light at the end of the tunnel

I have certainly been neglecting my blog, as well as my teammates.....please forgive me. Darn Catholic guilt...I feel like I am in the confessional...bless me Father for I have sinned...it has been many weeks since I have posted....

I have been nudging my participants in my TIP to keep trying the different Gaggle features. I trained them one-on-one as needed and provided suggestions for curricular uses and differences for the tools. Especially blogs vs message boards. Lastly, were the chat rooms. In January, I tested the chat room and they worked fine. In March, well, they didn't work. It seems Gaggle updated their Java and DoDEA did not. Ughhh! I had to go through the red tape, begging and pleading to get permission to have the computers updated so we could take advantage of a tool they were paying for.

The teachers and students loved chatting! We used the chat room for a Jeopardy like review game. Students were to use proper grammatical conventions as well as their speedskins when supplying answers. Having good keying skills did make a difference. Many students had never chatted online before and were amazed to see their teacher as well as their classmates all responding. I was amazed at how quiet the lab was...

This week my teachers will take the post survey and I will question the students as well. Next week is Spring break....yeah! I have made no plans and will be spending the majority of my time writing my paper as well as creating my delivery platform....I'm thinking photostory!

Reality

My grandmother, 97 years of age this past January. When I was speaking to her on the phone she reminded me not to take too long to come back and see her. Less than a month later, her liver is failing and she was not expected to survive past Presidents' Day. I rushed back to the Philadelphia area to say goodbye. The hospital sent her home with hospice care. I stayed and helped my parents (not in good health either) take care of her. "Mom-mom" as we all call her is still hanging on despite her DNR. God Bless Her! My sister who had a brain aneurysm removed last fall was back in the hospital with a staff infection in her incision while I was home. Scary moments. As you can imagine, I am physically back in Japan, but emotionally still in the states.

To ease my burden, I decided to drop 2 of the 5 teachers I have recruited to work with Gaggle. They are from the high school. I have found that with different servers and class schedules, I was having trouble scheduling training times and gathering artifacts. I do not know how effective and reliable my research will be with only 3 subjects....time will tell.