Action Learning Post 4

I met with Kathy last week to finalize our grant writing and to write my biography for the grant. We compiled it and sent it off and should hear back by January, in time to order the books for the unit. I like the format of that grant and would love to have the opportunity to go to the conference with Kathy if it gets funded. Doing the storymapping with the kids is going to be an interesting experience, and I hope that they'll be able to discover some things about the program that I haven't learned yet and can teach me as much as I teach them.

I'm thinking I might try to email/write Paulsen before the kids do just to make things easier so that he knows to expect correspondence from them.

I need to rework my planning sheet a bit, but I really feel like I'm on track with this. The grant is only a small part of what we're trying to do, but it feels like the first hurdle is complete.

I've put together a rough outline for my presentation on Wednesday, but need to finalize it. Not having internet at home is really making this planning a bit difficult because I have to remember to print everything at school or run to the public library (as I have this morning) to complete things. But, at least we're in the home stretch!

Meeting Frustration

Nancy and I met today online for our meeting for the LES collaboration. Nancy was there at 4:00, as we had planned, and I arrived a bit late due to a traffic accident that had traffic stopped both ways for a while. By 4:35, neither of the other two group members had shown up and neither had posted their schedules on the discussion board, as we had discussed in our last meeting, so Nancy and I decided to leave the chat room as she had class and I have another meeting tonight. I posted my schedule and answered some of Nancy's questions about hers, but we have seen very little interaction from the others on the discussion board during the week and feel as if this project is an aside or afterthought for them, rather than a focus. They seem to be logging in before they get to class and have not been very good about letting us know if they're going to be late. I hope that we can work through this, and that they are not equally frustrated with us or our actions. I wonder if some of the issue is that they do not feel comfortable with the technology and are putting off logging in until they are there to do it with a community.

I am going to post a preliminary schedule on the discussion board tomorrow to help Nancy get a better idea of what a master schedule can look like, since she's not had much experience in scheduling since she has not been responsible for that in student teaching or internship experiences. I hope to see some interaction from the others on the discussion board or via email.

Where do we go from here? I wonder if other groups are feeling a similar frustration.