I have finished what I consider my introduction to the teaching credential program, having taken in reverse order, Intro to Credentialing(TED601) and Foundations of Education(TED615) with Professor "Kimo" Sanchez at National University. I have learned that there are many forks in the road that all eventually lead to teaching in a public school. I am going to focus on the internship route that may or may not include the ECO(early completion option) that involves taking a "foundations of Education" test. For now I have decided to cancel my March class(TED605), fine-tune this website, fine-tune my approach to my teacher candidacy, get serious about making Plumbob a legitimate business, and pick up in April with classes again.

Plumbob and Education

I will clarify a little more about why I am documenting this on Plumbob.org. Plumbob will develop a core business platform that I will launch several other businesses with. I would like to borrow some lessons from the open source software community in general, and from Drupal specifically when developing Plumbob to make it a core infrastructure that is both the tools and the vehicle for starting and running a business.
The first project I am actively developing through Plumbob is a Design/Reconstruction Shop model that I would like to be grafted on to the Education System. It will serve three functions, potentially, but not necessarily at the same time;

• A vocational track for public school students to learn skills, apprentice in a real shop, and eventually inherit the tools and start their own business.
• An Industrial Arts Teacher Training program
• And a Design/Reconstruction Shop business infrastructure.

The model focuses on passive solar techniques in architecture as the anchor for public educational standards. ie. learning the sun's angles in relation to a structure's windows for solar gain as satisfying various math and science standards, possibly even history since these techniques are ancient. In practice the shop will focus on using salvaged materials. I like the term "reconstruction" since it is focused on outcomes rather than the seemingly insurmountable task of salvaging the immense waste stream from the Construction industry's current practices. However salvaging materials and organizing them is a core function of this shop, and furthers the opportunity in the curriculum for deconstructing and understanding existing structures, cleaning materials, and using an inventory system.
This might all seem like I am assuming some monumental changes in the system in order for this to be relevant. I hope to drive a lot of these changes through building my Shop model on a small scale first. But in order to get into a school shops, or accept interns from schools in my own shop, I need to get my teaching credential first.

Credential and Internship

Having spent 2 months wrapping my head around the muddy waters of entering the teching profession, I have concluded that the internship route is the most attractive since it is a paid position in a school shop, while I use the experience to finish my TPAs. In the meantime I need to organize myself so that I can effectively attach multiple values to everything I do. While I gain more shop time at Hyde Middle School, I need to look for ways to use that experience towards TPAs, as well as marketing my ideas that I will bring to my own shop and to shops in general.

Drupal

In order to get my credential, I need to be better at managing my content and I am doing that here with my Drupal website, and airing out ideas on Twitter, as a project of Plumbob. When I started my first class with my composition book in hand, I quickly gravitated towards using my website instead. A fellow student, a veteran of some 5 classes(at the time I was just pushing off on my first class, and 5 seemed insurmountable) looked over at me when I brought my computer in the first time, and said "once you start using a computer, you realize it's the best way." He took a look at my Drupal site for a minute and proclaimed he really liked how I was organizing my classwork. Later on my professor would say the same. It took me over a month and the better part of 2 classes to really nail down this "version 1.0" of my Education website. I will always be making small changes to it, but the public-facing user interface should not move around too much anymore. If a version 2.0 ever comes to pass, it will be through the shared efforts with others. I have really pushed the limits of my Drupal skills and I can't risk a meltdown as the site grows.
This website has been my enabler of sorts when it comes to getting my coursework done. I am want to procrastinate still, but publishing my efforts and ideas as I work towards my credential has turned out to be the single most important thing so far. If I wasn't managing my content here(with Drupal), all I would have is a composition book and a large pile of papers that I am slowly organizing into neat readied piles for the binders I spent way too much money on. Whenever I do get lost in the maze of hoops I usually end up sitting down and writing to my development blog. It helps me to get back on course by surrounding my thoughts with the web, open source communities, and communications in general. It helps me see problems through a fine example of a solution(Drupal) and how the web is weaving itself through increasingly everything we do.