Kate Says

Prepared for College?

Think back to your first month of college, regardless of whether it was this year or 30 years ago. Were you prepared? Did you feel competent among your classmates and friends?

Yesterday Patrick Higgins made a comment that struck me as a perfect way to assess whether schools are adequately preparing students for the rigors of college - he mentioned the survey he’s giving to all of the students from his school who just completed their first year of college. This seems to me the perfect way to determine if the students from your school are actually READY for that wild world of academia - if I had a school, I’d be jumping all over this!

Back to that question - was I prepared for college? Academically, definitely. Overall? Nope.

Tim Walker egged me on and egged me on to write this post, and I first balked because when I write about something I’m really passionate about I sometimes have a hard time conveying my true feelings - the rationale is all THERE in my head and has been for so long that it’s hard to get it out. Here’s my stab at it, one of a multi-part attempt to get my head around the issue -

My friends and I weren’t prepared for college for one simple reason - we were lacking time management skills. Sure, some of us had “Life Skills” classes in high school, but it didn’t prepare us for the complete and utter openness of the college experience. We went from being scheduled every single minute in high school to having a college class schedule, but WAY too much “open” time.

Who’s fault was it?

The high school I attended was on the quarter block system, which meant that teachers used the 90 minute periods to teach a long-ish lesson and then we worked on our homework in class with peers. Helllllllloooooooo reality the minute we hit our first university course! There was no time to work on homework in class and there was also no parent scheduling our afterschool time or weekends. How about those gaps of time on Tuesday mornings from 9-12:30 when I didn’t have class? I was NOT prepared for that! The last time I wasn’t working or going to school on a Tuesday morning must have been the summer after 8th grade!

I also wasn’t prepared for the ability to just not go to class - sure, some professors penalized us for not attending, but back in high school we were given the threat of being arrested if we skipped too much school - they scared us into attending! Also, our parents were held accountable for our actions - they were notified if we didn’t attend class and expected to take action.

Fast forward 3 months and it was ALL on us.

As Patrick mentioned polling students about academic skills they felt they needed for success in college, I immediately thought - but what about LIFE skills? Are we preparing our students (and own children) for life after us? Are we preparing them to make the choice about going to class and to assess how much free time is too much free time?

As we schedule our children in activity upon activity from the moment they are born, are we doing more harm than good?

My intention is to avoid this with my own children - I want to minimize the number of activities they’re in and help them learn to manage their OWN time. What to do with a free weekend? Homework or play? I want the consequences on THEM, not me. The only way to learn from mistakes is to be held accountable for them. I learned this the hard way in my college health and phy ed class where I earned one of my 2 C’s - it was the easiest course EVER, but I didn’t go to lectures because they seemed pointless and I could get the material from the textbook. Huh, turns out they took attendance.

I suffered from my own bad decisions - I think we as a society need to start letting our students and children learn just a few things the hard way.

Stop scheduling, stop cushioning the blows.

And now I head out the door for a 3-day trip to my hometown where I’ll see some high school friends - I look forward to discussing their experiences from that time period now that we’ve had a *few* years to process it all……….

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Twitter Network Issues

This is the status of the twitter network issues many of us had on Wednesday night (losing over half or all of our followers and followees) - the reply is from Jason Goldman of Twitter posted to the thread on GetSatisfaction.com:

Jason Goldman replied to Followers and Following are all gone - when will this be fixed?, a problem about Twitter.

Thank you to all the folks who provided additional information. We went into maintenance mode to recover from the missing user problem which was caused by a data inconsistency problem.

We were able to restore to an earlier version of the relationship data. You may still see out of date information for one of the following reasons:

1) The changes are still propagating out to all parts of the site. It will take several hours for the data to be correctly reflected everywhere.

2) There may be some missing data as a result of this restore. In particular, changes you made to your social relationships in the past 12 hours may not be reflected.

3) Notwithstanding the first two points, the counts that appear in your profile for followers or followings may be slightly different than they were before. Those counts are generated from a cache that was not always a perfect reflection of the true data. Therefore, the counts may slightly change.

