All Day Tech Coach Meeting – February 2007
Posted by psteffen on February 8, 2007
Share what you have accomplished since our last All Day meeting in November. Reflect on what went well and what you still need to work on and do the rest of the school year. Highlight the successes and the impact on student engagement and learning.
Robert Walling said
Since last all day meeting, my class has podcasted! We are currently working on our second podcast. They were very excited to hear their work online and even more so when we began getting comments from people like Peggy and Dr. Balentine!
It was such a success that my oficemate is currently podcasting with her fifth graders! I hope to share with the staff the process of podcasting and how they can incorporate it into their teaching!
mwarrick said
Since our last day meeting, Liesl and I have offered two trainings on United Streaming. It’s great working with her. She’s very knowledgeable about what tech coaches do and she’s patient with me. Kuddos! The group of teachers we work with are exceptional. They have been using United Streaming videos and images in their classrooms frequently with great success. One teacher is even using it to help his 5th grade daughter study for social studies tests by watching videos at home! (It helps to have access!)
We still can’t have our whole group “stream” simultaneously. Our network just won’t support it. But, we talk about our experiences/success and then demonstrate a United Streaming feature that then they can go and practice on their own time.
For our next meeting, Liesl and I will show the group how to get United Streaming to generated, offer, and grade quizzes either using a video or not! The results of the quiz get emailed to you already graded! That’s exciting. Hopefully, I’ll have time to put that together at this Thursday’s all day meeting.
Cindy Rolewski said
At La Cima we have had several United Streaming workshops. Our teachers are very excited about using these videos as it really supports our diverse population. We still need to work on fully utilizing all of the ancillary materials with UnitedStreaming. We have 2 more workshops planned at this point. I hope to learn more from my collaborative group as we continue to meet so I can be well prepared for our next 2 workshops.
Barbara Robeson said
Since November, I have worked to have all Donaldson teachers obtain ASSET & UnitedStreaming long-ins & passwords, as well as provide continued web page support.. Donaldson’t home webpage has evolved this year & the staff is working hard to have it help meet student needs & be an effective tool when communicating with parents.
While some of our staff had been utilizing UnitedStreaming previously, the Webinar that occurred in late January has really excited the staff. Liesl, another Tech Coach, also developed directions for Assignment Builder & then kindly shared them.
Today it was interesting to learn & hear more about WAN issues, iSafe America & then Smartboards. I sat in on the first part of that presentation & am truly intrigued!
I need to go out & observe the various ways our staff is utilizing technology & UnitedStreaming in particular.
I plan to share info on iSafe America with staff as I see it as a way to involve our students & help them become critical thinkers.
Liesl Scheffel said
Since our last tech coach meeting Michael and I have accomplished several things:
First, we have held another unitedstreaming inservice with our teachers at Coronado. I was pleasantly surprised at how many of our participants from our first session returned for the second session. We had the teachers share what they have done with unitedstreaming in their classes, then did a little lesson on creating assignments using Assignment Builder. We have another session planned for right after spring break, at which Michael will demonstrate how to create a quiz.
Second, we have continued to help teachers update their webpages and upload grades, as required by our principal. This is an ongoing process with our new teachers.
Lastly, we have created a series of how-to steps for using Assignment Builder, and dealing with some of the automatic features of Outlook that interfere with the showing of a video on the computer. This has been a big help to our teachers.
Cris said
This is my very first all day tech coach meeting, as I was in Napa looking at the new tech schools. Since the time of the first meeting, I have been working with the technology collaborative at IRHS to examine the Arizona technology standards in relation to what we are doing in the classroom. To initiate this process a survey was sent out to all staff members, where staff checked those standards they hit in their classrooms in each class they taught.
This semester we are analyzing that data. We have met with representatives from most departments (still hoping to get reps from a few departments), and each rep will be taking back the data from their department in the hopes of getting a synthesized compilation of what standards each department is covering.
We will be meeting again in March to examine where the holes are. In addition, I will be contacting the technology coaches at our middle schools to determine what they are teaching in regards to technology and then surveying the 9th grade teachers to determine what skills the students are coming in with.
Once we have compiled the necessary data, we have been asked to make decisions about what content areas will be responsible for covering what standards, in the hopes that making sure every IRHS student has been taught all of the technology standards upon graduation.
The collaborative has also been playing with United Streaming, but we have decided that with the task of analyzing and implementing all of the standards, we need to focus our energy on that for this year, and possibly next year as well.
Personally, I have been working on a lot of new things including writing a draft of a technology plan for IRHS, learning delicious, creating my first webquest and using it with my students, creating a teacher resource center on my website, digitizing all of my lessons to serve as an example for the IRHS staff. Learning how to use turnitin.com and offering professional development to all of our staff on this new tool. I have also been giving professional development classes as well as private lessons on curriculum mapper, grades online etc.
