Congratulations to all of the graduates. I have some pix to share soon -  but I’ve been a bit distracted by the tornado that came over my house the day after graduation!

Beth B. set up a Yahoo group for Cohort 6 to keep in touch “and ask questions we might be too shy to on the larger listservs!”

Sign up at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/uga-cohort/

She says that 11 have already joined. Email her if you want to join without opening a Yahoo account.

I have received several certification-related questions. I am happy to help with these, but remember that Dr. Hill has “power of the pen” as SLM coordinator. Instructions covering the entire certification process can be found here. I hear that there might be a bit of backlog down in Kate’s office (who is probably handling the largest number of certifications anywhere in the entire state, and the largest number of the year), but this will pass.

Happy Memorial Day!

I’m looking forward to graduation! Remember to bring cameras and/or have family members ready to take a picture. As you recess out, gather at the back of the coliseum floor – behind the chairs.

Another topic:  several bits of feedback came in that you wanted to know more about News Shows.  Lisa Delgado made a presentation for Cohort 7′s EDIT 6300, and she gave me permission to share it with you.  It’s good – she has this task down to a science.  Go to WebCT/7460/Resources for the presentation.

Sorry I have been out of touch for the last 10 days or so.  My own work got a little hectic and I had to attend to it – but, all of that is behind me now and I am turning to the piles and files of internships, those of you finishing and those of you starting as well.

Finishing folks – hooray! – I have pieces of your assignments *everywhere.*  Every email account, office, dropbox, etc. that I have access to has emails, files, etc.  My top priority now is to make sure that I can *find* it all.  I hope to have this under control by Saturday at noon.  Since time is of the essence, I will look in all the expected places, then I will post a message to your discussion board if I can’t find something.  Please be patient with me if you have to repeat something you have already sent.  With the various formats of submission and 20ish of you finishing, I am sure I will forget at least one memo someone sent me.

Thanks to all for your patience.  I will be excited to actually read all the internships that are on my desk right now, once I sort through them!  I hope you have had a great year, finishers.

And now for my updates:

• Course evals: 74% of you have done this.  I will bug you to death to get 100% on these.
• I created a Job Board in WebCT/7460/Discussions.  Here’s where I’m posting notices of job openings as well as “I’m looking for a job…” notes. You may post directly to this Discussion Board and specify the level and location and other details for your Dream Job.
• Remember the pic we took at our last meeting?  You can download it from the homepage in WebCT7460.
• Beth announced this elsewhere, and I’ll repeat it here: I can send a personal thank-you to your intern mentor if I have a mailing address for him/her.  Send to Beth.

Thanks to Terri for this photo!

Thank you also for the feedback you provided throughout. The Advisory Board met on Apr 22 and we discussed this further. While changes won’t help you directly, consider your feedback a significant legacy.

Updates:

• Internship documentation is rolling in. A reminder that all is due on May 1. Please submit paper versions and electronic versions (into the WebCT dropbox).
• 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 (no need to do it again if you’ve submitted one since January).
• 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.

Feedback on your documentation:

Think about how much of this you want. For the immediate future, we are focused on pass/not pass for the graduation deadline. Subsequently, I will read through your documentation word for word and come up with a numerical score. This may take me all summer, to be frank.

I understand that some people will desire almost no feedback; they just need to know that they passed or perhaps what their score is, and an explanation of the score. All of this will be provided in WebCT as I finish working up each project. (You will continue to have access to WebCT/7460 for quite awhile.)

Rest assured that I will provide critical feedback to you, regardless of your desired level of feedback – and I will get this to you through the most logical method. “Critical” in this sense is feedback that I think is absolutely necessary to your job performance. If you see your final score in WebCT and don’t receive any more detailed feedback within 1-2 weeks, you can assume that none was needed.

Others may want more detailed feedback. Perhaps you want a specific commentary on your video, or another specific element. If you do, please let me know specifically what you want to hear about. I will be happy to spend time on this (at my own pace) if you are willing to be patient. I am not willing to spend time generating a lot of feedback that will be … ignored. So: if you so desire, in the first few weeks after graduation, send me direct emails (not in WebCT, this time) asking me to pay attention to the specific part(s).

Finally, I had this idea during the Marathon. The new interns of Cohort 7 would greatly benefit from a pep talk from some of you who are finishing up. As you may understand from your own experience, they have a great deal of anxiety about how they will meet their time commitments. If you would like to a). address the class in person as a guest, or b). blog about this here – let me know. I am particularly interested in the perspectives of elementary teachers; middle/high teachers; and, people who have 9-5 jobs in the non-education world.

Everyone did well.

I already mentioned this to the Applied Project folks – people came with a range of presentation styles and backup technologies.  All were fine.  Among M.Ed.’s and Non-degree folks, the most common plan was to project the portfolio and talk from an index card of important points.

We’ll be in the same room on Apr 21.  This is a bare-bones small classroom (unfortunately; conference rooms are nicer for this – oh well).  Allow time for traffic and parking – the building was quite busy on Apr 14.  In the classroom, we discovered that the equipment will not run the most recent versions of Office, in case this makes a difference to you.  No big deal, unless you’re depending on a specific file to get you through the presentation.

I look forward to Marathon II. I hope the Marathon I folks would say that we weren’t too harsh.

We mentioned that in the first-year class that Lisa Delgado had presented some useful and detailed material about how to handle the beginning of school.  This presentation and accompanying checklist is useful whether you’re a novice SLMS or an experienced one.  I suspect that many of you will be trying to figure these things out all alone next year or the year after.

So: thanks to Lisa!  Go to WebCT/7460/Resources (this is the last backpack on the homepage). You will find her presentation and checklist loaded there.

I suspect that some of the logs I’ve been following are finished.  When you’re done with it, can you please put “THE END” or some other such clear indication on the log?  That way, I can stop checking it every week – one tiny less thing for me to do.  Thanks!

Each advisee should have received notice of a GoogleDoc that contains the checklist I used to review each one.  Please let me know if you did not receive this.

In most cases, I checked for overall completeness, site integrity, and text readability.  In no case was I able to read every word of every assignment.

I’ll see you Saturday, and we can tackle any last minute questions you have about portfolios.