I completely understand how frustrated everyone is by this outage. Thanks for your patience as we recover and work to make sure it won’t happen again.

I’m heading out of town for 3 days - I’m just going to hide out and hope for the best when I get back! Because, as much as I love Twitter - it’s all about the network. No network, no fun.

UPDATE: It appears as if my network is growing again, and there’s another post on GetSatisfaction saying they fixed the problem manually. Fingers. Crossed.

Online Degrees - From the Comments

Wow! The response to my post about choosing between a Masters in Education or an MBA has been outstanding - check the comments out if you get a chance, there is a TON of great information from many very knowledgeable people.

Here’s the thing that’s striking me, and striking HARD:

Several people have mentioned the bias regarding online degrees and it’s just killing me. This came up in a discussion I had earlier this year with a college professor and I hoped that he was in the minority. It appears not. I want to share these comments with you and then get your opinion because I really hate to think that in this day and age online learning is still looked down upon. The only way to change it if it is? Learning about the misconceptions and FIXING the things that lead to them!

Here’s what John and Jon have to say:

John Tenny:

First this:

“on-line is not as good as a live program; not that what you learn would be any less, but in the network you will build by getting to know your peers in the program.”

and then this:

Re f2f versus on-line: it all depends on the goals of the degree. If it’s learning the information, then anywhere that has the info will work. Same with wanting credits for pay increases (by the way, in most states is the number of credits that raises the salary, not just the degree).

But if you are looking to both learn and advance your career, the importance of the network can’t be ignored. For instance, a large % of CEOs in the business world come from just 3 institutions. It’s more than just the old-girl-network, but being in a group that will become leaders and who know you, and your interests/talents exist.

In addition to that, the experience of interacting with a group of talented, dedicated, and energetic other professionals who are thinking through the same issues you are can really enlarge your thinking. I valued the discussions and arguments with peers in the program equally to the great classes I had in terms of new ideas and new knowledge. And now I know who to call if I have a question about some topic or other (that networking thing again).

Unless there are significant reasons to form a community that go beyond the course requirements to ‘comment on someone else’s blog’, the elearning community experience will not last. You can build friendships, but fewer and more tentative.

The world of education is rapidly transitioning from a ‘cells and bells’ model where the teacher was queen in her classroom to a collaborative and interdependent environment. While the larger community can include e-colleagues, the primary professional community will be f2f.

Besides, drinking a beer isn’t near as much fun alone.

That said, other circumstances can make one place-bound and you need to choose from the resources at hand.

Jon Becker adds:

Kate, given your update, I would add a bit to @John Tenney’s comment. In the P-12 world, human resources folks (and school boards who make the ultimate determinations in lots of cases) still look askew at online degrees. It’s probably a little different for ed. tech. positions, but not much. For lots of reasons (mostly not legitimate), there are all kinds of biases against distance learning and in favor of f-2-f learning. There will be lots of folks who will look at your CV/resume and think, “OH, she took the easy way out…”

That might change in a few years, and I hope it does. And, you might find a forward-thinking, open-minded group of leaders willing to keep your CV/resume in the mix and interview you. But, you should know that there are those biases out there.

My location and family situation make it impossible to travel very far or move for a degree program - it’s just not going to happen. I really want to believe that an online program will prove as valuable as a face-to-face program, and in my mind, it will be. I work with an e-learning company and have found the platform amazing and robust, connecting people that would have never come together otherwise. Unfortunately, in this world, it’s not about MY perception, it’s about employers’ perceptions, isn’t it?

Help me out!

Thoughts on the comments above? Has this held true in your experience? If so, what can we do to improve the perception of online learning? Are there severe limitations that you’ve experienced?

