Step One – Find Vision
Step Two – Tell Others About Your Vision
Step Three – Be Realistic
Step Four – Install, Maintain, & Train, Train, Train
Step Four A – Get Staff Excited
Step Five – …And Then Train Some More!
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Step One – Find Vision
Last summer, before the 08-09 School Year began, I spent quite a bit of time recovering from the just finished school year and summer school. I spent quite a bit time and thought trying to come up with what would be the “next big thing” for my district in regards to its technology program. What could I do to kickstart the coming school year? How could I get the faculty and staff pumped up for technology in the classroom and for the students? How could I change lives with the district’s technology? I had made some self goals earlier in the year that I had printed out and stuck on the wall next to my desk as a reminder, how could I achieve them?
- The educational environment should be enhanced by technology
- Technology should be used to provoke change and thought
- The district should strive to become a leader in technology for its students, staff, and community
I always thought of those as “big goals.” I mean – of course I want the educational environment to be enhanced by technology, of course I want my school district to be looked at as a leader in technology, of course I want technology to provoke change and thought.
“Provoke change and thought” – those words “provoke,” “change,” “thought” have always felt heavy to me. Heavy like that life changing heavy. It’s my hope that I can help with the impact of technology in the classroom, and that teachers will use all the resources available to them in their teaching, that students will be moved and think outside the box, and that they’ll go on to do great things, and become great leaders. When I say great things, I’m talking ripple in the water kinds of great things. Isn’t that what we all want? Isn’t that why teachers became teachers, principals became principals, the school nurse wanted to be the school nurse, the school cooks cook, the superintendent supers… We all want to be part of the zoomed out, bigger picture. We all want to provoke thought and change and have an impact on the world. How can I do that?
First off, I needed vision. I found it here, at The Fischbowl. If you haven’t watched the “Did You Know?” video, please do so. You can find different versions of it on the web; check out youtube for the different versions as well. The Fischbowl was the site that started me on my way with what I’d kick off the new technology-filled school year with.
Over the course of several blog posts, I’ll cover what I attempted to do this school year in regards to giving my district’s technology program a vision.
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Step Two – Tell Others About Your Vision
Part 2 of my “what I attempted to do this school year in regards to giving my district’s technology program a vision” blog series.
I needed vision, so I found vision. Here, at The Fischbowl, along with the “Did You Know/Shift Happens” video found all of the interweb and on youtube in different versions. Now, what do I do with it?
At the start of every school year, we have an all staff breakfast and inservice, which then breaks out into teacher inservices at each building. Typically, I speak at the all staff inservice and don’t travel to each building with a presentation. Typically, I talk for just a few minutes about the installations and upgrades that took place over summer, about anything new in PowerTeacher, about any new software we’ll be using, a quick general lowdown of what can be expected in the new school year with technology. I’d like to think of myself as an energetic, full of passion, non-stuttering public speaker, but I’m not. I always feel like I’m a nervous stuttering mess.
How can I make this year different then? How can I let everyone know that the Technology Department has a new vision and some new goals? …What were those goals again?
- The educational environment should be enhanced by technology
- Technology should be used to provoke change and thought
- The district should strive to become a leader in technology for its students, staff, and community
I downloaded the powerpoint presentation from here, and changed it to match my district. I made one presentation for each building, and tweaked the beginning of each presentation to match what projects that been completed for that particular building, giving it a “building-wide personal touch” towards what the each building’s teachers would watch. For music, I downloaded one of the updated “Did You Know?” videos, which contained some pretty cool background music, and I played that video minimized for sound sake. Timing worked out fine with playing the powerpoint along with the video.
And that’s what I did. Instead of speaking to the whole district and being typical stuttering, nervous Chris, I was given time at each building for a smaller scale technology breakout session. I started the session off with my typical “Welcome back, I’m excited about technology this year…” ditty, then passed out the “Tech Handbook” (which is 3-5 pages of all-things-tech, giving instructions on how to use the district website, how to check email, how to print, how to-do-anything-tech. I’ll post this to whatthe-tech sometime) like I do every year, then we watched the presentation. (You’ve watched it by now, right? Watch the original, watch the new versions of the original, then check out my tweaked powerpoints. It shows the world our students will be entering. I closed my presentation out with “So, do you have 2020 Vision? Not your eyesight. The Class of 2020. Think about the world they will live in. Are we using all the resources we have available to prepare them?”)
