Forgac,+M

=Miranda Forgac=

Wednesday, August 22nd
|| **"Session"** || **Reflection/Products** ||
 * **Time**
 * 8:00-9:50 || Welcome, Intro, and Review Core Competencies || It was nice to go through the core competencies again to just review the goals of the Academy. ||
 * 10:00-10:50 || Building electronic portfolios with wikis || I found the wiki was not very user friendly when I tried to set up my own page. It would be helpful to have a little more instruction on using a wiki in order to navigate through building my own. This is something I wish I would have learned how to use a few weeks ago because it seems time consuming and I would have liked to play around with it before I try to use it in my classroom. ||
 * 11:00-11:50 || Using digital videos in your classroom || I learned how to embed wimdows media player into a powerpoint. I knew how to embed a video but not how to embed the player. That will be helpful when I want to put a video in a powerpoint. ||
 * 1:00-1:50 || Parent Involvement || Using SIP's-having students evaluate themselves. Document EVERYTHING. Parent nights, meet the teacher, college night. How else do we get parents involved? Technology nights: show the parents basic computer skills, how blackboard works, etc. Academy awards for specialties, art/specialty shows, culture nights. Booster clubs. ||
 * 2:00-2:45 || Meeting with floor Vice Principal || I learned the basics of the floor, procedures, where to get things, etc. Daily observations scared me at first but I think it will help if I need anything. If Eric is coming into class the students are more aware of his presence and it will become routine. The only thing I was not sure of is that most of my students are 3rd floor kids and I wasn't sure how it would work with the observations and if I am having an issue with the student. If there is an immediate problem do I send the student to Eric or Michel? ||
 * 2:45-3:30 || PACE Meeting || How to teach the core competencies. What the plans are for the PACE classes. This really helped me understand better what the PACE classes are for and how they are helpful to our students. I noticed a few of my government students are in my PACE class as well, so that will help me know what they are like in class as well as how they act in my PACE class. ||

Thursday, August 23rd
|| **"Session"** || **Reflection/Products** ||
 * **Time**
 * 8:00-9:50 || Meet with Teams and Specialties || I found the team meeting a little stressful. I am excited to be working on the activities with the other team members, but we need to get more student/parent involvement for the activities to go anywhere. ||
 * 10:00-10:50 || Teacher's Toolkit: Building up to project-based learning || Work backwards from what you want the outcome to be. Scaffolding, phase assessments, etc. Top five scaffolding: 5. Know what tools are needed. 4. Know how to use the tools. 3. Begin with the end in mind. 2. Have a road map and a timeline. Grade/Assess each part of the project. 1. rubric is a must so the student knows how they are being assessed. This was an interesting session on how to plan and carryout project based learning. ||
 * 11:00-11:50 || Social Bookmarking || I found this one very interesting, up to this point I was not sure how to add things to del.icio.us. This session helped me organize it and add websites I found helpful. ||
 * 1:00-1:50 || Managaing Student Parent Database || I love this database. I was able to change a few of my students who were not listed as in my class, so they are now in the database as in my PACE class. I also like the students pictures on on it so I can start to learn names and faces before school starts. ||
 * 2:00-2:25 || Reflection Time ||  ||
 * 2:30-3:30 || Meet with Departments || Learned a little bit about what kinds of things are going on in the department and what types of conferences or other things are available to me as a social studies teacher. ||