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OSPI Conference

I went and I survived. Ok, it wasn't really that bad. Terry Bergeson personally served us ice cream when a meeting went late... which was a nice gesture, since I all I got out of the "keynote speeches" was an increase in my tetris skills. At least I didn't snore.

One session I attended was given my someone from the Virtual School in Spokane. Somewhat good - although I wish it had been longer - and a link for all sorts of online goodies! I'm still working on setting up a stable classroom website that is easy to find, easy to use and doesn't require a lot membership levels for students. I'm currently using freewebs, but it's slow to load and blocked by most school computers. It has a lot of the functionality that I want, but not the freedom. I've been trying googlepages, but they don't have the functionality that I really want. For example, I cannot figure out how to get all three assignment calendars to show up on the same calendar page and I cannot find a "forum" capability that doesn't act like an email group and doesn't require an entirely new membership to post.

I also attended a session run by a guy from East Valley (Spokane Valley). The interesting thing about his chat session was the way he figured out to predict the number of students who will receive passing scores based on DIBELS scores. Which ones are more likely to benefit from additional help, etc. So far he's been shockingly accurate - depending upon the size of the group he's working with (the larger the group, the more accurate). Although there isn't a DIBELS test for high school, our school made one up. We've tested 8th, 9th and 10th graders every year for the past three years. If someone can aggregate the data, it would be interesting to see if this works at the high school level and if fluency even has a significant effect on WASL scores at this age.

There were also several sessions on tracking (none of which I attended, so this is all heresay). It seems like this trend is back in a very big way.

Comments

Ryan said…
That sounds a lot like Steve Hirsch; he's a school psych for East Valley and runs the program at WSU-Spokane. He did a presentation at the summer institutte in June on the correlation between oral reading fluency and WASL passing rate that was incredible.

Also a fellow Destination: Imagination! coach, so he's aces with me!
10:20 AM
Mrs4444 said…
Have you found that "stable classroom website" place yet? I, too, am interested in starting one. I took a WebEDu class this summer, and it offered wonderful ideas about using technology in the classroom, but I found no links to the perfect place to set up a classroom site.

By the way, I love your state. I live in Wisconsin, but I've been to WA five summers to hike with another teacher friend. Washington State fills me up; it's truly paradise...

Cbean
http://mrs4444.blogspot.com
1:37 PM
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