Ruth’s Ruckus

So, I’m preparing some stuff for the teacher’s summer camp that we will be offering…OK, I’m really avoiding writing Chapter 1 of my dissertation.. but anyway, I happened on this great Blog and some interesting materials.  Let’s see if I can get this slideshow to show up…

I went to the VSRA conference last week.  My presentation was packed!! I was quite surprised since for the last few years the maximum number of folks at a tech presentation at the conference was 4!!  We had close to 60 people…So anyway I learned a lot from this general session that I went to.  I don’t usually go to general sessions, but this one sounded interesting.  I’ve got to find my handout again because the guy (a prof from UCONN) was very good.

 He showed us this video:

I hope I did that right.  I really thought it was worth sharing.

The longer I work in this department, the more I realize that it is important that we work as a team.  In so many ways…I mean we all service the same client, the students.  Whether I’m teaching the teachers how to work with technology in their classrooms or if my tech specialist is making sure the machines in the classroom are working – it’s all for the kids right?  Somehow (not that I understand how), but somehow from time to time folks in the department forget that.  They seem to think that they are there to protect our stuff from those that use it  as opposed to serve the kids.  It’s funny how the objective gets muddied.  I mean we do need to make sure the stuff is safe, but the objective is to allow access not to deny it.

I’m very glad that my tech specialist understands this.  There are nights we stay after school getting equipment ready or setting things up for teachers so that they can use it.  There are those who don’t understand that principle. 

In my work group for example, several people have no idea what it means to work together.  They would much rather sit and wait for others to do the work.  Then they want to reap the benefits…I guess it’s that way everywhere.

It’s interesting to see how much of my effectiveness as a technology coach for teachers rests on my ability to act professionally.  This month I’ve seen some real challenges in that area.  First, I’ve got to be dependable.  To a lot of people and for a lot of things.  Sometimes dependability is beyond your control. For example, I have a teacher who needs some social studies review powerpoints.  She gave me the information at the beginning of the month.  But I’ve also been on jury duty this month.  Yes I did say month.  So I’ve been out 6 of the 18 working days since she asked me for them.  I have been in full day meetings for two of the days as well.  SO I’ve only been able to complete 1 powerpoint so far.  I know that seems like I’ve only done 1 powerpoint (although it took me 4 hours to create) in 10 days.  I have also done 4 inservices, a peer observation, 7 classroom lessons, two team meetings, 7 TSIP one-on-one confererences and had 3 content area leads “drop in” during those ten days.  I also manage to field 25-50 emails daily regardless of whether I am on site that day.  I was hoping I would get some time to catch up these last three days, but I’ve just been called for jury duty tomorrow…

Ok.  So today the entire elementary TRT team was on hand to assist the reading specialists who were the building PALS (Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening -http://pals.virginia.edu ) contacts with learning how to use their new equipment.  Earlier this year, back in October I think, these 14 reading specialists received laptops, presentation carts, and data projectors.  So they needed training on how to use them.  They got an hour of the basics – how to access your H: drive, how to connect to wireless, how to care for the laptop etc. – and 15 minutes on Kidspiration and 15 minutes on how to hook up the data projector.   I spent 3 hours getting ready for a 15 minute presentation.  I’m so glad I was able to give them a resource CD so that they would have something that they could use instructionally as an outcome for the training, since that was my original concern.  We could do all the training in the world on the hardware part, but if there was no connection with instructional use the stuff would never get used.  As it was, several came with the equipment still in boxes.  My supervisor offered our team to give an inservice on just using Kidspiration so that we could spend some time just helping them make templates that they could use and share.  That would be great since language arts it is harder to get technology into the language arts classrooms in our division.  Anyone interested in Kidspiration should really check out some of these sights:

http://www.globalclassroom.org/together/kidspiration.html

http://www.picadome.fcps.net/lab/teacherl/lesson_plans/kidspiration/kidspiration_ideas.htm

 http://www.northcanton.sparcc.org/~ptk1nc/kidspired2002/samples.html

http://www.coweta.k12.ga.us/cweb/Kidspiration/KidActivities.htm

Ok.  So I’m not off to a very good start.  When I started this blog thig, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.  so I’ve done some research and some reading (which is generally my response to most things I know nothing about…) and I realize that I have to create a strategy.  I can’t really say change my strategy, as I don’t think I actually had one before.  Anyway, like I said, I read a lot.  www.problogger.com gave some pretty good tips, and I checked out www.iste.org and looked at the handouts for the last few years of the NECC conference.  There was a lot there.  Leading and Learning with Technology (the ISTE publication) had several articles that were helpful as well.    At least now I’ve got some insight.

A blog isn’t just an online diary like I thought it was.  It’s an ongoing coversation about a topic.  This blog will be about my journey as a TRT, but every once in a while I guess I could add something else.  Frankly, it’s been an interesting journey.  I’ve learned a lot, and I guess I will continue to. 

I wandered back here today as the result of a meeting.  We met on the idea of using Blogs with students.  There are so many issues involved, and so many things that they could learn.  We discussed everything from Internet Safety, to cyberbullying, to increasing reading and writing ability.  I would like to pilot some student blogging in a fifth grade classroom, and see if it makes a difference in their writing.  I will also try to pilot some blogging in my summer camp.   So I’ll need to know quite a bit more about this strategy, before we take it live.  I think the only way I will remember to blog everyday it to make this my homepage.  I guess I’ll try. 

I am at the VDOE conference in Roanoke today.  I’ve learned a lot in the last few days.  Hopefully I’ll be able to use what I’ve learned in my everyday work.