Teachers of Children with Asperger’s

Ok, I’d like to believe that every education-related professional that reads this blog actually took my advice and joined HARO. I’m a realist, though, and realize that you probably didn’t. Here’s why you should have:

There’s a HARO request today for teachers who work with children with Asperger’s - the query states:

“Hello, I am looking for a teacher who has taught a child with
Asperger’s. The article is in a magazine for teachers. You’d need
to be able to say your school district and discuss what worked for
you and any possible challenges that can come up. “

I recently wrote about some excellent parenting blogs that deal with autism and Asperger’s and know there must be some excellent educators out there writing about this topic as well. If you aren’t on HARO yet and want info on answering the query, just leave a comment here or email me at kolson29 at gmail dot com. I wasn’t sure if it was ok to actually post all the query info, but I’d be glad to forward the email to you. In addition, JOIN HARO.

EdTech Musings

Tom Barrett shared a very interesting article on Twitter this morning and it brought up so many of the niggling issues I have when I get all evangelistic about technology in education. It doesn’t make me doubt the usefulness of technology itself, but the implementation of it. I highly suggest reading The Laptops Are Coming by Sarah Heller McFarlane to get a teacher’s reflection of her first year of teaching with a classroom of laptops - it brings up some interesting issues that I’m currently processing.

The main thing I’m taking away from Heller-McFarlane’s article is this (one that I’ve heard over and over again, especially when I was meeting with a group of ed tech people earlier this month):

Technology does not solve all problems and throwing technology at teachers without working it seamlessly into existing curriculum is NOT the answer.

The solution? I’m working on it, I know it’s out there. Right now, I’m going with this:

Before a district spends even one more dollar on technology, they need to spend the money on people. People to make the decisions about the technology, people to train teachers, people to help with the integration.

Before all of that, though, they need to spend the money to make sure there are enough people PERIOD.

A 4th grade classroom of 29 students with one teacher and no TA is positively impacted more by the addition of a TA than by a set of laptops. Do I have numbers on this? No. Do I have experience in 4th grade classrooms with too many kids and not enough teachers? Yes. I want my own children in classrooms with human beings to support them - once there are enough human beings in the room, THEN spend the money on the technology.

And yes, I’m one of those human beings that would like to be there to assist with the seamless integration….

And yes, I’m biased because I know my children will get technology time and training at home……..

Help me choose!

I’ve been going back and forth about this for a few years now and NEED input - seriously need it. I’m trying to decide whether to pursue an MBA or a Masters in Education, where there could even be a specialization in Educational Technology. I’m halfway to the Masters in Ed (through credits taken during my certification program) at a local university, but I’m not in love with the program and although this may sound rather quaint, I want to feel challenged by the program and be proud of my accomplishment when I’m done.

Whichever program I choose needs to be either in close proximity to where I live or have an online component - I can NOT move for a grad program right now. My undergrad is in business, I have a background in accounting, and recently completed my teacher licensure in business education.

Which degree has more value career-wise (opportunities, not money) in the long run? I know it’s all about where I want to go, but that’s where I’m a little lost - I want this degree to have value wherever I go!

Help! Would you PLEASE help me out by sharing your thoughts on this? Do you have either of these degrees? Worth it? Not worth it?

Updated to add:

After Jon’s gentle chastising to figure out what I want to do when I grow up, I realized that I didn’t clarify well enough - I’d like to be involved in education (and technology) in some form, I’m just not sure if I’ll always be in a classroom teacher position.

Tech Mommy Move

(cross-posted at This Mommy Gig)

I just completed my ultra geeky mom certification today, I promise. No, it’s not an actual title, but it SHOULD be! I actually can’t believe I didn’t think of this earlier, but you can blame it on my late-start to the ultra tech world.

What did I do? I just bought domain names for my 1- and 2-year-old.

Yup, that’s right. I’m paying $9.95 per year to hold domain names for my kids until they’re ready to use them. And with me for a mom, they’ll be ready to use them sooner than later! I was kind of bummed that they didn’t have .com’s left for my kiddos’ names, but I did end up with .org’s which are good enough.

I actually plan to help my kids build their first sites when they get a bit older - I’m not going to use the domains to build them blogs right now where I blog about each kid, but want the domains to be used for sites THEY create eventually. I’m seriously not leaving the tech education of my children up to their schools, we’ll do this as a fun mom-kiddo activity.