*pant pant* It amazes me I have time to teach
Tamra said
–>Since November, the Technology Collaborative members have begun to implement the use of United Streaming in their classrooms. Some examples are:
**Using Slim Goodbody video segments about the different body systems as the “before” activity to science lessons.
**To introduce Ancient Egypt, vocabulary, important links to Native Americans.
–>We are lucky to be getting five Smart Boards soon! So… We asked interested teachers to write a proposal indicating why they would want a Smart Board and how they would use it in their classroom
Lourdes Oros and Joanna Myhr-Arrison said
Since November:
We’ve started our UnitedStreaming Mini-Grant Collaborative. We were very pleased to have ten teachers sign up for the class. Some teachers were very experienced and were using it as time to improve their skills and others were “newbies.”
Our first session was a webinar presented by Kristen Sanders from UnitedStreaming. Even the experienced users learned new skills; it was very successful!
During our second session several of our staff members shared presentations they had prepared using UnitedStreaming and PowerPoint. People were very excited to see how embedding UnitedStreaming content into a PowerPoint presentation was so easy, yet powerful.
Our next class is a work session where they need to come with a partially started lesson and complete working on it.
The final class will be a “practice, share and prepare” class where teachers can practice presenting a lesson, share what went well, and spend leftover time preparing new lessons.
What we’d like to improve on is:
*Figure out a way to get teachers to take district class
*Find time to teach more classes on campus
*Improve our skills on the software we already own
*Find ways for teachers to use technology without a lot of need for building new skills
*Start a grant-writing club
*Start a SmartBoard club
*Update software to the most recent available
Mitch Miller said
Since our last meeting I have posted one new podcast. My goal was to learn more about RSS feeds and this was accomplished. We had a good discussion about the uses of podcasting and its appropriateness.
The impact on student learning has varied but that could be because the teachers are still in a learning mode. As we get better we will find a better fit into the curriculum. I think we need to make this a better communication tool integrating podcasts, blogs, websites, etc.This will be my next goal.
Monica Schott said
Wow! Since the last all day meeting I have gotten my smart board and my children are very motivated to learn. It has brought the excitement back into the classroom. I hope everyone has the chance to get a smartboard in thier classroom! We also have heald trainings for microsoft products, started the feeder pattern groups and continued with our one to one trainings! We’ve been busy!
Katrina Lantz said
Since November I have blogged with another teacher at a different grade level.
I have taken two district Smartboard classes. I have taught one Smartboard class for my school. The teachers were very excited and several said they were going to sign up for district classes.
Met with my Tech Coach collabrative as well with my school collobrative group.
Worked with two first grade teachers to create web pages.
Irene Barrantes said
Since last meeting, Monica and I have had Staff meetings as well as Feeder pattern meetings for each grade level concerning Microsoft Word and Powerpoint. The teachers have been excited about the project so we have enriched them with ideas. Teachers have been sharing their ideas so Monica and I have learned a lot too! We intend to continue the Microsoft trainings and sharing to keep inspiring our teachers for the rest of the year.
Katie Collins said
Since last Tech meeting, I have been meeting with grade levels coming up with grade level tech projects that they would be able to teach in the classroom or in the lab (reflecting school tech focus of using Microsoft office programs). Kinder- students will be taking pictures of classroom activities with the school cameras and classes will be putting them into Power Point presentations. 1st-3rd- Research on animals on Internet and typing up reports via Word. 4th-5th- Research on topic and create a presentation. Some will choose to do it on Power Point.
Teachers also checked out the Technology assessment that students have to complete and most stated that they were not able to do a lot of the skills in Excel so I will be teaching them during grade level/individually and encouraging them to take the district course.
In the lab, students have created podcasts. Now I am working up to handing the teaching over to the teachers. Students are quite excited and are willing to teach their teacher. Some teachers have signed up to use the computer lab during their teaching time.
I have been learning more and more about Smartboards in preparation of getting one next school year. I have been making lessons and discussing with teachers at Keeling who already have one of how things are going and sharing ideas.
lcelaya said
Since last tech. coach meeting I have been working hard with my video technology class to develop a more creative morning announcement program. We have acquired new equipment (5 camcorders, 3 PC’s and some software) to help us. We are now creating green screen videos to use on the show and have learned how to use a title animation software program that allows us to create video ending credits.
My next goal is to have the school purchase a 60″ plasma TV to install in our MPR. We can then attach it to a PC and link that PC to one in the video tech. lab. We can then create Power Pt shows and videos that we can run during lunches every day.
Ron Nason said
JoLynn McNeil has worked with individual teachers on the use of United Streaming in the classroom. We have a large percentage of SEI students at AMS. Providing video clips and images in classes with SEI students helps enhance instruction and build vocabulary for SEI students. JoLynn is holding drop-in sessions for teachers on United Streaming on the 20th of February.
Though the school’s computer labs were used to MAP test in January, in February lab use is increasing. Computer lab use is moving toward creating student projects. Projects range from 8th graders doing research on a decade of United States history to 6th graders using Power Point to display information they have learned on the weather, including charts they create in Excel.