May the Tech Be With You

Our middle school principal create a schedule so that almost all the teachers have two breaks during the day. The first break is for the teacher and the second break is scheduled by her. All teachers must attend the second break activities, called CAPS time. Every other Monday, I am teaching technology integration to all teachers. The principal or assistant principal sits in on all meetings to support the instruction. So far we have worked on setting up gradebooks correctly in STI, individual SharePoint websites, and SAS training. Tuesdays through Thursdays are spent with grade level meetings, designing engaging work, parent communication, and more. Because the teachers are having so much professional conversations together, I am seeing that teachers are impacting other teachers thoughts and ideas quicker than at any other school. A few teachers attending this summer's blogging workshop and are beginning to try blogging through our private SharePoint websites, discussion bo...

The 06-07 school year has begun with me in my new position, District Technology Integration Specialist, for a school system with 4 schools, 300 teachers, and a little over 4,000 students. I worked some over the summer to try to get my feet wet before the full force of the school year began. I conducted Tech. Tuesday classes on Teacher Productivity Tools and Social Networking Tools. There was not an overwellimg response to the workshops, however, at least 3 people attended each Tuesday. These were great because I was able to form relationships with people I had worked with at my old school and those I would come to work with in the future. Also, I created digital handouts which I posted on May the Tech Be With You (wikispaces) for each session I taught. This has helped me tremendously as I re-teach these classes to interested teachers this year. The teachers like the idea that the handouts are online but they still wanted them printed out infront of them. I attended conducting a...