Today I started the day off early. I was at Mount Vernon High School by 7:20 to see the virtual reality project they were doing. I was supposed to meet Phyllis there, so I waited in the office until 7:30, but she didn't come. I've tried to bring Grant Wood together more with Mount Vernon but things keep happening to get in the way of that.
The teacher I arranged this with was Richard Scearce, but there was another teacher in there named Joe Wallace (I looked him up and he's not on the staff list...so he's either brand new or he's a student teacher, and I didn't catch which). He and Richard are both on the syllabus they gave me. The students were at the very beginning stages with their projects. Richard wanted them to come up with a project that had a learning objective within the technology objective. I knew the kids in there, and got some hugs, so that was extra fun. Richard told them that "Mrs. Gunn would probably be willing to help them come up with better objectives than I could..maybe she'd be willing to let you e-mail her." So I gave them my e-mail address and told them I'd be happy to help them with that.
I met Erica at a coffee shop in Cedar Rapids for a meeting after going to Mount Vernon. We went over some things she thought I'd like to see, such as a career day that would be going on at College Community. We discussed the virtual reality experience and how we could use Richard's great syllabus to aid other people who needed some guidance.
After meeting with Erica I went back to the high school. First I talked to some teachers who wanted to know about my new job, which led us into a discussion about something they wanted help with. The yearbook leader wanted to use Facebook for a social networking group in which the yearbook team could communicate. She asked my thoughts on that and I said I'd check it out. I'll run this by Kay Rewerts and see if other schools are doing that. I know there are Wiki's that might work for that too.
I located Richard, and asked him about sharing his syllabus. He told me where he got his ideas, and said that he'd e-mail all his files to me along with a grading rubric for the virtual reality project. He also would provide the e-mail of the teacher that gave him some of his ideas, which Richard had revised, but could also need approval from before I share the documents with others.
I had a whirlwind week with a lot of meetings and a lot of new things to digest. I need to go back through my e-mails and make sure I didn't miss any. Also, in registering for so many conferences I need to get my registrations in one place.
It was nice to touch base with the people in Mount Vernon. It is Richard's wife, Deanne, that is the ELP teacher that wants to use the EIE kits. I need to read those manuals so I can get going on that.
