Week+Five

**Group Roles:**
Facilitator: Andrea Coach: Melissa Reporter: Paul, //(Andrea or Missy (?) covered Paul's reporter role due to funeral leave.)// Resource Manager: Larry

Things to do:

 * 1) **Individually, work on Assignment 2: The Full Clinical Cycle:** Be sure that you complete the post-observation conference video by the end of Week 6.
 * 2) **Individually, work on Assignment 3: Alignment of Professional Development Standards:** Continue to work on this assignment.

Activities completed:
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 * Individually, we completed and submitted our Practice Makes Perfect Formative Observations into our Individual Discussion Forums.
 * Paul, Missy and Andrea shared their thoughts about the following elements that make up a quality instrument:
 * 1) five domains that are critical to effective classroom instruction and whether or not they should have specific performance indicators or statements
 * 2) your thoughts about whether observation instruments should include specific ratings or responses in narrative form
 * 3) elements or aspects of an instrument that are most useful for teachers to improve instruction
 * 4) ways the instrument promotes constructive dialogue with teachers
 * 5) Missy posted a summary of the observation instruments by end of week Monday.
 * Team (Paul, Missy & Andrea) posted responses to classmates posts in the Whole Group forum. Andrea posted the summary of the ELC thread and Paul posted the summary of the Survey Monkey survey.
 * New tool! Embed-it
 * The following two documents were uploaded to ELC Whole Group Forum. I learned about this tool today in the DEN Virtual Conference, so I thought I would try it out! Nothing to download and super easy to use!

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 * Completed **conference call** for this week (Thursday, October 22 at 8PM)
 * We discussed the completion of our Practice Makes Perfect Assignment, the handling of the facilitator role in the Whole Group forum (each of us will post at least one time and we will try to denote trends...)
 * Missy will post a summary of the WG conversation on Monday.
 * We discussed the necessity to post in our Team Forum.
 * We will communicate via ELC and email to conclude our week as facilitator.
 * Record of call: [[file:Conference Call_22_October.docx]]
 * The fruit of our labor: Week 5 Whole Group Activity
 * See below for discussion

Preparing for the Whole Group Discussion : >
 * 1) WE are moderating the whole group discussion this week!!!! Please read the following carefully:
 * 1) Determine the format for the Whole Group discussion, which will be posted (or sent to Donna?) as an announcement by **Thursday** of this week. In the meantime, be sure that you have completed the readings, (i.e., three articles, [|one website], and four powerpoint presentations), to gain an understanding of various **professional development opportunities**. We should also take into account the national and state standards for PD, which are also part of our Assignment 3 for SUPD, here attached: [[file:NSDC_Standards.pdf]]
 * 2) Individually, prepare for the response to this question:
 * 3) //Think about one teacher that you observed in this course. Consider the needs of this teacher based on your observation. What professional development opportunities should the teacher engage in to benefit student learning? Does the teacher need one-to-one support or will the teacher improve by collaborating with others? Briefly introduce the teacher (using a pseudonym), identify the grade level, and describe the teacher’s area(s) of need. Then, provide your recommendation for professional development that will support the teacher’s needs. In your recommendation, describe the type and focus of the professional development and provide a rationale for your recommendation.//
 * 4) Team D will determine the appropriate follow-up discussion postings.

Decisions to be made by **Midnight, Thursday, October 15:**
 * 1) What tool are we going to use to communicate the guiding questions with the whole group? I started a brainstorming table below. PLEASE edit/add/remove content as you see necessary! This is just my brainstorming to get us started!
 * 2) Is there a rubric for this? Do we score more for using a new tool versus one we're all used to? (PG)

