Attendance
Place: Jerome and Carolee
Johnson's Home, a.k.a Rusty Cockridge
Students: Sahithi Busi, James Chrestensen and
Friend, Dillon Decicio
Members: John Gerecht, Charlie Kirry,
Jerome
Johnson, Scott Le Duc
Chairperson: Charlie Kirry
Secretary: Scott Le Duc
Agenda
- Review minutes from previous meeting
- Set meeting schedule for next year
- Scott's share about Ubuntu Live
- Get diverse group of students to come to the next meeting
- Especially recruit non-connected kids
- How to get committee members more involved in the classroom?
- Share lesson ideas from students
- Creation of Wiki for posting materials / resources
- Budget issues
Food
- Pizza from Costco
- Next time - Potluck :)
- Sign up for the November meeting
Review Minutes
- Scott reviewed minutes from the December meeting and covered many of the action items from that meeting.
- Highlights
- CHS has just purchased numerous Canon 10D digital cameras per the committee request to embellish the program. This will help with the new Introduction to Communication Arts Class. The new pre-requisite for all other classes in the program.
- Still need to purchase a digital hand-held meter.
- A diverse group of students was brought to this meeting, a trend we would like to continue. We even had a student who is represented the non-connected and shared his perspective on his situation.
- Scott shared a lesson plan template he is using with kids to build a database of lesson that can be used by the program that will be compliant with state standards.
2007 - 08 Meeting Schedule
- 6:00 PM Wednesday, September 26th at Olympia High School
- 6:00 PM Wednesday, December 5th at Apollos Italian Restaurant in West Olympia
- 6:00 PM Wednesday, February 27th at Rusty Cockridge (Jerome and Carolee's Home)
- 6:00 PM Wednesday, May 28th at Main Chinese Buffett in Lacey
Ubuntu Live Conference Report
- Dillon Decicio and I participated and presented at the Ubuntu Live Conference on Sunday, July 23rd. In our session, we discussed project-based learning and open source tools we use. Numerous people were there and it seemed to be well received. We met Zaheda Bhorat from Google after the session.
- Ubuntu is the most popular Linux variant on the planet. The Ubuntu project titled Edubuntu has me very excited. There are tremendous possibilities for schools and students who cannot afford the more expensive computer software. Open Source software is developed collaboratively and is free to all users. More on how we can embrace this in later meetings.
- The keynote was delivered by Mark Shuttleworth. In 1994, Mark founded Ubuntu based on the Linux operating system platform. He is also behind the launchpad.net collaborative tool for software developers.
- After word we had lunch with:
Zaheda
Bhorat, she managed the OpenOffice.org
project and community at it's early stages, and
Mark
Shuttleworth, after earning a cool 1/2 billion dollars in
1999 he paid $20 million dollars to go into space in 2001. - We discussed how their organizations can help us. Very exciting to have these people waiting to collaborate with us.
Diverse Student Representation
- We will continue to have diverse student representation at each meeting. Marc, Kevin and Scott will invite students to meetings and discuss with our classes the need for student representation.
Student Interest in Program - Getting Students Connected
- Charlie suggested we continue to build on student's individual interests / investment in the program. Motivate them on good reasons to be there, career opportunities, salary information, etc.
- John offered that students connect or else leave the program. Scott reviewed the policy at Capital that we cannot remove students for not being interested in the program.
- Scott shared how he and Kevin try to "draw out" interest from the students via class activities at the beginning of the term. He stated that about 75 to 80% of students do well and connect with the learning. It is the other students that we need to put extra time into to help along.
- Charlie offered that we conduct a formal interest survey at the beginning of class. This could help reveal students who may have a hard time being motivated so countermeasures can be introduced for these students early on. The survey could also help customize the lessons or "work the angle" to each student, within reason.
- Jerome asked the fundamental question, "why would students want to be there?" What is in it for them? We discussed reward systems for connecting with the class / projects. On idea was building activities around games that have intrinsic benefits of winning / learning / gaining credit.
- Sahithi treasures the ability to manage own time in class as an advanced student. She also stated that having clear project deadlines is a good target for students to manage time effectively.
- Charlie reminded us that the senior project is a good reason for being in our classes.
- Jerome suggested that we talk to seniors about the possibilities of working toward their requirements in our classes.
- Sahithi offered that connecting projects from our classes with other core subjects in school would be a great way to show relevance for our classes and bridge success from our program to to other classes.
- Sahithi also stated that the class atmosphere is a welcome relief from the pressures of other classes. She especially likes the conversations that occur in the class. The topics can connect class work to real world issues and students lives and be a nice change from the normal class routine.
- John underscored how connecting core concepts in class helps make the concepts real to students. Deliberately incorporating science, math, English, social studies concepts into our activities helps build connections to understanding. It's also a great reason to have fun!
- Sahithi mentioned that Scott LaViollette, math teacher, smurf and leprecon at Capital, is a great teacher who incorporates fun and learning in his classroom. He especially focuses on body movement learning.
- Scott offered that good lessons take a lot of work and need teamwork to help plan and carry out. He asked that all committee members get involved in the process. This will be a recurring topic for this year.
- Dillon explained the points and value weighting system for credit in his CHS marketing class. He shared many benefits of the process, focusing on the need to weight not just on the amount of time but also for difficulty.
- Dillon recommended we look at CHS marketing's career exploration unit. He thinks they do a good job of covering career options.
- Dillon suggested we share previous student success stories, like Dan Beitz from CHS.
- Sahithi shared how students need to chose a career path after 10th grade in India. We discussed the pros and cons of this process.
- Scott brought the discussion to a close by stating that he will discuss with Marc and Kevin goals for this year and that we will be more intentional with our meeting time to achieve these goals. The discussion topics will be included within these goals.
Committee Member Involvement / Wiki Development
- John offered that if the larger CTE committee meetings have smaller breakout discussions that they will be worth attending, otherwise he suggested we should skip them.
- Scott offered that students will contact committee members about volunteering in the classroom. This will be an easy way to monitor how well the students follow-through on the project.
- Scott shared a lesson template, based on UBD, he had students used to build new lessons in the Spring. This can be the template for future lesson planning.
- Scott will talk to Luke about building a database of these standards-based lessons.
- Scott also shared the need for the program to be checked for framework alignment with the state standards. This will be a focus for this year, too.
Budget Issues
- Nothing discussed. It's Summer :)
Agreed upon Action Items and the People Responsible
- Continued from last meeting: Still need to purchase a digital hand-held meter for CHS - Kevin
- Establish lesson plan template database - Scott and Luke
- Establish ComTech class wiki with which the committee can participate - Scott and Luke and Students
- Talk to Scott LaViollette about his teaching methods - Scott
- Set vision and goals for year - Scott, Kevin and Marc
- Focus on:
- Getting kids connected to program goals
- Bridging program to real world
- Course structure modification for semesters and lesson plan creation
- Aligning to state standards