FTCE - PEd

This has been a busy week in Orlando. I took my last FTCE test on Monday morning (the Professional Education exam), and thankfully, I found out right away (unofficially) that I passed.

I was worried about this particular exam because it covers a lot of education-related information and a lot of Florida-specific information. Since I've only taken 2.5 education classes, and I was not at all familiar with Florida education-related laws, I used the CliffsTestPrep book to study for this test. Since I passed on the first try, I can safely say that I learned everything I needed to know from the prep book! I am glad that I took an ESL class (TSL5325), a developmental psychology class (UoP PSYCH538), and most of a reading instruction class (RED5337) before taking this test; the things I learned in those classes came in handy for this test. However, I think I would have been OK even if I hadn't taken those classes because the prep book covered those topics fairly well and really hit on the important material.

It's coming to the end of the summer semester - my last assignment is due August 4, and then I'll be starting my last semester of classwork.

It's a good day!

I got e-mail from the FSU School of Library and Information Studies graduate coordinator that my UoP class was successfully added to my transcript as credit towards my degree. That's one less thing to worry about.

Just for the heck of it, I decided to log on to the FTCE site to see if my essay score was reported yet. I checked a few days ago, and the score wasn't there, and it still hasn't been 6 weeks yet, so that wasn't surprising. Well, today it says I passed! I assume the official score report will be showing up in the mail any day now.



Making school work (and normal work) a little challenging these past few days is the fact that I have a couple of stitches in my left hand. (Cutting with scissors...that's dangerous!)



If I spread my fingers too far apart while typing, it pulls and doesn't feel very good. The way I have to wrap my hand to keep the dressing on is also sort of constricting on my fingers, even if I don't wrap it too tightly.



Fortunately, I should get the stitches out on Friday.

The summer has slowed down a bit

I've still got a ton of homework for my remaining summer class, RED5337, but now that PSYCH538 is done, I've had some time to slow down and do non-school related things. Mostly, visiting with family over the 4th of July weekend and catching up on my "fun" reading (not that my school reading isn't fun too...).

My grade was finalized last week for my UoP class, and I requested my transcript sent over to FSU as soon as it was. Hopefully that class will be added to my FSU transcript some time this week. The School of Library and Information Studies graduate coordinator received the electronic copy of my transcript immediately, and she submitted it to get it added. She's not sure if they'll accept it, so I had a paper copy sent to her as well. I guess we'll just have to wait and see if the electronic copy is enough or not.

I've got my (hopefully) last FTCE test coming up a week from tomorrow. I started looking through the prep book for it this weekend, and so far it seems like a lot of common sense. At least I'll be getting this test done first thing in the morning, and I'll know if I passed it right away. Then I'll just still be waiting to learn if I passed the essay portion of my last exam.

PSYCH 538 - done!

Yesterday was the last official day for my University of Phoenix class, PSYCH 538 - Educational Psychology of Developing Learners. It will probably be next week before grades are finalized and I can send the transcript to FSU for transfer credit, but I'm basically done with that class. The funny thing is, two weeks ago FSU sent an e-mail out to school media students saying that chances are good they'll offer an online version of EDF 4210 (the equivalent class to what I just took at UoP) in the fall after all. Oh well. I've got the requirement completed, and I guess it doesn't really matter if I took it from FSU or UoP.

Now that this class is over, I'm hoping the rest of the summer will be a little less crazy and stressful. There's still plenty of homework in RED 5337, my FSU class, but maybe I'll have time to do some reading for fun and not spend my entire weekends (and week nights) on homework.

One down!

I got the official score report for my FTCE Educational Media Specialist PK-12 exam in the mail today, and I have officially passed. I knew I passed unofficially as soon as I finished the exam, but it's still nice to have the official confirmation. The scores came a week earlier than expected, so maybe I won't have to wait 6 weeks to get the results of my other test.

School has been keeping me very busy lately. A little too busy. I have a major paper to write this weekend for my University of Phoenix class as well as a reflective writing assignment for my FSU reading instruction class.

