Pre-Observation Chat

Lisa Rogers has joined the chat.

DeLana Lightfoot[8:55:19 AM]: Hey Lisa! How's it going?

Lisa Rogers[8:55:52 AM]: Good morning - it's going good - hard to believe school is almost here

DeLana Lightfoot[8:57:01 AM]: I know! I hate all the back to school flyers everywhere. They make me so angry.

Lisa Rogers[8:57:47 AM]: Are you going to do staff development this time or another teacher?

DeLana Lightfoot[8:58:45 AM]: I wasn't quite sure exactly what Connie was asking us to do. But...alas, I have a plan. I want to do staff development and teach ipodding. What do you think?

Lisa Rogers[9:00:25 AM]: That sounds great, I'd love to attend that. I'm going to do staff development on Moodle, since I will have to teach it anyway I'll be getting 2 things done at a time, the only draw back is the person I have to mentor is an Instructional Facilitator who is use to being the mentor.

DeLana Lightfoot[9:01:27 AM]: Fun. So...do we still have to mentor a teacher and teach staff development?

Lisa Rogers[9:02:47 AM]: No, one or the other, you have to mentor someone that is going to teach ipodding to teachers, you can help, but you can't mentor yourself

DeLana Lightfoot[9:04:01 AM]: Oh, right. Makes sense. So...do we have to mentor an academic teacher to teach the staff development?

Lisa Rogers[9:04:36 AM]: It can be any one it doesn't have to be an academic teacher.

DeLana Lightfoot[9:05:41 AM]: Sweet. I'm sorry you didn't enjoy you moodle class. Did you just go to a bookstore and buy a book to learn more on it?

Lisa Rogers[9:07:32 AM]: Yes, there is really good online documentation but I'm still old school enough to need something written down in my hand. OK - so you will be working with adult learners, how will your teaching stategies be different?

DeLana Lightfoot[9:11:04 AM]: I think that the adult learners will be more cooperative and focused early on in the lesson...so, I think that the learner centered instruction can begin almost immediatley. I will will have visual handouts for them to follow...and also have a sample podcast displayed via a projector. All teachers have their own laptops with compatible software already installed.

Lisa Rogers[9:12:14 AM]: What will be your learning objectives for your mentee? and how will you assess her achievement?

DeLana Lightfoot[9:15:29 AM]: Our school district likes for us to use a warm-up for students (incorporating various academic TEKS) as daily grades to encourage all students to be on time to classes. Tardies are a problem for us at such a large school. The objective is for teachers to be able to incorporate daily objectives for the student...into a simple podcast to use as a daily warm-up. Assessment...weekly meetings to answer questions, check progress, problem solve. Also email correspondence for quick response situations.

Lisa Rogers[9:16:57 AM]: Great idea - a podcast would ensure consistency. What about your professional goals this time, what would you like to achieve?

DeLana Lightfoot[9:21:04 AM]: My professional goal is to continue to learn and become more knowledgeable about podcasting...video and audio, so that I will be a good resource for all teachers when they have questions. I also would like to continue to improve my communication skills so they are more thought inducing for my mentee and students so that they can draw their own conclusion. I still have the tendency to give them the answers instead of helping them figure things out on their own. 

Lisa Rogers[9:22:53 AM]: We've covered your learning objectives and assessment, your goals for your mentee and yourself, is there anything else we need to cover? Will you model podcasting in your staff development?

DeLana Lightfoot[9:24:12 AM]: Yes. I will make a podcast as a sample...and also present a podcast at various stages of development as a sort of rubric for the teachers/students.

DeLana Lightfoot[9:24:57 AM]: How about you? What are your goals for your mentee using/teaching Moodle? Any ideas on assessment?

Lisa Rogers[9:28:46 AM]: Since Moodle is an online curriculum delivery system, I will be using Moodle to teach How to Moodle. My learning objective for the teacher is to create a shared library of online classes. Creating a Moodle class is time consuming but if we share the load we will have a number of good products. In the staff development we will create a sample lesson so the assessment will be if the teachers are able to create a usable lesson on their own. My professional goad will be to encourage this collabortion between teachers to enhance their curriculum with teachnology.

DeLana Lightfoot[9:31:21 AM]: Sounds awesome. Is Moodle a shareware program? And...this question is just for my benefit. Is Moodle kind of like blogging? Sorry...I'm not more knowledgeable about it.

Lisa Rogers[9:35:09 AM]: Moodle is a free course management system, you can blog, wiki, have lessons, take quizzes. It's really powerful, you just need some space on a server. Connie runs hers off her Ipod so it must not need much space. I'm going to run it off of a flash for awhile until I figure out how it is going to work. Look it up at moodle.org. I have learned a lot about how to set up an online class from taking this one, so I hope that teachers will want to take advantage of the 1-1 laptops.

Lisa Rogers[9:36:14 AM]: We are planning on using it a lot for staff development, especially for coaches who can't make regular hours, they can take the class at home.

DeLana Lightfoot[9:37:01 AM]: Wow! That sounds really cool. I will look into that as well. I would love to incorporate something like that for our Career and Technology clasees to use together. Thanks so much for the information.

Lisa Rogers[9:38:32 AM]:  Do you think we have covered everything?

DeLana Lightfoot[9:38:39 AM]: By the way...have you read the last Harry Potter book yet? Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows? I have about 30 pages left!! I'm worried about Harry making it out alive!

DeLana Lightfoot[9:38:57 AM]: I think we covered everything. Thanks for chatting with me!

Lisa Rogers[9:39:28 AM]: Haven't finished it yet. Get back to reading. Talk to you later. I'm off to the dentist. Not my favorite place. see ya

DeLana Lightfoot[9:39:42 AM]: Have fun.