June/July – KPSnyder

School has ended. WV State Folk Festival, 4-H Camp, Gilmer County High School Class of '91 20-year class reunion…summer is here!!! And for the most part, I have finished everything for TIS-CTE training. I know my teacher resource site and ePortfolio need help, but I am still working on them. I will be attending Master Mentor training, CTE State Conference, and ArcGIS Advanced Training this summer. Good stuff!

May – KPSnyder

All three of the GED Option Pathway students who wanted to graduate this May, PASSED. Also, another student passed her GED before leaving school. It has been a great spring. These kids were motivated and knew their only option was this one. It has been a great program. I have been busy administering the TABE to perspective students for the fall Option Pathway class. Looks as if my job description has changed again. I attended a webinar on creating our ePortfolio. John Miller did an excellent job walking us through the ePortfolio and I feel confident using it now. Our small group of TIS-CTE cohort members met again at Panera Bread on Saturday, May 21. I feel so behind in my course work. A group of us are taking an eLearns course together, WebTop for Educators.

April – KPSnyder

My Environmental Technology students completed several work-base hours and we had a field trip to Cabot Recycling Center. Some of my Option Pathway students are gearing up for their GED tests in May so that can graduate with their class. Not much on the technology front. Everyone is focused on the Global21 Performance Assessments and I have completed student interviews for some of the classes.

March – KPSnyder

ACT WorkKeys Testing…I had to administer the test and all the make-up tests…Yay! A group of us, TIS-CTE cohort members met at Panera Bread in Bridgeport for a study group on Saturday, March 12th and 26th. It was great to meet and work together again. I attend ArcGIS training with Erika Klose at the Bridgeport Conference Center on Saturday, March 19th. GIS-geographic information systems-are being used in environmental industries to map and locate natural resources and human interactions. I hope to attend the advanced workshop this summer. Tracy Chenoweth of WVDE visited our school on March 22nd to help us with understanding the changes to the Global21 Performance Assessment. It was a very informative training session. “Working” lunch I had schedule on March 23rd was cancelled due to a conflict the director had. Our Criminal Justice CSI team won gold medal at the SkillsUSA competition. Get this…we had school three days to make-up snow days for one county and the other county had all week off. How nonproductive.

February – KPSnyder

What an experience FETC and Florida was! The only thing I was bummed about was I didn’t win the trip to Hollywood to see the taping of MythBusters. My favorite session was Steve Dembo’s session: iThink iNeed iPads in My Classroom. It really help me incorporate the iPads in my Option Pathway class. We have been having so much trouble using GradeQuick and WVEIS at our multi-county center. Our director called the secretaries and counselors in from both home high schools for a working brunch on Friday the 11th. Our ProStart students fixed omelets and pecan pinwheels (from scratch) and the secretaries really enjoyed themselves. They understood our frustrations with the technology and needing all course codes and section numbers to be the same at both high schools for the GradeQuick module to work. It was one of the best school technology meetings I have attended.

January – KPSnyder

Six snow days and two early dismissals, not much work can be done. I had scheduled on the Wednesday the 26th a “working” lunch to discuss the possibility of applying for a GEAR-UP grant for Career Cruising, an ePortfolio program. It was an early dismissal day, follow by two snow days. I was busy administering the TABE to students for our new GED Option Pathway program, which I am now teaching. Made it to Florida on the 30th for FETC.

Janie Spahr June Blog

June is also a busy month technologically speaking. I am teaching a Veteran's Upward Bound Class in which I tutor Veterans that are entering college. We work with Reading/Language Arts, Math, and Computer Skills. There is a computer program they work with called My Skills Tutor, which I have had to learn. It is very similar to KeyTrain. I spent two days at PLATO training. There were several other teachers at this training that also plan to use PLATO. We decided we would have to set up a schedule for using PLATO since we only have a certain amount of licenses. I went through the Computer Technology lessons and made up plans that I can use in my BCA classes. The lessons are very interesting. I hope I can use them. I also attended a one day session in Charleston doing GET A LIFE simulation training. It really doesn't have much to do with technology, but it is a great program for students. I can see where you could add technology to the program by letting students use computers to help them figure out their finances for the simulation. I am working on my advanced marketing creditialing, so I have been trying to add as much technology into my lesson plans as possible. On June 4, I attended a one day CS5 training session at Randolph Technical Center in Elkins with Denise Stalnaker. I feel it is a very difficult program to learn, but it is very worthwhile to learn it and to teach it in Desktop Publishing, Web Page Publishing, and Digital Imaging. I can see where it can also be used in other classes, too. I also finished my Webtop for Educators WV Learns class as part of our TIS requirements. I enjoyed doing the lessons in the course. Janet was very helpful when we needed her help. I'm hoping to finish my TIS work soon, too. Once we're all finished we'll celebrate in Charleston or Morgantown! I can't wait to see everyone.