Staff Development

Last week I was blessed to spend lots of time on campuses working with teachers as they were preparing for the 2011-12 school year.  What a great opportunity to see all of the excitement that teachers have for quality learning.

This is my first year in over 24 years to be in a position outside of public ed.  I love that I was still able to be part of the "back to school" fun.

Good luck to all my friends and colleagues. 
DFTBA (Don't Forget to Be Awesome!)

Success!

Those of you who know me well, will nod your head vigorously when I state that I am a praise junky.  This is a week that I can celebrate with much internal praise as some great projects are coming together beautifully.

I am excited about the opportunity to host author Neal Shusterman for secondary librarian in preparation for Banned Books week.

I'm also looking forward to working with Kelly Drinnen and Shelly DuPuy with Flower Garden Bank National Marine Sanctuary.

These little steps will work together to create a path.  My hope is this path leads to education that is higher quality and more engaging for students (and teachers)

To Use the Tool?

I am crediting Chad Jones, Ed. Tech. specialist in Lamar Consolidate ISD with a recent post.

Please click here to view.

I love his premise and agree 99.9% Technology Tools should ADD to your lesson.  We don't use technology just to get the check box on the principals' walk-thru form or our mental checklist of tools we've applied this year.
1.  Does adding the technology make your task faster?  Example might be analyzing and communicating data by creating an excel graph from a data set.
2.  Does adding the technology bring an experience to your students that would otherwise be difficult to share with them?  Example might be the Nautilus live website:  http://nautiluslive.org/.  Who among us will ever be able to travel on a Robert Ballard research ship in the Black Sea?

Additional comments?

SMART User Conference

Thanks so much for Katy ISD and SMART for putting on a great Houston area user conference.

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE teaching teachers as I always learn WAYYYY more than I could ever teach others.  Teachers conference that my premise  is correct, no matter the grade level/content area:

all teacher give students some sort of prompt and expect some sort of response...

Thanks so much to Kimberly Bojko, Kindergarten teacher at Griffin Elem.,  for helping me with this concept and how it translates to the SMARTboard for the benefit of students:

1.  Create your prompt on a page in SMART Notebook. 
2.  In 2 page view, pin the page.
3.  Student groups add new pages, record names on the new page and record responses.
4.  If possible create manipulatives (keep it simple) on the prompt page that are infinitely cloned.

Great strategy for easily setting up you SMARTboard to be used as a meaningful workstation.
Please let me know if you need more details!

Other things I learned...teachers want to know how to incorporate websites and videos.  They didn't expect to LOVE the new/improved ability to print to SMART Notebook in version 10.8.

LM

JAZZ 123 VC

This is my third or fourth year to participate in JAZZ.  With only 4 participants at our local site, I am more exhausted this time than ever before. (What's that all about?)  But what a great group of people. 

I was reminded of the hurdles that folks who are new to VC face:

• technical phobia
• buy-in from colleagues
• funding
• quality use to meet student needs

JAZZ does such a great job of empowering participants to overcome these issues.

• Technical phobia is resolved through trial by fire.  Participants are handed the VC remote on day 1 and we learn together in a safe environment with techno-comfortable people standing by for reassurance.
• Buy-in from colleagues and administrators is a tough hurdle.  JAZZ builds excitement for video conferencing in general and empowers the group with knowledge of a varity of formats for quality video conferencing.  The session also offers lots of support and encouragement.  Facilitators contact participants a month or so after school starts to follow up and prompt follow through.
• Funding is an issue throughout public ed., especially with the financial crisis within the state of Texas.  JAZZ highlights quality content from a variety of content providers but the focus is on building quality video conference projects that can be developed at no additional cost to the campus.
• Quality instruction is something we desire for all students.  JAZZ immerses participants in a variety of tech tools authentically and facilitates many discussions through out the week about interactivity for students and the kinds of activities that engage kids.  The focus truly starts with curriclum.

How do you provide training for video conference implementation?
What other hurdles do you think educators face in using video conferencing?

Interact

Thanks to Lamar CISD for sharing Interact with me!  I love the way that strategies instruction is incorporated with technology tools.  What an awesome blessing for teachers.