Data driven decision making is the practice of today. The availability of data has made No Child Left Behind mandates possible to follow through on. The Excel and Access programs correlate with Standard #3 regarding "management of the organization for an effective learning environment". From budget, to making curriculum decisions, these tech tools will be used in order to view, manipulate, and organize the information needed to make sound decisions as an administrator and teacher. I am in charge of our budget; it was great for me to have the instruction. Frankly, out side of the accounting department, I have not found many colleagues who explain excel.
I am really enjoying how the tech we are using works together. I have publisher for a brochure on Volunteers, blogs, and wiki for communication, and moviemaker will be on our school web page for another avenue to reach our community concerning this new program. The key is communication and this class has opened up new avenues to use.

Second Weekend

I enjoyed having class with everyone and will regretably miss the third weekend. I learned a great deal this past weekend. The introduction to podcasting and wikis were both valuable presentations, even though many administrators probably have little knowledge of both.

In addition, I thought the excel spreadsheet assignment was very valuable for future data mining. In addition, the introduction to access was great, as I had no familiarity with this program. I can see where both of these software programs would have uses in an administrative setting. I look forward to getting my wiki and bloggers up and running for use here at MHS!

Information Galore!

Looking at the standards I can see where the open source material could connect to Standard 3 in the management of the schools. In a time where money seems to be at a low but the need for technology at a high it seems that being able to cut down on the site license cost might be nice. I did like the idea of sharing it with parents who might not have the access or money to spend on the Microsoft version so that the students have the opportunity at home to complete some of the work.

I think that the podcast is a neat way for students to get to share their ideas and what they have learned. I do fear that if things are done too much with movie maker, podcast, or powerpoint that students lose the ability to write effectively. Over the years I have seen a decrease in the quality of student writing since thay use different language when texting and instant messaging each other. I think that there needs to be a good balance between everything.

I think that the conditional formatting with excel was interesting. I use excel a lot and have just highlighted to change things color but this will save a lot of time. I think this connected to both standards 1 and 3. Access would be the same but since it is not a program that all computers most likely have I think that it is more specific to the school or job on whether it can be used.

In looking at Standard 4 I think the Wiki or blog would connect to this. I am not totally sure though how to really use a blog as an administer and in the past I have not always find the Wiki's to be user friendly. I think that a lot of the communication takes place either through emails or even postings on the district web page. But it has to be kept in mind that their are parents and families that do not have internet access who still need the same information.

It was interesting because on the news this morning there was a segment that talked about how technology could be contributing to memory loss. Since people rely on technology holding all their information, their minds do not work as hard at remembering things and begins their ability to remember things on their own begins to slip. I thought it was interesting as we are working on finding more ways to incorporate technology into the classroom.

Managing Data

I'm relating my comments to Standard #3 regarding "management of the organization....for an effective learning environment". I was really impressed with the management of data that can be accomplished with Access and Excel. (I don't have much experience with either, so most of the information was new to me.) Pretty amazing! I definitely can see the value of an administrator being well-versed in this software to take full advantage of the capabilities of both. The "power" is being able to manipulate data to bring contrasts, comparisons, and trends to the forefront. The insight that this provides could mean the success or failure of an initiative, a student, or a district.
It was frustrating to not be able to get on the internet all weekend. I'm hoping that the problem is resolved within the next two weeks.

Weekend Two was Busy

Wow! I feel like we had a lot going on this past weekend. I am feeling a a little overwhelmed, but am working to manage what I have to do, and how I have to do it. I am working in Office 07 for ACCESS and EXCEL so a lot of what was demonstrated in class was hard for me to follow. I am grateful for the help given by very patient and kind classmates. :-) I enjoyed working with my Seinfeld group on our Podcast. I am very pleased with the finished product. It turned out pretty cool, and was relatively easy to do. The Generation presentation was very cool, but I would have really loved some time for directed guidance with my assignments or time to conference with my partner on the multi media project. One final week to go and I will have completed my program. I wish I had taken this class earlier as so much of what we are doing would have helped with the rest of the EDAD courses.

Sorry, Earlier Post Didn't Address 6 Standards

In looking at the 6 Standards I can see how the tools we were exposed to this weekend have the potential to achieve the goals of standards # 1, 3 and 4. I can see how excel would help an administrator achieve standard 3's goals (ensuing management of the organization) and I can also see how wikis and blogs might contribute to achieving standard 4's goals as well (collaborating with familes and community) but again, I spoke with our administrator plus administrators from 4 other schools and they are not "old foggies" who are afraid of technology, they are very cutting edge I would say and they just don't use the Wikis or Blogs to communicate with the community. When asked why there response was access. When you have rural communities access to internet is often times an issue so they want to achieve the goal of community collaboration and they feel the best way to do it in the environments they operate is through newletters and public access TV. As far as using excel, they say that their business managers use it more than they do, they already have preset programs that do data analysis for them, much like what you have on IIRC, graphs, charts etc. already put together. I guess if you want to compare data that isn't already evaluated it would be used then but most of the time the data they do analysis on already is in comparison format.

YIKES!!

Where do I begin. Again tons of information. I really wish we were given handouts on each new task we were doing. It will be helpful in the long run to look back at a cheat sheet instead of relying on my memory. I am so not a tech person! I feel I am gaining good information, but really question doing things to "fill the time." I feel we should spend class time doing quality things related to our assignments or work on assignments so we have support while doing them. I too have asked my administrators what they use for tasks and Access and Wiki is not one of them. My administrator hadn't even heard of Wiki before. So I wonder why Western pushes Wiki so hard in the administrative program. Again, I have gained a lot but question other things.