Everyone knows I am a fan of Sci Fi. If I could, I would watch Science Fiction all day every day. Back in my college days I actually watched 17 episodes of Star Trek a week. I love Star Trek especially the original, because the episodes always made some social commentary. So I was quite pleasantly suprised when I was searching Slideshare the other day and found a presentation on lessons learned from one of my favorite shows of all time.
I’m at the Craft Hospital. It’s the place they send burnt-out TRTs from Portsmouth. I’m not quite sure what they do for TRTs in other school divisions, but in Portsmouth, we’ve had this arrangement for a while. We usually get sent in groups, but in special circumstances they send us individually. So now you know why my auto responder doesn’t say why I am out or when I’ll be back. It’s really not so bad here. It’s quiet and it’s beautiful outdoors. The food is really good. I had some visitors yesterday - DD, Big K and Ms. T. They sat and watched TV with me in the lounge.
As I write this I realize that this is my first post in months. It is a definite sign that shows how bad things were before I left. But the fact that they let me have my laptop back so soon is a good sign. I know this, because I’ve been here before…here are some pictures from when the 10+2 TRTs got sent here during the summer. You’ll notice that Nancy got her laptop back before anyone else…
Ever wonder what a TRT does during the summer?I mean, TRTs are responsible for staff development…there’s not a whole of teaching staff around during the summer, so what do TRTs do?Well it depends on their contract.Some school divisions hire TRTs on a 10 month contract – they are around when the teachers are.Other school divisions have TRTs around during the summer to do teacher academies and other special projects.If you are a TRT in Portsmouth, you could be in either situation.I have the distinct pleasure of working all summer. It’s great for me – I always know what my summer job is going to be … and there is no learning curve…
So this summer I am working on 13-14 projects in an attempt to get ready for the opening of school.It’s a lot of work, and there are days that I am not sure I will get it all done, but my goal is to close 2 projects a week and beg for mercy when the others don’t get done.Our summer project list was huge…Here’s a picture of it…
When I did training on United Streaming earlier this year, I mentioned the DEN and recommended that folks check it out. The DEN (Discovery Educator’s Network) is a community of educators who use digital media among other things as they integrate technology into their practice. The DEN sponsors an annual national institute to provide additional professional development and networking opportunities for a limited number of DEN STAR members. I am fortunate to be one of the 100 people selected this year. I will be attending the institute this summer and hope to bring back lots of information for everyone!
Since I was notified of my acceptance, I have been reading the blogs and discussion boards at the DEN more often. (Surprised?) On my visit today, I stopped by Matt Monjan’s blog and found out about this commercial for Discovery.
Ok. So they are absolutely cute, and Matt’s post inspired me. So I wrote this little ditty for you all:
It’s so obvious
For anyone to see
I’m a geeky girl
I love technology
I love Ms. Streeter (my boss); she’s very good to me
Boom de yada, Boom de yada, Boom de yada
I love my flip cam
I love Avatars
I love VoiceThreads
My blogging’s come real far
I love Web 2.0; something’s always new you know
Boom de yada, Boom de yada, Boom de yada
I love del.icio.us
And portaportal too
All my teachers should know
I love harassing you!
I really love my job even when it’s frustrating…
Boom de yada, Boom de yada, Boom de yada
Boom de yada, Boom de yada, Boom de yada
Boom de yada, Boom de yada, Boom de yada
I got to thinking that this might make a great meme about our jobs…and if I were going to tag some folks on my team I would choose Christine, Brian, and Deloris
Today we had our first round of presentations on the VSTE conference. I’m always a little apprehensive when the TRTs are supposed to give presentations. I never know if my “stuff” will actually make a meaningful contribution for these folks. For example, my first ever blog in-service was for the TRTs. I was new at blogging myself, but I wanted to do the best that I could. I spent hours getting ready; had folders with handouts but judging from the results about half of the TRTs didn’t find the information valuable. In fact, some of those in my audience left the handouts behind. The TRTs are one of the hardest audiences…So today, I was glad that I wasn’t first. I am having a little difficulty with my presentation, but I’ll get it all worked out before the 25th.
