As of this morning, everything is done for this class.  I’ve yet to submit the grades officially, but I will do that Monday or so.  In the meantime, you should be able to see everything in the WebCT gradebook.

Very soon, I’ll be changing this blog over to the Cohort 7 Ed.S. folks. (Not quite yet, in case there are a few last details to take care of for you.)  After the switchover, you are welcome to keep “watching” if you like!

Just a quick note as a reminder - about half of you have grades viewable in WebCT now.

For the other half, in most cases, the only thing holding you up is the e-permission.  (It doesn’t matter if you decline/accept, this is just a “received.”)  No, I won’t hold up your grade on this - but I will finish you up early if you go ahead and clear this up.

And, remember - there is no A+.  The highest grade we can give is A.

We are now reaping the benefits of all of those early deadlines - early completion for this class!

Course evaluations are now 100%.  Thank you!

E-permission: I’m checking those off as they come in.  Even if you submitted in another class, it surely makes it easier if you duplicate it in the 7650 WebCT - no cross-checking required for me.

Make sure you submitted your final AP URL in the final dropbox.

If you have done everything that I need, you can see your grade in WebCT. I will update once per day, and have already done so for today.

Congratulations to all of you for completing your AP Presentations! Yay!

If changes were needed, you now know. Nobody had major changes. Wonderful!

I have not caught up with the scoring since late last week - perhaps today, but no promises.

Finally, as I told the intern blog, do these things as you finish up:

• The course evaluation for this class is available through early May here.
• I will be checking for e-permissions in WebCT. I think the form is self explanatory; we need one updated within this final semester, and it helps to have it for each class (no need to do it again if you’ve submitted one for 7650 since December).
• Check your UGA directory address - update as necessary, and try to remember to keep it up to date over time. Yes, this means you will receive Alumni money requests; but it also helps us keep track of you for future reunions, etc.

Thanks to Beth B. and Michelle, I was reminded to finalize submission details for the VERY LAST AP Submission.  Woohoo!

(This seems premature to the half of you that are left to present on Apr 21 - sorry about that. But at least you know what’s ahead.)

To clarify: if you Marathoned on Apr 14, you already know about any changes needed. These were established in the session itself. If you have any questions about that, I’m happy to clarify further.

Here’s what I edited in the assignment description and in the Dropbox:

• In a single Word document (if possible), submit the URL, Rubric, and final Feedback Table.
• At the request of IRB, please add this statement near the front of your project: “This Applied Project was reviewed under the Instructor Exemption for Class Projects, EDIT 7650 (Applied Project in Instructional Technology), under the direction of Dr. Mary Ann Fitzgerald and Dr. [insert advisor's name if not MAF].”
• Name the file in a WebCT-acceptable format, like: maryann-finalAP.doc.
• The deadline of April 28 is critical because we must submit your final defense form to the Grad School by 5pm that day - in order for you to graduate.
  

(In fact, I set the deadline to Apr 27 to give us a few hours to do the paperwork.)

Early is good - make this final (woohoo!) task a top priority.

The Monday Marathon went great (Apr 14). Looking forward to the final installment next week.

I have “graded” all of your Ed.S. portfolios. In some cases, I gave no feedback - and you have received it by now if I gave it.

I also posted “grades” for the folks who presented on Monday. Think of these as check-offs - that’s the way I’m thinking of them.

The variety of presentation modes was quite interesting Monday. Some chose the index card method. Others prepared Powerpoint presentations and even gave print-outs. All worked well.

Remember the back-up plan discussion? As it turned out, the computer in this classroom (A1440) has a version of Powerpoint that won’t open the latest and greatest files. In two cases, this was a problem - so here is a forewarning on that score. In both cases though, the presenter had a Plan B and things went forward. You just never know what the situation will be, do you?

This occurred to me during the Marathon: remember that Google has a Presentation tool within GoogleDocs.  It’s not nearly so fancy as the Microsoft version, but it doesn’t cause the same compatibility problems, either. We used it at COMO and it held up well.  An idea if you haven’t started your (optional) digital presentation!

