Week 4
I am a bit frustrated that I had to miss class on Thursday. I have a grasp on the first part of the test but I am a bit lost on the correlation material, since I missed that part of the instruction. Thursday was a long night with parent orientation. I had at least 70 parents come through and I had to do my song and dance over 5 times! I was exhausted and did not get out of the building until 8:45. I plan to submit the first half of the test right away, but I may need a bit of help on the correlation material. Although I have read the chapter, I can tell that I am missing out on some important information. Other than that, two more weeks of cross country and then I start the school chess and scrabble club! I did find the section on standard deviation rather interesting.. I finally feel like I get it. I might not be quick at it, but I get it.

This last week was interesting. I felt bad about my post about sitting for too long in class! I know that I just have a hard time staying focused for long periods of time. This week it was interesting learning about standard deviatons and z-scores. It has been some years since I have worked on this sort of thing and I need to work on it alone for a while before I understand it. I was not able to figure out the questions in class as quickly as the others so I am a bit worried about the next benchmark. Another problem I have is understanding the difference between the Experimental data vs the Descriptive data. Even after I read their definitions over and over, I still don't seem to get it right every time.
My group has started working on our data on google docs excel program. It has worked out nicely because we can all work on it remotely at our own schedule. I am still amazed about what you can do with excel! My wife uses it all the time for budgets.. in fact we had our wedding plans and finances on a spreadsheet that she is still very proud of.
RC

Second stats class

I have to admit that I needed the notes on quite a few of the banchmark questions. As I reflect on the evening, I was impressed with what you can do with Excel.. The last time I took a stats class, we were allowed one small notecard for the final. I remember having an entire chapter of furmulas on that little card! I also remember squinting at it attempting to figure out the formula I needed. This week, it was nice of Jim to show us how to use Excel to figure out the variance and standard deviation. I remember having to figure it out with just the calculator. Needless to say, I am very relieved! This is also the first year that I have ever taught math. Math never came that easy for me but I have always enjoyed the challenge, and I can understand what students go through when they have trouble.

Stastics

It looks like it is time to bust out the old stats book that has been collecting dust in the basement! What I like about math is that whatever effort you put into it is directly related to what you get back out of it, and either you get it, or you don't. I look forward to the challenge, and now that the weather is getting cooler, it will be a bit easier to focus. As far as the reading, the first chapter focused on the different types of research and I do feel that it would have been helpful to have the statisics course prior to the start of the action research course. My other reasoning is that to design a test and lesson plans, requires us to be in our classrooms. In the summer some of us do not have access to our classrooms and it provided and extra challenge. It will be a challenging fall!

Correction

I stand corrected. I should have called Linda much earlier to avoid the anxiety I have been feeling about this IRB. Tonight we spent over a half hour on the phone going over things that I had to have done for Thursday night. I must say that she was very helpful!

With this being the last week of this class, I have been talking with a number of students about the course. There seems to be a great deal of confusion and frustration in all of the groups. After reflecting on what has transpired this summer, I feel that this course should have met more often than the three times. Even though it is more difficult to meet over the summer, some more guidance would have been a good thing. Considering the financial costs of this program, I would have expected more guidance and direction.

Summer Grad Class Article Reviews

So far things have been going O.K. with the summer school program. We have done a bunch of work on the article reviews and met to go over the powerpoint projects. What I find frustrating is the difficulty doing school work with busy summer schedules.