We have completed our self-study and the WASC committee has come and gone from Bonita Vista High. Everything looks good and it will be nice to devote more time to teaching (and maybe blogging) and less time to demonstrating that we teach our students well. The cherry on top of the sundae was a call from the state superintendent of schools on the last day of the committee’s visit to say that we have been designated “A California Distinguished School.”
03
Apr
WASC adventure
I’m not sure why I stopped posting to my blog or keeping my resource page up-to-date. Creating and updating the moodle for my classes has kept me busy, but it has also helped keep my students informed about assignments and grades.
What I’ve missed by not updating my blog
- Reflecting on the job I’m doing as a teacher on a regular basis.
- Evaluating changes to my class lessons in an organized way.
- Organizing resources that I may not use this year, but want to try in the future.
As a teacher, I’m more energized in the classroom this semester. Implementing ideas from the Ed Tech program has been invigorating. And taking a semester off from the masters program provides time to use the ideas without stressing.
A presenter at the CAEA conference two years ago suggested changing the theme or focus of standards based visual art classes each semester. If students repeat a class, the projects and emphasis is fresh and interesting even thought students still develop the same skills. But, attempting to change the focus each semester in computer art was becoming too time consuming. I was introducing assignments that didn’t interest most of the students. And the projects that captured students interest in the past, were sitting in the filing cabinet. Now I’m resurrecting some old standards, and the student interest is perking up. More students are completing the assignments on time, and the quality of their work has improved overall. It is also allowing mere time for me to prepare examples and job aids for new projects. So now I’ll introduce enough new assignments to keep me interested, and use some reliable projects that have been successful in the past.
Current computer art project is an old faithful – using photoshop to customize a car with new rims, airbrush paint and more bling. The Digital photo class is learning to light a car photo shoot, using car models and mirrors thanks to Peter Kirrings tutorial at Digital Photography School. Something old and something new, it works for me and I hope for the students.
03
Oct
It’s been over a month
But my excuse is that it has been a very busy month. For the first time, I set up a moodle for each of my classes, and then tried to get my students, who are mostly ninth graders, to set up their own account and enroll in the courses. This means several students set up accounts, but never enrolled. Others never set up their account and some set up several accounts.
Needless to say I’ve been pulling out my hair and using very unprofessional language as I tried to grade assignments and clear up the situation. Next year I’ll produce a job aid ahead of time, and won’t try to introduce the moodle until class has been going for 2 or 3 weeks.
The good news is that last night was Open House. It’s over for another year, and the parents loved the idea of the moodle. They like that students can keep up with handouts, assignments and class activities whether they are traveling, sick or in the class. Now several teachers at our school want to set up their own moodles.
It’s also time consuming to rebuild a web activity using trackstar. Clicking ok without reading the details caused the problem. You can only link trackstar to three pages of one website because of copyright infringment issues. Now I need to have fewer trackstar links with more notations, so the students will know what to do. Guess I should have read the details at the beginning.
