Be of Use

I've done a bit of an about face since my last post on my next learning steps as I wrap things up at UWM in a couple of weeks. Last post I was thinking about my next program. Now I'm looking forward to the freedom of learning independently. The books we had for classes were great, but I know over these 20 months my personal reading has suffered...how could it not at six credits a semester? I've been kind of jealous of my wife's personal reading of late. I'm one 20 page paper away from that. The worm turned for me about a week ago when something switched in my head. I asked myself, why do I think I need to pay someone $2000 a class to learn? Before UWM I learned quite a lot from books and blogs. I bet I could again! I've been pretty faithful to my favorites - Blue Skunk and Dangerously Irrelevant , but I haven't done much online reading beyond that. With new initiatives coming for 2012-2013 I need to more deeply explore Edmodo communities and see what othe...

This May I'll be wrapping up my master's program at UW-Milwaukee in Administrative Leadership . This program was 100% online . I've done a master's face-to-face too, and the online experience has been better for me. There's no way with a 2.5-year old and a almost 3-month old I could have done this any other way. If UWM hadn't offered this sort of format to earn a degree with licensure for Wisconsin's principal and director of instruction certifications, I wouldn't have done it. I think back to my first master's program, sitting in a car for 180 minutes a night to listen to a 2 hour lecture with some lame group work and a few breaks. Certainly the relationships I built weren't a waste, but those were more built on our collective misery for that process. I can't/won't go back to doing that. Now that I'm at the right stage in my life where I truly love learning (if only 16-year old me had a twinge of that feeling...) I want to event...