10 THINGS YOU DON'T DO WHEN TAKING A MASTER'S DEGREE

  10. READ: I don’t read anything “fun” – interesting, maybe, but not anything I can get lost in. My TBR pile is about to topple – okay, so it was kind of tall BEFORE I started this programme, but it’s even scarier now!

9. SOCIALIZE: I don’t socialize much, and if I do, it’s with guilt that I should be at the books.

8. COOK: I don’t cook from scratch. I would be fine with PB & J sandwiches, but the fam would not. I love to cook, and use Saturdays and Sundays to do it. Retired Guy has weekday duties. However, now we go out on the weekends because I spend the day hitting the books!

7. EXERCISE: I don’t exercise or work out! I love yoga – had to give it up because it runs on my class nights. I love walking through the woods and trails – again, no time to do this. Between this and #8, I’ve gained 8lbs!!!

6. SHOP: I don’t shop for frivolous articles like new shoes, clothes, things for my soon-to-be grandchildren!!! A bonus here, of course, is that my bank account looks better – oh wait, no it doesn’t, because I have to pay tuition!

5. WATCH TV – Okay, I hardly watched TV before, but I did have some shows that I liked. Now, I have no idea what’s going on. The Rob Ford fiasco totally cut into my homework time because it was a train wreck from which I couldn’t look away!

4. RESPOND TO EMAILS OR PHONE CALLS: I’m a terrible friend, mother, niece, sister. I try not to be rude – I try to respond – but it’s usually with a “yes or no” and always …”I’m doing homework”.

3. BLOG: Although I should maybe do it as a reflection piece – I just don’t seem to have the time (except now, when I’m actually procrastinating doing my final term assignments)

2. CLEAN: My house is a Dee-SASTER! The dust bunnies have been feasting on the dog hair and look like actual pets themselves! It got so bad last week that Retired Guy found the vacuum and ran it around the living areas. I thought he’d removed furniture, there was so much space!

And the #1 thing you don’t do when you’re taking a Master’s of Ed @UOIT,

FEEL RESTLESS OR BORED! It’s so interesting and my brain is challenged. I absolutely love what I’m taking and learning! I would recommend pursuing this higher education journey to everyone!

My Research Thoughts

It seems I must narrow down what I want to do for my Master of Ed research. Just as I think I have it figured out, my brain takes off on another tangent. I never had to worry about "declaring a major" in my undergrad, but I think I now know how that feels and the stress it causes!

So - here's what I'm thinking ...
1) What's the continuance rate of students who use AT, and why?
2) Once introduced to technology, how do teachers transform their practice?

I think the broad topic is Transformative Learning and/or Transformative PD (nudged to this conclusion by my professor, Dr. Lorayne Robertson)

My goals for the first would be to figure out why students are reluctant to use AT and how to overcome that.
My goal for the second would be to find what works for teachers to transform their practice and what is still needed?
My ultimate goal with this M.Ed is to teach AQ courses, so maybe I should focus on the adult learner. However, I'm currently so immersed in the adolescent learner and accessibility, adaptability, UDL as it relates to Student Success, that I feel like I should focus here too ...aggghhh!

Here's my concept map:

It's no wonder I can't zero in ...

THOUGHTS? (please ...)

Restarting the Blog Thing

So - I've decided to restart the Blog thing. I can see the value of writing down my thoughts and thinking and presenting my metacognition in written form. I'm just not sure I feel confident enough to share it with anyone. We'll see ...

So - in my Master's program, my brain is exploding! I'm taking the 1st of 10 courses for the M.Ed, through UOIT. It's all done online, through Adobe Connect - a synchronous chat room. The 2 courses I'm taking are Research Methods in Education and Social and Cultural Context in Education. Both courses are vastly different in content, professor, delivery and student complement and I'm loving both of them.

Research Methods seems very high-level to me, in one way. I've never taken any research courses, so I feel a bit like I'm swimming upstream - but I am still swimming! In this course, we are being pushed, somewhat, to decide on our research focus and on the type of delivery we want to choose (project, thesis, portfolio). I have 3 areas that I'm looking at and I just can't decide which one I want to choose, because they are all so interesting! Despite (or maybe because of?) the brain stretching that I'm experiencing, I love this course and the content and even the prospect of completing the assignments! I wonder if I'll say this once I get the marks back ....?

The Social and Cultural context course is challenging in a more reflective way. It's a course where we are presented with ideas and phenomena and asked to reflect on them within our own practice. The readings are in this course are more in number, but not necessarily as dense as those in the Research Methods course. The instructor is a sociolinguist, which is quite fascinating. The assignments in this course are also interesting in that we have to respond to a certain number of Discussion questions and we have to create 5 Wiki entries. I like this variance!

So - thanks to the encouragement of Aviva Dunsiger (@avivaloca) or http://adunsiger.com/ for restarting this blog thing and to Doug Peterson (@dougpete) or http://dougpete.wordpress.com/
Not only are they wonderful cheerleaders, but they also provide great Blog exemplars!

Tomorrow - my 3 ideas for this colossal endeavour called the MASTERS!