EDM 613 MAC Week 3 Wimba " The Art of Possibility" and Leadership Project

Although this was one of the shorter Wimba sessions, the information was pretty intense. After reading the Art of Possibility with its inspirational stories and authors peaceful purpose, it was WILD and AWESOME to see Van Halen's Right Now video!!! I was not expecting that. However, the context and correlation were very appropriate. People do forget how one act of kindness, one responsible choice, one hug, one positive word, can change a lot in a domino effect. I was reminded of an email my husband sent me about 2 years ago about a project that a HS class did- each student made 6 ( with 30 extra) ribbons that said something like " you made a difference in my life" and gave them to 6 people with 6 ribbons. Those people gave them to 6 people and so on. A guy gave one to his boss, the boss gave one to his son, the son gave one to a teacher... etc. I was amazed at what a simple story made such on impact on so many people. The Art of Possibility has the potential to touch more than one life....

The power of positive thinking has to be incorporated with motivation and willingness to change....And have the ability to let things go... you will feel better.....see life in the broad scheme of things.... not the scope of the day.

I am very nervous about the Leadership project. I have such a specialized group of students and the research is so limited. I hope that my peers will be able to understand the impact technology has on students with Autism. I am committed to having a great school program, being an up to date and informed teacher, and using my skills learned at Full Sail to promote an technology. I want to tell others about my success with technology in my classroom.

EDM 613 MAC Week 2 Response to Peers @Tim

Tim said:

To be honest I was really being bored to tears with this weeks reading, Art of Possibility, until! I came to a paragraph the just rang out to me. In this paragraph the topic of grades is discussed. I always had a problem with grades as a way of measuring mastery of skills, I just didn’t know why. Well the authors of this book gave me the answer I was looking for, letter grades just compare student against student, and say very little about the actual work completed by the student.

Every student is different and learns at a different rate and in different ways. Taking into account these differences, why should they all be measured on the same scale. How do we resolve this situation? I really don’t know, but it is definitely something that should be studied.

Reading the paragraphs in this book relating to grades had really opened my eyes to something that has been bothering me for a long time. Wouldn’t it be great to get a giant gathering of educators together and have a massive brain storming session and see what we could come up with? Makes me really wonder about the possibilities……


Elizabeth Said:

Tim, in some regular classrooms where special needs kids are mainstreamed, modified grades are given. So, if a special need kid does half the problems or a pared down list, the teacher gives the student a grade based on that, not in relation to the class grading scale ( for example- if a child has 5 spelling words and gets 4 correct, it is still an 80%) where as other kids have 20 words and they have to get 18 to be same percentage. On grade cards, these grades are asterisked so that parents understand that the student has a modified grade. The only problem I have seen with this issue was at the High School level. One of my former students GPA was 3.9 and he graduated top 5. Now, we all now that student did not take Advanced classes or even had all the required classes, but because of his modified grades in his special education classes, it appeared that he was an above average student. I have struggled how to make this a more fair and understandable issue