Hi Dr. Fisher,
I came across your profile and I must say I am extremely impressed with your qualifications and background experiences in education!! I am just a few years into my teaching, but I too aspire to achieve such great things as you have already accomplished! I am becoming more interested in teaching in the higher education field. What do you suggest I can do to get started? Also, it obviously seems that instuctional technology and web-based education is the wave of the future ( I am attending Nova southeastern Univ for my EdD which is a long distance learning program). But I feel it will always involve those educators who have a basic grasp and are comfortable with computers to really push technology education for our future generation of students to come.

Nicole Handy

Well...this is where I realize that I need to have a specific area of expertise and/or interest to teach--especially at a higher ed level!! With only an elementary level background--I like ELA, (Reading/Writing. I have recently become more comfortable with elementary (5th/6th) Math over the years (lol). But as far as PASSION for topics in educfation field, I am concerned about academic achievement of minority students, character education, classroom management, and high expectations for students. I am currently working on my doctoral research on subsitute teacher training and its effect on student discipline.

Therefore, I am not sure as well as academic content area wise if I have a specific expertise?? I was thinking of going for an additional certification in Middle School extension--but I am not a Science and Math person! I mostly like ELA. Please help!! Any suggestions or advice??

I am writing to folks who are listed on this forum in search of people who could do one or more of the following:

1. Provide me with the colleges they attended earning graduate and post graduate certificates and or degrees. (this will help me build a profile of the set of all such institutions thereby allowing me to enhance my market research)

2. People who would be interested in serving on a panel of experts to provide responses to situations and challenges in the game a colleague and I are developing for graduate school leadership and administration classes.

3. People who would be willing to share ideas with us on experiences they have had in their capacity as an educational administrator

4. People who can provide us with factual information about the graduate programs where they teach and discuss the project in greater detail.

A quick overview of our project is this; Our project aims to use technology as a way of moving beyond the case study approach to coursework in graduate programs in educational leadership and administration. The serious game will be a web based product that would augment the work in classes like school law, school finance, leadership, community relations, school personnel, and a capstone class.  In one of the modes, the graduate students will select one of four of five characters each with a different leadership style.  At periodic intervals, they have to respond as their prediction of how the character they are monitoring will respond to the challenge, or conflict they face. Additionally, the graduate student will be prompted to respond to the same situations as how they would proceed. The feedback they get will be instant and will be compared with the findings of the "Panel of experts" and will be plotted along the lines of stakeholder groups that a high school principal's decisions impact.

This is a long post but I hope you take the time to read it and respond and will connect me as a friend on this group.  I look forward to hearing from you.

Best Regards

Josh Arnold MS C.A.G.S. Ed

Educational Consultant/Advocate for children with special needs.