Thursday, July 31, 2008

Summa semestah is ova.

I am now officially 60% of the way through my Master's program. I've taken classes on instructional design, educational psychology, educational use of the internet and how to rip apart research study reports. Summer sememter was all using computer programs; Flash, Fireworks, Dreamweaver and Photoshop. It was a lot of fun, and a lot of frustration, and I learned a lot of things. Both of the classes had final projects that were a combination of creativity and use of the programs. In the class we learned to use Macromedia Flash I made a Flash introduction for my personal web page. If you got to this page through http://www.srossi.net/, then you've already seen it. If you came straight to laduanta.blogspot.com, then it'll be new for you;



The midterm for the same class was to do an advertisement for anything we wanted to, and I built on a joke website I did years ago - and advertisement for our property up in Duchesne;
My final project for the other class was to develop a curricular based web site. Here is the picture from the front page of the site, just click on it to see the whole site.

Overall, I'm kind of proud of these things I produced. I've been amazed at how much I learned over the last year, and how relatively easy it was; I expected it to be a lot harder. What I am afraid of is that the first year is all the easy(er) stuff, and that it's going to get really hard for the last 2 semesters. Wish me luck, I hope I survive. But at least I get the next 3 weeks off - no college, no school. Yippee!

6 comments:

Jannx said...

Congratulations on achieving your 60%. Every bit moves you closer to the finish line.

"...kind of proud of these things..." You should have more pride than "kind of". Those sample projects look very impressive. Think of how many people still struggle with the basics of computing(myself included). This doesn't mean you should be arrogant about what you've accomplished, but you deserve to feel good about what you've done.

I really have to get off my backside and get to work on finishing my Master's. At first, I continued on from undergrad straight into a Master's Program, but toward the end, I would not focus and concentrate and just quit. Now, I have to buckle down and finish what I started those many years ago.

Enjoy your 3 week (work-free) vacation.

Max Sartin said...

Thanks, I'll be really happy next April when I'm actually done. And thanks for the compliments on the projects.
In Utah we get paid by the number of years and amount of education we have, I don't know if it's the same in NYC. I'm at the top end of Bachelors+20 semester hours, and without a Master's I would top out at Bachelor's+40, so I decided that I needed to get a Master's. I've been planning on it for 10 years or so, but I didn't want to get just any Master's, I wanted one that I could enjoy (uh, for the most part) and could use. This one was the right one at the right time.

A Paperback Writer said...

Wow. I am impressed, Max. I could never do this stuff.
And to add to these comments, I'm working on the Masters + 20 bit right now. By the time I finish this course in Scotland, I'll be at 15, so I hope that by next summer's end, I will have finished the 20 hours.

Max Sartin said...

Thanks. And that's what I'm going to be doing next - working on more endorsements until I get up to Masters+40. There are a few other subjects I'm thinking about working on getting endorsed in. I'm going to look at either Physics or History to start with.

Jannx said...

Hello Max. Yep, we have basically the same pay scale here in NYC. Here it's Bachelors+30 credits or Master's+30 credits. Currently, I have my Bachelors plus about 21 credits towards my Master's (before I quit). I have to finish about 9 credits to complete my Master's, that's about 3 more classes I'll have to take a complete the papers that go with the classes.

Oh, and the licenses have changed here in NYC. Since I let my license expire while I was in Japan. I had never completed all of the requirements to get a permanent license. Now, I am under the new licensing criteria. Now, even a permanent license will expire if a teacher does not complete 75 hours of professional development within a 3 or 5 year time period.

Max Sartin said...

Here we have to renew our teaching license every 5 years, we don't have a permanent version. To renew you need 200 points. There's 2 ways to get the points; they can all be from classes and teacher workshops (aprox 1hr=1pt), or if you are teaching during that time you can get 100 points for teaching, then the other 100 points from classes and workshops.