal
Here is a report for my activities for my principal. I summarized some of the highlights from last month. It's been a busy month!
Media Center Evaluation
May 2, 2009 -
As I reviewed the Georgia DOE 2008 Library Media Program Self Evaluation Rubric, I found that our strengths were in Categories 1 (Student Achievement and Instruction) and 3 (Facilities, Access, and Resources). This is were I felt that we had the most proficient and exemplary marks.
Category 2 (Staffing) is probably an area where we should improve, but I don't know that we really don't have much input to make any changes. However, I'm sure that most media specialists feel the same way. In fact, we probably have it pretty good compared to some other schools. We have 2 media specialists and 1 media clerk in our school of approximately 1700 students. That sounds good, I think. However, in my first year as a media specialist I was most over whelmed by all the extracurricular duties. We (the other media specialist I work with and the media clerk) often had to neglect our school library duties in order to get the extra-curricular duties accomplished.
Here is a list of all the extra duties that we (as a department) take care of:
- Junior Class Sponsor
- Senior Prom
- Senior Week
- Homecoming
- Ring Ceremony
- Honors Night
- Relay for Life
- Fixed Assets (starting next year)
I don't know if that looks like a long list to someone who has never planned any of these events, but I can tell you from experience that most of these events take countless hours of time to plan and organize for a school our size. Prom, for example, doesn't mean that we just decorate the venue; we sell tickets out of the media center, paint the wall hangings in the media center, store the props in the media center, and many other things. Honors Night was the equivalent of planning my wedding! I sent nearly 300 invitations, prepared the program, prepared and organized the presentations, organized the special awards and gifts, kept up with RSVPs, prepared the 500 slide power point (with pictures...), etc.
I don't mean to sound whiny by describing all of this, but I just want to make a point that there is a large portion of our time that is spent doing other things. If we were "just media specialists" it would be an easier job...but we kind of do it all :) This is simply on area where we could improve, but probably won't.
I think that we are proficient in Category 4 ( Administrative Support) and 5 (Staff Development) overall. The main areas where we should improve here is in meeting with our administrators more frequently. I feel that we have their support, though.
As I reviewed the Georgia DOE 2008 Library Media Program Self Evaluation Rubric, I found that our strengths were in Categories 1 (Student Achievement and Instruction) and 3 (Facilities, Access, and Resources). This is were I felt that we had the most proficient and exemplary marks.
Category 2 (Staffing) is probably an area where we should improve, but I don't know that we really don't have much input to make any changes. However, I'm sure that most media specialists feel the same way. In fact, we probably have it pretty good compared to some other schools. We have 2 media specialists and 1 media clerk in our school of approximately 1700 students. That sounds good, I think. However, in my first year as a media specialist I was most over whelmed by all the extracurricular duties. We (the other media specialist I work with and the media clerk) often had to neglect our school library duties in order to get the extra-curricular duties accomplished.
Here is a list of all the extra duties that we (as a department) take care of:
- Junior Class Sponsor
- Senior Prom
- Senior Week
- Homecoming
- Ring Ceremony
- Honors Night
- Relay for Life
- Fixed Assets (starting next year)
I don't know if that looks like a long list to someone who has never planned any of these events, but I can tell you from experience that most of these events take countless hours of time to plan and organize for a school our size. Prom, for example, doesn't mean that we just decorate the venue; we sell tickets out of the media center, paint the wall hangings in the media center, store the props in the media center, and many other things. Honors Night was the equivalent of planning my wedding! I sent nearly 300 invitations, prepared the program, prepared and organized the presentations, organized the special awards and gifts, kept up with RSVPs, prepared the 500 slide power point (with pictures...), etc.
I don't mean to sound whiny by describing all of this, but I just want to make a point that there is a large portion of our time that is spent doing other things. If we were "just media specialists" it would be an easier job...but we kind of do it all :) This is simply on area where we could improve, but probably won't.
I think that we are proficient in Category 4 ( Administrative Support) and 5 (Staff Development) overall. The main areas where we should improve here is in meeting with our administrators more frequently. I feel that we have their support, though.
Grant Application
April 30, 2009-
Here is the application that I completed for the grant.
April 29, 2009-
Today I finished the application and mailed it to the Junior League of Augusta. It is due July 2009, so I probably won't hear back from them until after that date. It is now even more important to me that we get an educational blogging subscription, because the free bloggers were recently blocked by our county internet filters! I went to read our class blog the other day, and the screen that flashed before my eyes said it was prohibited and considered to be "pornography". The county wants us to use the paid subscriptions so that the teachers have more control over the blogs.
I've been trying to figure out how to upload the application to my blog...but I haven't had much luck. I'll scan the document and upload it as a picture tomorrow :) Here is a link to the web site:
http://www.jlaugusta.org/UserArea/StaticPages/20092010ACEAWARDS.asp for more information about the grant I chose.
I've found the grant I want to write! I'm going to write a grant for Edublog. The grant is called the ACE award and it is awarded by The Junior League of Augusta for creative and innovative projects. I'll begin working on the grant soon, but I'm glad to have finally found one that fits!
Here is the application that I completed for the grant.
April 29, 2009-
Today I finished the application and mailed it to the Junior League of Augusta. It is due July 2009, so I probably won't hear back from them until after that date. It is now even more important to me that we get an educational blogging subscription, because the free bloggers were recently blocked by our county internet filters! I went to read our class blog the other day, and the screen that flashed before my eyes said it was prohibited and considered to be "pornography". The county wants us to use the paid subscriptions so that the teachers have more control over the blogs.
I've been trying to figure out how to upload the application to my blog...but I haven't had much luck. I'll scan the document and upload it as a picture tomorrow :) Here is a link to the web site:
http://www.jlaugusta.org/UserArea/StaticPages/20092010ACEAWARDS.asp for more information about the grant I chose.
I've found the grant I want to write! I'm going to write a grant for Edublog. The grant is called the ACE award and it is awarded by The Junior League of Augusta for creative and innovative projects. I'll begin working on the grant soon, but I'm glad to have finally found one that fits!
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