This would be "keeping it simple" during a very busy week of observations. (PG) || We don't introduce anything new to enhance the use of a variety of technology tools used by the whole group. || At first glance, to me it has the makings of a whole group "wiki." This also fits "us" because we have taken to this format as a team during this course.(PG) The A&S forum has a wikispace already. It is being used this coming week, (Wk 4), for Whole Group/Individual activity. (PG) || Unless people put their initials after the content that they add, it is not easily visible as to who added what. Would we create a brand new wiki? (yes - pg) Would we just add a new page to our existing wiki? (no - pg) Would we try a new Wiki host or just stick with what we know, Wikispaces? (stick w/ Wikispaces - pg) In order to make sure each PD example is covered, I think we have to "assign" participants to a particular example. There have been multi-faceted activities before, (e.g. canned improvement plans), that were distributed across the groups. (PG) I did notice in Week 8 of our first course that 4 different examples of "school partnerships" were divided BY TEAM and posted for whole group, so assigning 2 of the PD examples to each group is an option, I think. (PG) Paul--I think you are on to something! I like this idea! (AC) || "Been there, done that" many times, (PG). || New **// || Choose and complete one of **//Inspiration//** Thinking Skills templates, either "Comparison" or "Venn Diagram," in which you compare TWO of the PD opportunities, (these may be assigned by team). Post your completed template to the Week 5 Discussion Board. Consult other team's comparisons to learn about the variety of PD opportunities. Then respond to this week's questions, (see above). (PG) Participants who do not have Inspiration could [|download the free trial]. || Hey! This is cool! Did you know there is a free Web 2.0 tool VERY simiiar to Inspiration? I'll look for the URL and add it to this space...(AC) || Intent is good, but too much else going on to burden participants with learning something brand new. (PG) || Let me know what you think of this; I had fun making it! (PG) || Paul--I am really warming up to this idea! I think this should be done by all individuals and not teams/groups. It would be easy (and informational) to report out on the results of most of the questions. We could use bar graphs to illustrate the results... I am not too sure about having 3 comment boxes. As someone who does a lot of surveys, it is really cumbersome to summarize comments from a large number of people. What if we remove the compare and contrast question from the survey and do the survey + a separate request to compare and contrast two styles in a way that makes sense visually/graphically. That way, if people want to use inspiration, they can. Those tech geeks from Illinois can use bubbl.us or some other web 2.0 tool. Or if they are tech challenged, they can draw a venn diagram on a PowerPoint slide. They could upload a link or a document to the whole group forum in ELC. Nice work, by the way!! (Andrea) || I. Here is a suggested assignment of PD opportunities by team:
 * ** Web 2.0 Tool to Consider ** || ** Pros to using this tool ** || ** Cons to using this tool ** ||
 * //**ELC Threaded Discussion**// || Everyone is familiar with this format.
 * //**Blog**// || Different questions could be posed as different blog posts. Most people are familiar with blogging. If people "subscribed" to the blog, they would be notified when new comments or posts are added which is an enhancement over ELC. || Not too much of a stretch to enhance a variety of technology tools used... Whose blog would we use? Would we just add on to one of our individual blogs? Would we create a brand new blog and who would be responsible for doing that? ||
 * **//Wiki//** || The history tab makes it easy to see who has added/edited content. We could embed surveys/polls, graphs, charts, photos if necessary. (AC)
 * **//GoogleDocs//** || Participants are used to it, comfortable with using it, (PG). || We need to remember to share it to everyone so everyone can add content...
 * //**Inspiration
 * Mindmapping Web 2.0 Tools || Okay--this goes along with Paul's suggested uses of Inspiration. While my school subscribes to Inspiration, many do not. I know you can get a free trial, but we may want to consider one of the tools described in this blog post: [] (Andrea) || There are some great tools in this blog post (fliffy, mind42, mindmeister, bubbl.us, mindomo, spinscape, slatebox, etc) many of which I am unfamiliar. I didn't check all of the tools to see if they did Venn diagrams. If you guys like this idea, we can start making a list of the ones that do. I am hesitant to assign one to each group because that may be too constrictive....Maybe we could create a list from this blog post and say that they have to use one. Anyone ideas?? (AC)
 * Powerpoint || We could rely on an ELC favorite...PowerPoint, where there would be one or two slides per PD example, created by the same mini-teams that worked together last week. I think we could specify what elements we were looking for per example and create a template so the participants cover the necessary material. (PG). ||  ||
 * Survey Monkey || [|Professional Development Survey]
 * **Team** || **Compare & Contrast** ||
 * A || Listening to Student Voices vs.LASW ||
 * B || Book Study vs. Lesson Study ||
 * C || Classroom Visits vs. Critical Friends ||
 * D || Coaching vs. Online Courses ||
 * Andrea's comments:** I kind of like this idea Paul....we could take a wikipage and put the directions and this table (above) on the main page. then we could link each group to their own pages (one for Team A, one for Team B, one for Team C, etc.). I was thinking more of having each of the PD examples by name on the left menu, like we have "weeks." We could put the creators of the pages in the headings. (PG)

[Andrea removed her content from this space after realizing that she was on the wrong track...] If I'm reading it correctly, the main questions get answered on the DBoard "AFTER" folks have dabbled in the readings and have completed their wikipage/webbing/etc. So the exploration of a PD example would be Part I, and then answering the main questions Part II. And follow-up questions to follow Part II, (they don't necessarily have to be Part III). (PG)

II. Here is a suggested assignment of PD opportunities by last week's mini-teams:
 * Listening to Student Voices, (Andrea & Nancy)
 * Critical Friends, (Beth & Brady)
 * Lesson Study, (Carissa, Melissa, & Van)
 * LASW - Looking at Student Work, (Judi & Paul)
 * Classroom Visits, (Larry & Teresa)
 * Coaching and Mentoring, (Lizette & Patricia)
 * Book Study, (Stephanie & Anne)

The following decisions also need to be made:
 * 1) Who is going to email Donna with our plan? They need to provide Donna with how the Whole Group will access our tool including clear directions. (Reporter for the week? That would be ME! ) (PG)
 * 2) How will we ensure that **all** of us contribute posts to the Whole Group discussion. We all need to be present in the discussion to receive full credit.The comments and feedback need to encourage critical thinking. (AC) Agreed; according to the rubric, our "followup" on their posts is worth 7 points out of the full 10. (PG)
 * 3) I'm just not sure how we ensure participation from each member. Do we assign each person (by letters?) to a particular PD approach? (PG)
 * 4) Who will summarize the conversation(s)...due by midnight on Monday, October 26. (The "Coach" summarized the HOT eval. this week. In that case, it would be Missy. ) (PG)

Examples of Professional Development Opportunities
 * Listening to Student Voices
 * Critical Friends
 * Lesson Study
 * LASW (Looking at Student Work)
 * Classroom Visits
 * Coaching and Mentoring
 * Book Study
 * can we add Webinars or Online Courses, (so that if we divide by 4 teams, each team has to address 2 of the examples...PG)