They may not use these domain names for a few years, but my kids will be thanking me later…………they WILL, stop doubting me!

And yes, the total of my domain purchases this year is well over $100 - kind of cringeworthy, but buying them is addictive……..

Anyone else do this? Anyone? C’mon, I KNOW some of you did, since you told me about it on twitter!

I’m also excited because my .com name was FINALLY available and I just managed to grab it - yay!

Note: I bought the domains at DreamHost because I love DH’s easy install of WordPress for when I finally end up hosting something behind the names.

Goats and Ice Cream

We just got back from a trip to the county fair - a trip we’ve been building up for my 2-year-old daughter all week - animals! ice cream! cows! goats! pigs! chickens!

Guess what the favorite animal was? Bees. Yup, that’s right. The hit of the trip was the beekeeper exhibit where we got to see the queen bee in with all of the rest of the bees and got to listen to the hum and buzz of the pack (sorry, forgot my bee terminology!). Cows, pigs, horses - ho hum. All she cared about around those animals were the cool ribbons and balloons that the 4H kids hung on the fences. Seriously, the kid’s going to be a designer, I swear. Oh yeah, and, “Can we have ice cream now?” was the constant refrain.

What will my husband and I remember from the trip? The goat trying to eat Jake’s sleeve - no lie, a goat bit my son’s sleeve - only at the county fair, right? What will Maggie remember? Bees and ice cream. What will Jake remember? Nothing.

The trip reminds me so much the most important thing about parenting and teaching - it’s not about me and what I want to happen, it’s about what actually DOES happen.

I wanted an idyllic farmyard experience, we got a coveting of sparkly streamers, sticky hands and honeybees. Oh, and don’t forget the hungry goat……….

My constant need to control often leads to frustration in parenting and was probably my main weakness in the classroom.

I just need to remember: it’s not about expectations, it’s about experiences. Maggie will remember the bees, that’s what’s important. The test we didn’t take in school that day because of a fire drill? The kids will remember how the principal praised them for being so good during the experience.

I thought for a long time today about what I actually remember from school - I can promise it wasn’t facts. It was bits and pieces of social interactions and getting in trouble and maybe a glimmer of the Wisconsin History series we had to read in 4th grade.

What do I remember from the ski lessons my mom and I took? Not the specifics of downhill skiing technique - I mostly remember my mom and I both falling a LOT and some snotty girls on the chair lift making fun of us while my mom and I laughed and laughed.

So as all the debate swirls around about parenting and teaching theory and “how-to’s”, I’m just going to remember the bees.

And the goat that almost ate my son.

Another One Bites the Dust

Remember how I posted that tribute to my Starbucks habit back in May? And lamented the fact that I wouldn’t be driving past 2 ‘bucks on the way to work anymore now that I’m working from home? And would now be saving $25/week in coffee costs?

Well, with Starbucks’ news today, my life would have gotten cheaper anyway - they’ve announced their MASSIVE store closure list and their location right next to my old school is being closed.

Guess I quit that job for a reason, huh? Joking, joking

Go check out the list - are you going to have to *gasp* start patronizing a local coffee shop or different ‘bux location now? I’m liking Caribou better these days anyway - their free, no registration wireless has made their location in my town my second office.

Mommy Market Saturated?

I usually don’t publish my comments to other blog posts here, but this one was long enough that I thought it deserved space here as well. As you know, I’ve entered the world of mommy blogging with the creation of This Mommy Gig, so have quite a few thoughts on the below issue.

Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester wrote an interesting post today after attending a BlogHer party - he poses the following questions after commenting about the swag that the BlogHer party attendees received:

When this organic and natural market gets saturated from the many vendors pitching at them (would make Scoble blush) what impacts does this have to: 1) credibility of the women bloggers, 2) Effectiveness of brands trying to reach this inundated market? 3) If credibility and demand is reduced to this market, will it decrease their influence? How will they be able to maintain these levels? I think something has to give.

Of course, me being me, I responded. The comment I left was this: