Number of Applied Projects to finalize:  just three!  I hope to finish these today.

Percentage of course evals submitted: 79%!   Wow, you’re in the lead!

E-permissions needed: 7% – just one person to go.

Research permissions needed: ditto above.  Brilliant idea: I should combine these two into a single document – good advice for next time.

I’ll do another update in a couple of days – but thank you for not needing any reminders to speak of.

Hello!

Just a reminder that the course eval for EDIT 7650 opens today.  Please let me know if there seems to be something wrong with it.

I’ve finished all Presentation “grading,” which included capture of any requested changes – I noted those in the comment field.  Many of your Final submissions have come in, but I’ve not been able to work with them yet – they are due tomorrow.

I’ll keep updating you until everything is completely wrapped up.

Hello!   Plans for Saturday are almost ready.  We really don’t have much to do.  Isn’t that nice?

Of course, most of you will attend in the morning, and many cohort-wide details will be discussed then.  Lunch will be around noon (see Tanya’s emails about that).  (Lisa and Mandy – check out the 7460 agenda in case you need any of that info – happy to fill you in when you arrive – hope you’ll come for lunch!)

I haven’t finished your Ed.S. portfolios, but I’m still hoping to get that done by Saturday.

So far so good on the Marathon business – I will let you know if anything needs handling along that line.

Time to take my last stray cat to the vet – I’ll see you Saturday!

Hello – a few clarifications about today’s deadline:

I have now completed my review of your AP Drafts, and all follow-up work has been done.

Your deadline today is to make sure your link on the portfolio site (where you registered for the marathon) goes to the right place, and that your advisor has access to it (these tasks are the same, usually).  Right now, there are some links that go … nowhere.  (Of course, it’s not midnight yet!)

My advisees: make sure your link leads to the right place.  I know where your AP is, but the one on the portfolio doesn’t lead there in every case.   When all of that checks out, I will “release” it. I have until the 13th to do all of these – but please help me out (I have 10 or 15 to do) and make sure your link works right.

The Ed.S. Portfolio, for everyone in EDIT 7650: I’m not worried if these aren’t ready yet, since they’re due on April 12. I will check on those the week after that.  Your committee (and advisor, for now) will be focused on the AP.  If your Portfolio is finished, great!  Do make all of these items link together, however.

Hope this makes sense. After the weekend, I’m behind on all evaluation tasks – but at least I got my taxes done.

Hello!  I’m finished (woohoo!) with your AP Drafts.

In every case, I provided feedback and some sort of indication of what you need to do next.  (My voice is tired!)

One thing that I didn’t notice while I was reviewing the first 10 or so: titles!   Make sure you have a title on the top page of your AP.  As someone who pretty much hates writing titles, I think I conveniently have forgotten that they needed doing.  So – even if I didnt’ tell you – stick one on there!

Most academic papers have colons in the titles.  Colons: Good.

Overall, Discussions are in great shape!

I’ve caught up with everything submitted as of this morning.  My time window to grade has closed for a few days (til next week), as I have 4 busy days of meetings, teaching, and extracurricular life ahead.

For almost everyone, the Next Steps are:

1. Digest my feedback, updating the Feedback Table with the major points.
2. Revise as indicated, highlighting as you go. Deal with each point of feedback; your solutions may vary from my suggestions, but deal with each issue.  Indicate each revision in the Feedback Table (most of you have been doing this quite effectively all along).
3. Incorporate updated drafts into the AP Draft 1 (due March 29).

By “highlighting,” I mean the following, as mentioned in class.  It won’t be possible for me re-read every word of every project, although I may do that in some cases.  I will work from the Feedback Table, looking at your most recent changes (as well as the overall shape of the AP).  If you will kindly highlight any additions or significant edits to anything I’ve read so far, it will make my job much more doable.  You need not highlight the minor grammatical, spelling, wording edits that you make.  And, it’s ok to use the same type of highlighting for tags (headings) as well as edits.

Congratulations!  It’s all downhill from here – in terms of mental toil.  Don’t underestimate the time it will take to assemble everything.  My hope is that after your initial revision work, you can give your Higher Order Thinker a rest.

Just a couple of things:

I’ve started right in on reviewing your Discussions, and plan to finish one fourth of them each day through Thursday, in the order received.   This will free me up for a busy weekend, and give you what you need to finish up.

As for the Ed.S. Portfolios,  three have already been submitted from folks working ahead – and there seemed to be no problems.  Therefore, I won’t try to make a coaching audio.  If you have questions, please ask.

Stay dry!  Rain is good – I keep telling myself.:-)

If you haven’t already, check out the Cohort 7 blogpost from today.  To recap, it mentions caps and gowns and advisement for summer.

The same Midterm Evaluation applies to all classes – just choose the right course number in the first drop-down box.  Fill out a separate evaluation for each course.  As always, this feedback is anonymous and optional – but very helpful to me as a teacher.

Your agenda is ready as well.  We’ll start 12:30.

Hello!  This is just a quick reminder that we do have class this coming Saturday, March 14.  We will start around 12:30 p.m.  (Of course, I’ll see most of you at 10a.m. for the Internship meeting.)

I hope all of you are digging out from under the snow with no nasty side effects today.  It actually covered the ground here, and was pretty as it fell for hours yesterday – an exceedingly rare event here in the almost-semi-tropics.   Schools are out; kids are happy; no significant problems that I can see – good deal, all round!

As promised, I made an audio  to set you up for the Discussion, Recommendations, and Conclusions assignment.  It’s 26 minutes, and I highly recommend that you take advantage of it.  The outline and Mp3 files are loaded onto the WebCT 7650 Homepage as the first two items.

Let me know if you have problems with it, or subsequent questions.