And it went well. I had good feedback from each of the groups, and for the first time in awhile, I felt like I had let some of my excitement for technology spread maybe ‘just a lil bit’ to the other district staff. I even had a teacher ask me to present to his Careers class students, and another teacher ask for copy to show his students. It was a good kickstart, but was it good enough to meet those goals?
Over the course of several blog posts, I’ll cover what I attempted to do this school year in regards to giving my district’s technology program a vision.
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Step Three – Be Realistic
Part 3 of my “what I attempted to do this school year in regards to giving my district’s technology program a vision” blog series.
So I had a vision for the technology program, I told the teachers, principals, and other staff all about it, and after doing so, I felt like maybe there was some excitement building in the air concerning this stuff called technology and its newfound potential impact in the district.
I was feeling pretty good about what I had done, and it didn’t take long to realize I was far from being able to ride that high horse into the sunset. These things take time.
First day of school – I ran around like a madman as I plugged in computers to their appropriate power outlet, connected loose power cords to the back of monitors, worked on computers without sound (unplugged the audio cable that someone plugged into the microphone port and plugged it into the speaker port), connected network cables that weren’t plugged into the wall, plugged in surge protectors that had gotten unplugged over summer, flipped the “on” switch on surge protectors that had gotten turned off over summer, fixed computer issues that were probably issues at the end of the last school year but that weren’t reported until day one of the first day of the new year – all the typical, usual, standard, stressing workorder fun that I’m used to, but that I had somewhere along the line thought would’ve magically gone away when I gave my “life changing” inservice presentation.
It’s not that I thought staff would instantly have an understanding of how to solve their own technology problems after watching the presentation, it’s more that I had given myself the false idea that “This year is gonna be different, I can feel it!” I needed to be realistic; these things take time. I can’t expect a teacher to be fully utilizing the technology resources in her classroom if she struggles with turning her computer on, or with making sure the computer is even plugged up with power to turn it on.
It was the first week of school when I realized we definitely had a need for instructional technology training for staff. The lofty goals we were trying to set sail with – there’s no way we can sail with them, if we don’t have a properly trained crew that will know how to take on the stormy technological seas along the way.
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Step Four – Install, Maintain, & Train, Train, Train
Part 4 of my “what I attempted to do this school year in regards to giving my district’s technology program a vision” blog series.
Over the summer, it had been decided that we’d try out a new Instructional Technology Program with our certified staff. Several possibilities were thrown around and I contacted several other school districts already with programs in place to see what they were doing, what was working for them, and here’s what was decided for us:
* A REQUIRED set of online courses that all certified staff would have to complete before a set date. These courses would be worked on during time after school, time before school, planning periods, or any professional development time. Why online and why during school time? Our afterschool programs, meetings, and schedules are insane. There was no way for us to be able to fit a new, required technology program into an afterschool setting.
* An OPTIONAL set of courses (some online, some not) that participants would have to complete before a set date. Some participants could receive a stipend (if their name was drawn), some could use these as Career Ladder hours, and some could participant voluntarily.
Why have two tracks, required and optional? We wanted to have required courses, so that we could develope a baseline of knowledge. And so we could say “Our staff know how to do this.” At the end of this year, all certified staff will have accomplished the same set of courses and should, in theory, have the same particular knowledge in that area of technology. With the optional, we’ll have a group of staff that we know accomplished the same baseline as the required, as well as some particular additional technology-focused training.
Then, in theory, next year we’ll be able to assign a new set of required courses and a new set of optional, and we’ll need up with four tracks – those that are just taking the required, those that are taking the required and took the optional last year, those that took just the required last year and are taking the optional this year, and those that took the optional last year and this year. The “in theory” with this is that we’ll able to let those that have a desire to utilize technology as a tool in the classroom to continue to have that desire and let it grow, and then those that don’t, well, they will continue to grow as well, except maybe some kicking and screaming will be involved. We take everyone along for the ride.
No Teacher Left Behind.
Concerning the online classes, we chose InfoSource Learning for Required and some of the Optional. We also use Moodle for parts of the Optional program. (I’ll dive deeper into these programs in a later post.)