We are supposed to share what we learned at the conference. One of the presentations was rather short. It may be that with our push to present at the conference (I think our team did 7 presentations) we may not have been able to see a whole lot of what other divisions brought to the table. We might keep that in mind when we receive the request for proposals for the 2009 conference. We had a delightful presentation today by Al in which he showed us stop animation and the K-12 Voicethread site. It was his first presentation to the group and he really did well.
Kudos to Al who is doing a great job in his first year as a TRT!!
WOW. The last two months have been absolutely like a whirlwind. When I think of everything that I’ve been doing, I’m grateful for the lull that this week has afforded me. I looked at my schedule and thought ‘I have time to update my blog at work!!’ Don’t remember the last time that happened. What have I been doing? More like what haven’t I been doing…In the last two months I have been to three conferences - EdTech 2008, VSTE, and VSRA (I presented at two of them), finished a PBL curriculum project, took a five hour class on using the Promethean board and completed Thinkfinity bridge training. I also gave two workshops on blogging for the social studies folks and built a ning group for the math department. I get tired just thinking about it, especially since I still had to do all of my regular work with my teachers. My next few posts will be reflective…better late than never.
Well…it’s 9:00pm and I just walked in. If I don’t stop to reflect now, it won’t happen. So much has happened today. Let’ s see. I started the day at Victory Elementary giving the teachers some quick tips on technology integration. I introduced them to Trackstar and reveiwed Portaportal (Victory has it’s own portaportal.) I reminded the teachers that I would add anything to the portaportal based on their requests.
Then I went to Brighton Elementary. I had quite a day ahead of me. The first grade is studying shapes in Math. The teachers are all at different comfort levels with technology, so I had three totally different lessons planned…
I used powerpoint in Mrs. Gamble’s class. She helped to prepare the lesson by taking photos in her room with her students and gving them to me on CD. I used the photos to create an interactive powerpoint. Mrs. Gamble uses powerpoint with her class regularly, but had never used an interactive text-box or a wireless keyboard. Her kids were a little intimidated at first. The first few who offered to try backed out in that cute way little ones do when they are totally overwhelmed by a new experience. Mrs. Gamble and I are already planning to co-teach again. Maybe next time her kids will be more comfortable.
Mrs. Taxson wanted to do a project on shapes this week. She remembered the shape hunt that Mrs. Mojica’s students went on last year and decide to embellish on that activity. Mrs. Taxson’s students use KidPix regularly - almost daily. They are used to a routine where they write independantly and then use KidPix on a rotational basis to type their sentences and then illustrate them. So Mrs. Taxson and I decide to add on to her students’ repertoire of skills with the program. They will be creating shape stories importing digital photos. We will use the slideshow feature to publish the student stories. Today we used the hamilton cameras to take photos of shapes to use in our stories. After our shap hunt I put the photos on the media drive in preparation for tomorrow. Tomorrow we will go into the computer lab and create the stories.
I took Kidspiration templates into Mrs. Smith’s class. Mrs. Smith wanted to start using Kidspiration with her class. She is interested in using it for writing, but her students had never used it before. So we used the shape templates and the wireless keyboard to introduce the program to her class. The idea of using one hand to move the pointer and the other to hold the left click button, was a little difficult for her kids. But they were very motivated…so we worked on clicking and dragging to sort shapes…
Let’s see what else did I do today…
I met with the AP at Victory over some questions on equipment
I met with the principal at Brighton to confirm training dates for next week
I found a Kindergarten worksheet on recycling made in Word. I’ll need to recreate it in KidPix to accomodate a request from Mrs. Brazier.