Now that I'm past the halfway point for the UoP class, I can say that I would never, ever choose to take another UoP class again unless I was paid a lot of money to do it. The group work has been... less than smooth, and I am not interested in repeating this "learning team" experience. Since UoP puts a lot of emphasis on learning teams, no more UoP for me. I have had some major group work in my FSU courses, and it has always ended up being a positive experience. I can't say the same thing about UoP. I keep telling myself there are only two more projects, and then I'll be done.

To be clear, I have nothing against working in teams. As I said, my group projects at FSU have all been extremely positive experiences. Part of the problem with the UoP learning team experience, at least for the online classes, is that you are given no practical collaborative tools to work with. You are discouraged from using the phone or e-mail and encouraged to do all of your team interactions on a discussion board so that the teacher/facilitator can monitor all interactions. You are not provided any means for real-time interaction - no chat room, no web conferencing, no nothing. When each project's time line is only a week, it's really inefficient to try to hold a conversation and make timely decisions on a discussion board, especially when some team members only log in to check the team board every other day. The bigger part of the problem for me was that I ended up in a learning team that just did not get along and too many team members were unwilling to discuss the issues or make compromises.

First day of PSYCH538

My University of Phoenix class "began" today which basically just means that when I log in to the UoP eCampus website, the class shows up under my "Current Classes" tab instead of "Upcoming Classes," and the professor has posted the syllabus and course schedule.

Being a six-week course, they don't waste any time. My first assignment is due on Saturday, and my first paper due on Monday.

The course weeks begin on Tuesdays and end on Mondays. From what I can tell, the course discussion board (or forum as it is called at UoP) is used extensively - much more than in my FSU courses, and in a much stricter manner. I've had courses which required you to post responses to a certain number of threads or questions by mid-week and then post a certain number of replies by the end of the week, but for this class, our entire class participation grade requires us to post to the classroom's "Main Forum" with two substantive posts on each of four days during the course week. Substantive is defined differently in different classes apparently, but in this class, it means between 200 and 300 words. From what I can tell, that means 8 discussion board posts a week. Two of those posts will be responses to certain discussion questions which are due on certain days of the week. Except for this first week when the discussion questions are due on Thursday and Friday, they will generally be due on Wednesdays and Fridays.

We will also be assigned to "Learning Teams," which I can't say I'm looking forward to at all. According to the syllabus, 30% of our grades are from group assignments, with the first group assignment being due next week! We don't even have our teams assigned yet. I've been pretty lucky with my groups at FSU, so I'm hoping my luck holds out and I end up with good group members at UoP as well.

The next six weeks would be busy even if this was the only class I was taking, but taking this class along with an FSU class, and trying to study for the Florida Teacher Certification Exams at the same time is going to be rough.

Reading Instruction - Summer classes begin

The summer semester officially began for me yesterday. I had my first session of a class that is known by two different names and has two different course numbers. For some, it is LIS5441 - Leadership in Reading. For others, it is RED5337 - Supervision and Instruction in Secondary School Reading. It's the same class meeting at the same time with the same professor - there were just two ways to register for it.

Here are the course descriptions (again - even though it's the same class, depending on whether you registered for RED5337 or LIS5441 you got different descriptions):

RED5337:

Application of the reading process to the secondary school curriculum. Diagnostic procedures and instructional strategies useful in developing school reading programs.

LIS5441:

This course focuses on the knowledge and skills necessary for informational professionals to provide collaborative leadership in reading across the K-12 spectrum. Special emphasis is placed on how reading for achievement and reading motivation can successfully be reconciled as essential components of information literacy.

It sounds like it will be an interesting class, and the professor sounds very knowledgeable about the topic. This is only her second semester teaching a class for FSU (she taught this class last summer too), but she has 25 years teaching/school library experience in elementary, middle, and high school and is currently working as a middle school librarian.

The work load doesn't seem like it will be too intense for this class, which is good, since after looking at just the first week's worth of assignments for my UoP PSYCH538 class, I'm already stressed out - already a paper due the first week. I hope that once the class officially "starts" next week, all of the assignments will be posted rather than just the first week's, so I can space the work out as much as possible.

I hope both of these summer classes will help prepare me for the third FTCE test I need to take, Professional Education, because I have never learned a lot of the content listed in the exam prep book I have for that test.