Welcome!

November 3, 2010

NEW!!
Today, I added discussion forums for the articles for this week in the area of "School Management" and for the articles for next week in the area of "Governance, Finance, and Politics". As you do your papers, feel free to add articles into any of the sections where they apply OR to use articles that appear in any of the sections of the wiki.

October 26, 2010

Today, I have added an additional reading to the "Determining Educational Needs" section. It is the one that Eric suggested that we use as a case study. Keep checking back to the "Determining Educational Needs" section this week. One more article will be posted for Monday's class.

October 19, 2010

Today, I have added the resources that Dr. Rempel suggested to the "Program Evaluation" page and to the forum. I also added an article to the "Determining Educational Needs" page about peanut allergies/peanut bans in schools. And, I have added the two articles for the discussion about "Determining Educational Needs" to the forum so that you can exchange some ideas while you are reading. I still want to add one more article to that section in time for the November 1st class.

September 30, 2010

Today, I have been adding resources for the topic of "Program Evaluation". I didn't include this topic when I taught the course before. So, I had to start from scratch. Within the BU library holdings, I was unable to find any articles that I felt would provide the learning, thinking, and understanding that I hoped to develop. Karen Rempel will be coming in that night (October 18th) as a guest speaker and she will also be coming to Winkler to present on the weekend of October 29th and 30th. She will provide most of the learning but I wanted to give you some things to consider so that you were better prepared for her presentation. As a result, I have added some links to web resources about that topic. Although there are some ok pieces, and some Canadian pieces, I do not feel like it is crucial for you to read any of them from beginning to end. Rather, I would like you to look through all of them for understanding, and for gems of knowledge that you might find useful for your work in the class and in your job.

September 27, 2010

Hello, it's Monday! I have added a few articles for "School Planning". I have chosen three that I would like you to read for class and I have added each of them to the Forum. I also added one that I would encourage you to read. It's a bit deeper reading but it's by Weick and he is amazing. His theory of sensemaking actually makes sense. If you are interested in thinking deeply about how members of the organization make sense of the changing environment, I would recommend this article. However, you will see when you start it that he writes in a way that begs you to slow down and digest the contents.

September 24, 2010

Eureka! I think I might have solved the article forum problem. Please try this out and let me know how it works. On the right hand margin, you will see that I have added a link in the first section called "Forum". When you click on it, you will find that I have added a section for each of the articles in the first two sections, the Connected Principal and Staff Development and Instructional Improvement. I will add the rest over the weekend. Before then, perhaps a few people could try posting comments (even about articles that you read last week) just to try it out and let me know, if this new system will work better.

I also learned something new tonight. Of course, I had to learn it the hard way!! If you have filled in the stars and then I make and save a change on the page, it resaves and therefore restarts the star count at zero. So, I apologize to the one person who had voted for the articles in Staff Development and Instructional Improvement. I think that means that I should also remove the stars because every time someone adds an article, it will reset ALL of the stars…sigh.

Thanks for your patience. I will just keep working on making it more useful, if you just keep letting me know the parts that aren't working.

~Jackie

September 22, 2010

I'm trying to respond to two issues that have been brought to my attention. First of all, it seems that it is difficult to view this site through FireFox or Safari. I haven't yet come up with a good solution for that problem.

I also had several issues brought forward with the discussion boxes following the articles. I was personally frustrated with the amount of time that it was taking to load those boxes. So, While I am in the process of looking for a new solution, I am going to erase the discussion box code from all of the pages except the "Connected Principals" page. Please use the star rating system to indicate to myself and others which articles you preferred.

In class on Monday, I suggested that students could start their own pages and experiment with the different functions. I see that three people have ALREADY added pages. Yay! Thank-you. I have added a link to those pages in the right hand menu so that everyone will be able to view them and so that those students will be able to navigate back to them easily. If you start a page and would like to have it added to the menu, just send me a message through email or through the Ning and I will add your name to the list.

Thanks for your patience as we work through the challenges with this site.
Jackie

Welcome Message

Hey, fellow Ed. Admin-ers! I have started this wiki so that we have a place to share articles, websites, and other resources that we come across in the study of Ed Admin. I have already posted SOME articles and I will post more as we work through the course. Even after the course is over, I hope you will come back here to find resources and to post new resources to share with others. Enjoy!
JK

A Few Interesting Web Resources to Share

And, I had to try it myself!!