CEA Conference 2009

I will be presenting at this conference in March along with 3 others from PBCC. My part of the panel discussion will focus on AskOnline.

OWL 2

Online tutoring has been postponed until the spring. I have recruited two very capable tutors to assist me in this project, and we will be working closely with one instructor and her hybrid class. I am currently working on some method of marketing to entice her students since she is not requiring her students to use the program but only making it available to them. The Math Lab has had some success with various marketing strategies, so I will work with the Math learning specialist on this. I've had one tutor training and plan to have one more tomorrow.

OWL

I was asked to resume my work with online tutoring for the English Writing Lab. If you've read earlier blogs, you know this topic is fairly controversial. The math lab has been very successful, but math is a completely different animal. The fact that our subject not only relies on typed text to convey the message but that the typed text is the message makes the project a little daunting in this abbreviated txting, l33t world. I pulled out my old research and did some additional research to prepare a presentation, and, for better or worse, we've agreed to begin using AskOnline with a limited group of students in the fall. Lake Worth is the main campus of PBCC, so implementing this program here will be much different than implementing it in Belle Glade. I've been asked to recruit a couple of tutors to volunteer for this pilot, which will be tricky. I need to find tutors who are tech savvy, don't mind a little extra work, and would support the initiative. I've asked one who's a little reluctant because of the extra work. I haven't yet decided on who else to ask. I may find three to help me out.

"Quotation Marks"

I'm creating a handout for quotation marks to go in the student resources section of our website, and I came across this site: http://quotation-marks.blogspot.com/. After listening to the BBC radio show of Eats, Shoots and Leaves, I'm always on the lookout for comical punctuation. Who would have thought quotation marks, commas, and apostrophes could be so hilarious?

Back at PBCC

Well, I am back at PBCC as an English learning specialist.  I am extremely happy to no longer be teaching high school.  Not only did I have no time to spare for this site, but I also had no time to spare for anything else!  The most techie project I dealt with (besides RenWeb) was the few weeks I taught on informational and visual media.  The students were required to do a multimedia presentation.  I felt like we could have gone so much further with these, but with everything else the students had to learn throughout the year, there was no time.  I enjoyed the focus on literature, which I had missed working at PBCC previously, and I enjoyed the majority of the students, but that was about it.  I won't miss the mounds of grading, paper work, lesson plans, record keeping, phone calls, supervisors, etc.  It's nice to be back in my niche.  

mac

I've finally purchased the incredibly hyped mac to pursue my educational tech interests. Compatibility problems will be an eternal problem. Most educational facilitie rely heavily on PC/Microsoft; therefore, I purchased the mac version of the Microsoft Office Suite. I felt very wasteful since Pages and KeyNote seem quite sufficient for what I need.