So, we have our Instructional Technology Program running, now what? Deliver the goods. How ’bout installing all the new tools and resources you’ve been talking up, and mainintaing them as well. There is nothing that causes more poor technology integration than having non-existent or non-working technology in the classroom. For technology to be fully utilized by staff, you as the Tech Dept must provide quality installations, maintenance, and training to the folks that will work with it daily.
What were those goals again? Our goals:
- The educational environment should be enhanced by technology
- Technology should be used to provoke change and thought
- The district should strive to become a leader in technology for its students, staff, and community.
Oh, those lofty goals we were trying to set sail with – Not only is there no way we can sail with them if we don’t have a properly trained crew that will know how to take on the stormy technological seas along the way, but there’s no way we’ll even be able to leave the dock if there isn’t a working, non-leaking ship (I.E. the computer, the projector, the interactive whiteboard).
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Step Four A – Get Staff Excited
I read this before, but have been reading it again…
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I’m planning on tweaking with the “What If…” PowerPoint and using it as an opener to next school year’s Technology Program. Call it a potential “Step Five” in the “what I attempted to do this school year in regards to giving my district’s technology program a vision” …only, of course, Step Five begins in Year 2 and, of course, takes place after steps 1,2,3,4…
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Step Five – …And Then Train Some More!
Part 5 of my “what I attempted to do this school year in regards to giving my district’s technology program a vision” blog series.
It’s been awhile since I’ve blogged on this. What have we been doing? Well, we’ve been training, and we’re rounding the corner towards wrapping up a second year of having an Instructional Technology Program with our certified staff. Here’s what we got:
* A REQUIRED set of online courses that all certified staff would have to complete before a set date. These courses would be worked on during time after school, time before school, planning periods, or any professional development time. There are two “tracks” to the required courses. The first is a set of courses assigned to the teachers who last year only participated in the required courses and who, again, this year are only participating in the required courses. The second is a set of courses assigned to the teachers who last year took the “optional” courses along with the required courses and, for this year, are taking just the required courses.
* An OPTIONAL set of courses (some online, some afterschool) that participants would have to complete before a set date. Some participants could receive a stipend (if their name was drawn), some could use these as Career Ladder hours, and some could participant voluntarily. There are two “tracks” to the optional courses. The first is a set of courses assigned to the teachers who last year didn’t participate in the optional courses but, this year, are. The second is a set of courses assigned to the teachers who last year took the optional courses and, for this year, are taking a new set of optional courses.
Why have REQUIRED and OPTIONAL tracks, two required and two optional? We wanted to have required courses, so that we could develope a baseline of knowledge. And so we could say “Our staff know how to do this.” At the end of this year, all certified staff will have accomplished the same set of courses and should, “in theory,” have the same particular knowledge in that area of technology. For example, we required all staff to take a teacher webpage course and to have a teacher webpage. And having two required tracks means we have a set of staff that are only doing the baseline stuff, and a set of staff that are a little more advanced than the baseline stuff.
With the optional, we’ll have a group of staff that we know accomplished the same baseline as the required, as well as some particular additional technology-focused training. Having two tracks here means we can work with those that “want to be more advanced” as well as with those that “really want to be more advanced.”
So if I’m a teacher only taking what’s required, I’m in Track One. If I’m a teacher that took the optional stuff last year but this year I’m just doing the required, I’m in Track Three. If I’m a teacher that took only the required last year and this year I’m doing the optional too, I’m assigned Track One and Track Two. If I’m a teacher that did the required and optional last year and this year too, I’m assigned Track Three and Track Four. So “in theory” with this, we’ll be able to let those that have a desire to utilize technology as a tool in the classroom to continue to have that desire and let it grow until it bursts, and then those that don’t, well, they will continue to grow as well, except maybe some kicking and screaming will be involved. Everyone’s on the technology wagon – NTLB, No Teacher Left Behind.
Concerning the online classes, we chose InfoSource Learning and use their curriculum. Next year, we’re planning on using their SimpleWorkshop so we can make our own curriculum. Concerning the afterschool classes, we do these typically four times a month at two hours a piece, and the Tech Dept creates the curriculum.
So, we have what appears to be a successful Instructional Technology Program, but it’s only our second year. Wait… second year… Isn’t this the “what I attempted to do this school year in regards to giving my district’s technology program a vision” blog series? I said “this school year” didn’t I? Dang… it’s taken two years so far, and I’m still working on it. We’re getting there though, wherever “there” is.
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