Put this in your “FYI” and perhaps “Someday Maybe” file. In other words, I’m not about to say anything critical regarding classwork - except for the unnecessary reminder that your portfolios are due Monday and I’m already seeing many submissions. Also, I’ve submitted my advisees’ applied project URLs to the committee. Having heard nothing about the others, I assume all is well.

If you have any last minute Marathon questions for Monday, today is best because I’ll be in an all-day Skype meeting tomorrow and have class Saturday.

OK, now to the less essential.

I know I put Diigo out there in front of you as a feedback medium and then backed away from it. However, in my use since then, it is holding up well. For my personal scholarship, it’s holding up really well - it saves my highlights and “sticky notes” and there’s great potential for organizing libraries of articles. I’m still using del.icio.us for general bookmarking, but I use Diigo when I really need to get down to business with an online resource. And, I can make my work private or public, and I’m learning how to navigate through that. So, I highly recommend it for this purpose.

As far as feedback goes - in the future, the first step is to make “friends” with anyone you want to share annotations with privately. That’s where I messed up in terms of your work. I definitely plan to try this again in the future.

And a new one: have you seen Glogster? Too cool. Check it out, and see this library use with children. (For fun - not an assignment. :-))

I learn about some new cool thing every day. It’s amazing how fast these things are developing.

The agenda for Saturday is taking shape.

I’ve only listed three topics: Ed.S. Portfolio, Marathon presentation, Final AP.

If you have others to discuss, let me know! Of course, we will have Q&A as usual.

Let me write this now while these little details are fresh in my mind!

I’m finished with reviewing your AP First Drafts - what an impressive bunch of work.

Please know that this time I could not read every word. Instead, I checked for overall completeness, cohesion, feedback response, first and last impressions, and any other thing that caught my eye. Check the Dropbox for a document that summarizes your feedback.

Here are a few points in general:

• I used Diigo yesterday but not today. This tool has great potential. For our purpose, however, I should have invited all of you to be my “Friends” before starting to review, because it’s difficult to share annotations after the fact. Feel free to join and invite me (Mfitzger) to be your “friend.” It may come in handy in the future! I’ve told individuals whether or not they need to do anything with Diigo.
• We never talked about titles. Create some kind of title (not just “My Applied Project”) and add to your start page. A couple of you did do this - that’s what made me think of it!
• Don’t forget the IRB clearance statement, which should go on your start page as well. I forgot to check for this consistently; it seemed to be in most.
• The Feedback Table continues to be an invaluable tool. Please update this and keep doing so all the way through graduation - it is a lifesaver for me.
• Links to all Applied Projects and Marathon products will collect in 2 places: my del.icio.us tag page, and the Portfolio Archive page. For now, use the del.icio.us page because it is dynamic. If you change your URL, let me know.
• I recommend that all of you have a single start page that also contains a link to your Ed.S. portfolio - one-stop-shopping for all of your stuff on Marathon Day. In every case, this should be no more than the addition of one or two links to your page. See Terri Byers’ page for an example.

I am pleased with all of your work. Keep plugging through this tidy-up phase (as directed in your feedback).

Professor versus Advisor feedback

This could get confusing, if your advisor is not me. Here are a few points in this regard:

• If I am your advisor, sorry - this is all the feedback you get regarding your AP until the Marathon!
• If someone else is your advisor, then you will also need to respond to that feedback. Very important: if the advice conflicts with mine, make your advisor happy first. Include any such action in your feedback table. If it’s a really big deal, let me know.

Hello!  No need to read this until you’ve dealt with today’s big deadline.  (I see that many AP Draft 1’s have been submitted, but you still have all day.)

Thank you for taking the time to provide midterm feedback weekend before last.  It sounds like overall we are doing ok, despite the pressures.  (I’m certainly feeling those pressures now that the avalanche of material is starting to come in, from all sides.)

One comment you made is very interesting: about redundancy between the AP and instructional design. This is a first. While not of benefit to you, I will think about this in relation to SLM curriculum as a whole. It’s definitely a big-picture question, and these are always fun to think about.