Ruth’s Ruckus2

This is a post typed during my blogging 101 workshop.

Apparently it’s quite the buzz.  I’m so excited!!  Eighteen months ago, I asked the Instructional Technology department to provide a blog portal for teachers at PPS.  I just knew that if we built it, they would come.  And now it’s happening…we’ve had 6 inquiries about blogs in the last 2 weeks.  I’m actually redesigning my blog workshop so that I’ll be ready to give the workshop in our “Tech Tuesday” lineup this fall.  There are so many ways that teachers can use blogs.  My personal favorite is the virtual literature circle.  Here are a couple of examples…

• http://thedugoutsounderliteraturecircle.blogspot.com/
• http://www.gtps.k12.nj.us/technology/litcircles5th/
•  http://mrsperrybfg.blogspot.com/2007/01/welcome-to-bfg-literature-circle-blog.html

If you are interested in blogging with your class, let me know.  I would love to help you get started.

I spent most of my time in June working on the TEACH Academy initiative.  If you didn’t make it, you really missed a great opportunity.  TEACH was a 3 day technology professional development experience.  We took over the Starbase Victory facility and ran 7 hands on concurrent sessions every day.  Wow.  We even had a strand for administrators on Thursday the 19^th. We had a great mix of presenters: Debbie Rollins, Tom Spencer, Doug Adams and Paul Barron as well as our own folks.

I gotta give props to Christine Munroe who handled all the registration and all the changes.  Karen Streeter who was the visionary who knew we could do it back in January when she dreamed it up and the TRTs who both taught sessions and assisted throughout the week. Special thanks (what is this an Emmy speech?) needs to go to Jason Sullivan,  AJ Boone, Bob Roberts and Tami Barker from the engineering and applications groups who gave both remote and onsite assistance troubleshooting and getting things fixed.  All hail the Great PPS Websense Nazi who unblocked sites as necessary at the last minute so the show could go on…I know I’ve forgotten folks…you all did so much to help. 

Between the preparation and the actual event, I thought I was going to die.  When I finally got my car unloaded on Friday and had a chance to unwind, I just fell out.  I didn’t leave my house all weekend.  My good friend Melissa is a TRT for Bristol Schools and she does a teacher academy all on her own…don’t know how she does it.  

I still have to finish the debrief but overall we got lots of positive comments, some lessons learned, and 115 teachers who were immersed in technology and will be ready for followup in September…Oh - I’ve got some pictures…

 I’ve spent the last two days in professional development.  On one hand, I feel like a limp dishrag.  On the other, I can’t wait to try some of these things out.  Karen Streeter, my supervisor, arranged for Tammy Worcester to do professional development for the TRTs for two days.  It was just us, the Portsmouth folks and it was great.  Tammy is a nationally known Instructional Technology Specialist from Kansas.  She’s been in the field for a very long time.  Lots of the things she showed us were applications that we should have been able to figure out on our own. However when you are working at 100mph every day, you just don’t have time to think about some of these things or play with applications the way you’d like.  

As I see it, Karen was doing herself a great favor by arranging this for us.  In my mind it was at least the equivalent of going to the VSTE ITRT mini-conference.  We spent a day learning how to support academics and another day learning about using web applications.  We would have probably had the same kind of learning experiences at the mini-conference, but logistically our whole team would not have been able to go.  First of all the ITRT conference is in the summer and most of our folks don’t work in the summer.  Secondly I think the cost (travel, meals, lodging) would have been more, and this way we got two days of professional development instead of one.

So at the end of day two I am wiped.  But since we had arranged to be in the ODU tri-cities center, we needed to make especially sure that we returned the teaching lab back to the way we found it…(my mom taught me manners). So, the question is how do you clean up after a group of TRTs?  The answer - with dread…I know this because I end up cleaning up after these folks most Fridays. 

      The first thing we had to do was to empty the recycle bin (a large blue container with the recycle symbol on it above which is a sign clearly stating that it is for copy paper only).  It was filled to the brim with garbage from everyone’s lunch from the two days we were there.  Of course if they had followed the lab rules about not eating in the lab in the first place we wouldn’t have had to clean up their garbage.  Then of course we wanted to make sure the computers were all back in working condition.  Here again, my experience told me there would be an issue.  Most of the computers were fine; however one had been totally upended and left that way.  So the computer needed to be put back the way it was found.  

Other than that, the two days were great.  I look forward to finding language arts applications for the information we got. 

Thanks to all of the BES teachers who came to the inservice this evening.  The books that I featured templates from are available in the library and are featured in a previous blog post… http://ppsblogs.net/ruthokoye/2007/09/08/looking-for-ideas-we%e2%80%99ve-got-new-stuff/  

The powerpoint that I used is here: BES Jan 23 inservice