Career Pathways Resources

Sally Loughlin shared two books that articulate the framework for a Career Pathways initiative. In conversations about the place Career Pathways might take in our work, she searched for a figure from the book Career Pathways: Preparing students for life (Howard and Ill, 2004). I saw potential application for iTeams both as a planning resource and as project material for an iTeam. So, I borrowed the book and found excellent resources (including templates and planning documents) and a helpful copyright statement:

All rights reserved. When forms and sample documents are included, thier use is authorized only by educators, local school sites, and/or noncommercial entities who have purchased the book.

Since the high school has purchased multiple copies of the book, we satisfy the copyright condition. I searched for related online resources and found a SlideShare presentation that summarizes the book in 33 slides. The figure that Sally called to my attention is slide number 4 in this presentation.

Collaborative Career Pathways

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

GuestWiFi at Midcoast Hospital

I brought a book to read while I waited for my appointment. Last time I was here (a year ago?), I had to search high and low for a way to get access. The hospital library had one computer. Today, I found signs stuck on service counters that welcomed public access the the hospital's GuestWiFi. Now we can easily get access to additional sources of information.
Thanks!

Open governance: BigDialog

Theron recently asked me for information about our family's experience with math enrichment in the Pullman School District. He wanted to share it with a colleague at WSU.
When I sent him the information he wanted, he shared some links on open governance sites that are growing in parallel with Obama's campaign and transition: change.gov.

BigDialog is one of he efforts intended to increase participation. While it is interesting, I wonder whether a simple click on thumbs up or down is the kind of commitment required for substantive change. These are a user generated form of self-selected response polls. Note the interesting use of the mashup with Google Maps that indicate the distribution of responses that are color-coded.

Testing the new Simile Timeline tool

David at the Simile Project at MIT has made it even easier to create timelines:

Surveymonkey's technology enhanced support

We have been using Zoho Creator and Surveymonkey to collect data for formative assessment and other uses. This morning I wanted to know whether we could share the responsibility for creating assessments and surveys with other users. This is an important feature because we can build on one another's work and improve our efficiency of our efforts to improve learning and assessment. So I posed this question to the support contact form at Surveymonkey:

Export surveys to use in another account?

Question

2/15/2008 10:55:59 AM

Your site explains clearly how to export data from surveys. It also explains how to use one survey to create a copy of it that can subsequently modified. It also explains how to use system-wide templates to start and then modify.

Is is possible to export a survey and then import into a second account? Can professional accounts mimic characteristics of your template functions so that surveys can be developed for similar user communities? For example, if our school district develops a survey that helps us improve instruction, can we share it with other districts who may want to build on our work? I. e. you have an open data capacity, do you also have an open content capacity?

Thanks for your assistance.

Immediately after submitting the form containing my request, the site responded with the following page:

One more step! You are not quite finished.

Based on your initial question, please review the following topics we have found for you. One may provide an immediate answer to your question.

Tutorials

Survey Design - Print Your Survey

Email Survey - Collector 201 - Create an Email Invitation

Answers

What happens to my surveys and data when I cancel my account?

What features are included in a Professional subscription?

Do you have an example survey?

Can I print survey results or open ended comments?

Can I create surveys from a selection of survey templates?

What is a custom report? Can I customize the data in the Analyze section?

If this does not fully answer your question: [Submit]

Apparently, the support system "scanned" my query and compared it with its database of questions they have already answered and published on their support site. They wanted to make sure that I had found an answer to my question if one already existed. I had already used their search function to look for "export" but all I could find were references to exporting data rather than the surveys themselves. So, I submitted the form and returned to working on related projects while the humans took over trying to interpret my request. Mychal, a support provider, responded several minutes later:

Mychal Hoffman (Support)

2/15/2008 11:02:19 AM

Hello,
You can transfer surveys designs to another account.
Here is how:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/HelpCenter/Answer.aspx?HelpID=11&q=transfer

You will want to select Copy (not Move to do this). If you copy the survey into another account, this will not copy the data or responses. ...

His response continues with more details on characteristics of the copying process. So, it turns out that they had answered my question already. But, they use the term "Transfer" to refer to reusing surveys and reserve the term "Export" for references to data. That distinction eluded the help systems' inference engine. I anticipate that the next generation will get it right.