I did some troubleshooting on a document camera for one of our ActivBoard users
I fielded several help requests and put helpdesk tickets in to get some additional assitance to the teachers
I completed follow up correspondance and additioanl paperwork to reserve rooms for some upcoming division wide training that I am coordinating
I compileded registration information and created rosters for division-wide Promethean training
I met briefly with three teachers (individually) to help them fush out ideas they have for technology integration
What a day…I’m exhausted and I’ve given 110%. For whatever reason, that 110% s apparently not enough…that’s the message I get when hear that the Superintendent intends to decrease the number of people we have providing my service toe teachers nex year. If I am one of the TRTs who survive the cut, I will have more work to do as a result of the cut. Next year is not looking promising…
Back from vacation and I’ve spent the last 3 hours on the net…couldn’t help myself. I’ve been in Orlando, FL for the last week at my mother’s timeshare Westgate
Lakes. An interesting set of circumstances left me without reliable internet access all week.
First, my laptop died Sunday night. I just got settled in my room and paid for the wireless service, started to check my email. It was a little slow, but I managed to squeak out a few replies. Then the screen went black – and it was dead as a doornail! Not to be denied internet access on my vacation, I turn to “my mother’s” laptop, (Ask me about how my mother got a laptop; you’ll get a good laugh) only to find it did not have a wireless card.
Monday morning finds me at Best Buy buying a wireless card…Monday evening, I’m back in business. Then the wireless signal in our building died. “Tech Support” assured me that they would reset the signal and everything would be fine in 15 minutes. After it was reset, the signal was so weak it was worthless. Tuesday morning “Tech Support” realized the issue would require maintenance and wireless would not be available until Friday. “Tech Support” lied to get me off the phone…the wireless was never fixed.
I actually rested most of the week. Spent a few days at Universal Studios, and read three books that I have been trying to finish for the past year. When I was a kid, I would have given anything to be able to spend a week like that. I also would have finished several more books…but my priorities have definitely changed. Within five minutes of coming home, I was on the ‘net – gettin my fix. Feelin better now that I’ve been connected again…
Oh - a word of caution:If you go to a resort and the internet access is provided by ExtreamTV you are screwed…make alternate plans.
I don’t know how many times in the last week someone has asked me “Did you get my email?” Most of you know I spend close to 12 hours a day at a computer (10 hours at work and a few hours at home). I check my PPS email several times a day. If you’ve sent an email to me and enough time has passed for you to wonder if I have received it… chances are I have already responded.
Email is an automatic service. Unless there is a severe network failure or crash, I will receive any email sent to me on the PPS network within 2-3 minutes. While PPS only requires staff members to check email daily, as a member of IT, I check much more frequently. As a matter of fact, I am more likely to email someone than I am to call.
So check your email before you ask if I’ve received yours…’cause the question might really be “Did you read my response?”
I spent this past week at Regent University attending the required residency activities for my doctoral program. Sometimes I find the immersion in academia to be exhilarating, but this week was just information overload. I think it was just too close to the NECC conference. Then of course there is the Teacherline course that I am taking.
Some things that really stood out to me this week were:
He spoke about training at-risk students to build resiliency skills in the academic portions of their lives. As we all know, our kids have survived tons of stuff. They learn survival behavior from day one, but they are unable to learn how to survive in classrooms. Many times the setbacks they they get in school are trivial compared to what they have overcome personally. Dr. Arroyo piloted direct instruction of these academic resiliency skills at a school in Norfolk - their office referral rate dropped by 80%. I think that’s something to really think about.
Michelle Miller, a fellow school leadership student, is researching the technology leadership characteristics of school principals. You’ve got to know that I found that fascinating. I thought that her ideas were great, and I can’t wait to hear the results of her research.
Two recent grads gave presentations on how they completed the dissertation process. I was very interested, because I started my research in the Spring.
Well, Tech Cadet Boot Camp starts Monday! I’m looking forward working with the kids and the projects that they will be taking on.
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