Pressing the Flesh

Love that saying 'Pressing the Flesh'! Used it to describe that I had the pleasure of meeting a number of our class in person. This was at MIT for a working lunch! Lovely food Vicki! Present were Oriel, Dana (he has 11 cats!), Mareena, Misha and Me and the guest of honor Bronwyn who we made work for her money by seeing her afterwards about our assignments. Nice to meet those who I feel I know.

I have made some general notes which I will write up and link in my next blog post once I have made sense of them.


By the way those involved in the discussion the other night that the plan should be 50% and the report 25% Bronwyn agrees. (Doesn't mean it will change now)

The reason for the potato picture is we are all getting to the stage that the fruits of our labour will be showing - ie survey results coming in. These are the fruits of my labour involving three grow bags. Harvested now so I can get the tomatoes in.

The Famous Five Met

A small group of us still met online tonight - Dana, Lousie, Liz (from very hot Perth), Rachel and Me. Allowing for Bronwyn apologising before hand that she may not make it we still spent an hour plus looking at issues we have had, any help we can give (Rachel tried her hardest - thanks!) and also looked at our special topic (yes the next course). Dana has nearly completed his and the rest are due to do ours next year. So we looked at what we thought we would do. We even looked at the fact that the plan is 25% of the course but the sweat and blood involved was more like 50% so maybe Bronwyn should swap the marks around with the final report.


Is it time to revisit my previous photo just to remind you of how we felt.


Data collection - I now have 11 completed surveys and sent out the survey to 16. Some teachers had issues with doing the survey online. I think user error is involved so I have given those that contacted me a paper copy.

Also I have completed two interviews using Audacity so I could record and listen to it later. Each interview has taken around 20 minutes. I hope to interview two more teachers and ideally one more who is a lead teacher and a team leader. I feel her interview will bring a balance between the two 'sides' I have talked two so far.

Next point: the rest of the interviews and surveys, looking at the exemplars provided and think how I will structure my final report.

Survey started

Lisa and I have both released our survey out onto the staff. So far between us we have 16 results in. I marked my email so I could see who have read it. (10 read emails and 7 completed surveys)

One teacher was unsure about privacy which I had mentioned verbally so have sent out an additional email addressing this issue and mentioned that they can see me if wishing to know more. With Obsurvey we only know the city location which means nothing in this case.

Having a few issues timetabling my interviews as I have had two shorter weeks (and I work part-time) because of PD and Union meeting so will have to try and fit them in next week. Have set up Audacity as my recording device on my laptop and will save them as MP3s.

Hope all one has had a good long weekend.

Now it can be marked...

In her attempt to get the last drop of blood from Lisa and Katie Bronwyn sends out her feedback J

Sent this line to Bronwyn in a recent email as Lisa and I continue to polish. Now it is time for marking.

Have sent out my survey but it got blocked by the firewall at work so hope the AP who is acting principal see my email and unlocks so gathering can now start.

Next step is to comment on some of your projects and to check out Audacity which I am going to use as a way of recording my interviews.

Have not put a copyright for the picture - so all of you may use it if you wish.

Survey

As Lisa and I have got into the habit on a Wednesday night we had our usual assignment chat. The focus this time was our online survey. We are using Obsurvey as mentioned in a previous post. I 'found' this through another site and it seems to have advantages over Survey Monkey.

Even though this meeting could of been a short one we spent time a lot of time doing a mock up of it to check if there are any issues. We are doing our surveys individually so we can compare them in our report if anything comes to light in the survey.
To use an old saying 'the proof is in the pudding'.

I love rich text editor

Here is an update of where the swimming pool was. My poor brother-in-law is shocked that the deck (can't fit in photo what is round the side of the house) is bigger than his flat.

Please note the title of my blog this is my new swear word. For those of you who have not used rich text editor much will understand why this code is treated with such distain. (Foot note I tried to have the code for page break as my title and the blog couldn't cope - typical!)

Lisa was away over the holidays entertaining any child that would call her aunty. I was seeing distant family and having a builder in everyday ...and I kept the cake tin full! Because we were unable to make contact during this time I was involved in a 4 hour session of corrections suggested by Bronwyn.

To quote Bronwyn (sorry not APA referenced) 'Your evaluation plan is looking very good and you are not far from completing it.' I tried to use this as my mantra.

Our evaluation is at the point where if we play with it anymore bits will drop off. We have looked into using another online survey rather than SurveyMonkey which has its limitations. You will see a link in my blog (two blogs ago) and in Lisa's.

Plan Here is a link to our plan. Make comments here or on the discussion tab on our project.

Making changes

Thanks Bronwyn for the feedback. Have yet to hear from Lisa so have done some of the changes but will need to get out the legendary big piece of paper to make sense how we could adjust the questions. Husband away so may not get a chance until tomorrow or Monday night to start.

Funny experience with last blogpost. Got three comments from outside which included two comments from the person who developed the online survey I was thinking of using. He is in Denmark. When I get a chance will ask a couple of questions I have about his work. Nice to see what motivated him to develop it.