Who can enroll for credit? You must have completed your year of supervised fieldwork, and if you have not yet graduated and decide to take the for-credit option, you will need to receive permission from your advisor to use this as an elective credit toward your degree.
If I take the New Teachers Online Forum for credit, what are the assignments? Every two weeks, a new topic will be posted in the Discussion Forum, along with some suggestions about how to address the issues. Participants will share their thoughts, questions and resources. There are three assignments that for-credit participants will need to complete:
1. Students will be required to post on the "This Week's Discussion" page at least twice each week ( on separate days). They can respond to the topic question or to another participant?s posting on that page by asking questions, making comments or sharing their own experiences. The postings need not be long and you can log on at any time that is convenient for you.
2. Students will be required to post a brief annotation for at least one online or in-print resource (a book, a website, a chapter, a journal article, etc.) for each topic, for a minimum of four resource postings in the eight weeks. These annotations should be posted during the two weeks that the topic is being addressed on the "This Week's Discussion" page. (Annotation guidelines are on the website.)
3. At the end of the eight weeks, students who have chosen the for-credit option will write a 3 to 5 page paper about an area of their teaching that they need to work on, such as asking children questions, working with parents, what to do with blocks, assessing individual children, addressing conflict resolution, and so on. In that paper the student will describe the issue or problem and then identify a modest action plan for gathering information or resources that will help her/him to begin to learn more about this topic. Students may want to use the open discussion page to address these areas and to ask the other participants for advice. You are not required to solve the problem or to demonstrate that you have changed what you do in the classroom. Instead, this paper will tell me that you have given thought to the issue and that you have also thought about the steps you can take to grow in this area.
How do I register for credit for the New Teachers Online Forum? You will need to do two things. First, complete the Online Forum enrollment form and send it to Judith Leipzig, either by email or land mail. For credit and non-credit participants will complete the same form. This enrollment form is for Judith Leipzig's use, and is separate and distinct from the registration materials used by the Registrar's office for those who would like to participate for credit. Click here to link to the Online Forum enrollment form.
Second, if you would like to earn one credit for your participation, you will have to obtain an "Add/Drop" form from the Registrar's office, obtain your advisor's signature, and return the form to the Registrar. The official title of the course is EDUC 651 "Special Study: New Teachers Online Forum". Because of the special circumstances of this course, there will be no add/drop fee for this late registration.