I know that it has been a long time since a blog post, but Spring Break and a seek-long Internet outage in our school system prevented a lot of work from being accomplished.
The rush and pressure to finish something before the due date has helped to get things moving with this project. I have been working with the webmaster of our system to create a prototype website, which has now morphed into not a website about my school, but a database of technology-heavy lessons for teachers to contribute to all over our county. I will submit the link at the end so you can check out what it looks like so far.
The website link was distributed in an email to the teachers at my school for critiquing. They generally liked the format, but also gave me some feedback on improvements that could be made.
I am continuing this week to improve and streamline the site, and the teachers at my school were excited about having this resource!
http://www.rss.k12.nc.us/index.php/Forms/HighSchoolLessonPlans
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Friday, March 15, 2013
Different Perspective
This week was totally consumed with grant writing. Salisbury is fortunate to be the hometown of a very famous stock broker/hedge fund manager, Julian Robertson. Several years ago he setup a grant fund for businesses and schools exclusive to Rowan County. So much of the technology and repairs that our schools have benefited from are directly linked to this Foundation. They award several grants a year ranging from a couple thousand dollars to a couple hundred thousand dollars.
I resolved early last year to write a major grant for North Rowan to double the number of iPad carts. We were fortunate to obtain funding 4 years ago for 1:1 student iPods, but now the trend in education is moving towards iPads. This puts us at a disadvantage amongst our school system. We are not the first on the list to receive new technology because on paper we already have plenty.
This means that the option to get new technology ASAP falls to the people at the schools who put in the work to advocate for themselves.
Okay, on to the reason why I titled this blog, "Different Perspective". Writing this grant I had to look at NRHS in facts and figures. Test scores, growth, graduation rate, discipline referrals, etc. It was the first time I had given the school an overall look instead of what I see here day to day. Since NRHS became a 1:1 iPod Touch school, test scores have risen by over 20%, graduation rates have risen 15%, and discipline referrals are down 60% per 100 students.
The point being, today showed me more reasons to praise our school, and maybe a different way of approaching the features and what things need to be said about this school. It was a neat perspective I did not expect to have!
I resolved early last year to write a major grant for North Rowan to double the number of iPad carts. We were fortunate to obtain funding 4 years ago for 1:1 student iPods, but now the trend in education is moving towards iPads. This puts us at a disadvantage amongst our school system. We are not the first on the list to receive new technology because on paper we already have plenty.
This means that the option to get new technology ASAP falls to the people at the schools who put in the work to advocate for themselves.
Okay, on to the reason why I titled this blog, "Different Perspective". Writing this grant I had to look at NRHS in facts and figures. Test scores, growth, graduation rate, discipline referrals, etc. It was the first time I had given the school an overall look instead of what I see here day to day. Since NRHS became a 1:1 iPod Touch school, test scores have risen by over 20%, graduation rates have risen 15%, and discipline referrals are down 60% per 100 students.
The point being, today showed me more reasons to praise our school, and maybe a different way of approaching the features and what things need to be said about this school. It was a neat perspective I did not expect to have!
Monday, March 4, 2013
Collecting Resources
Again, I realize it has been a long time since I have posted. It is not indicative of any lack of research and work on my part, but busyness at school and working to collect what resources I will need. Last week, I decided to use my professional development training day to have teachers provide lesson plans that are heavy in technology usage. The goal of this is to build up the database of resources on the webpage for teachers to use. I encouraged teachers from all subjects to contribute what they had so that the resources would appeal to a broader range of teachers. I think I came to the realization last week that this website will be in a "bare bones" kind of stage when the semester finishes, but I hoping to continue improving it and potentially encouraging other technology facilitators to take on creating a web page for their schools like what is being created for NRHS.
I tried to start working on making the changes and additions to the actual website several times, but find that I need more information on a section, or I think of a better way to present other info. I have been brainstorming to try and see what kind of sharing and interactivity features I could have on the website. I would love this place to be somewhere where teachers from other schools could post tech-heavy plans, but I do not think the Rowan System structured these pages to do that. I could also see them being pages for teachers to post from each specific school. This would still allow other teachers to view, and would give them an easy opportunity retrieve lessons by going to the individual schools lessons.
There has not been difficulty in meeting the class's requirement for the final project, but I do feel pressure to make this a sustainable webpage for the system. It's main purpose is to show off the accomplishments and successes that have occurred at NRHS since the implementation of the 1:1 iPod Touch program. The secondary goal, and the one that I believe will drive traffic on the site are the teacher resources like lesson plans, and favorite apps. I will continue to work on this stuff and hopefully become a better, more regular poster in the future!
I tried to start working on making the changes and additions to the actual website several times, but find that I need more information on a section, or I think of a better way to present other info. I have been brainstorming to try and see what kind of sharing and interactivity features I could have on the website. I would love this place to be somewhere where teachers from other schools could post tech-heavy plans, but I do not think the Rowan System structured these pages to do that. I could also see them being pages for teachers to post from each specific school. This would still allow other teachers to view, and would give them an easy opportunity retrieve lessons by going to the individual schools lessons.
There has not been difficulty in meeting the class's requirement for the final project, but I do feel pressure to make this a sustainable webpage for the system. It's main purpose is to show off the accomplishments and successes that have occurred at NRHS since the implementation of the 1:1 iPod Touch program. The secondary goal, and the one that I believe will drive traffic on the site are the teacher resources like lesson plans, and favorite apps. I will continue to work on this stuff and hopefully become a better, more regular poster in the future!
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Collection
This week I have begun to collect pictures, quotes, documents, and examples for the website. Most will be used in sections to give specifics on how the iOS program is implemented here at NRHS. This is much more difficult that I thought that it would be. There have been several times that I have sat down to work on the site and found that I needed to go get more information or that I needed to do more planning before I actually made edits and additions to the page.
I am planning on bringing a camera to school tomorrow to take high quality images of students (no faces) working or of the device itself being used so that their will be some true classroom examples. There is also video that was taken by another technology facilitator with a professional camera that I plan to obtain the files for (once he gets back from New Orleans) and use. They showcase 5 different classrooms of varying subject matter and technology utilization.
Sorry if my blogs have been erratic, I had 7 teachers get trained on OS X Lion and I had to get their carts prepped to go out to them, and I also had to attend a 2 day meeting in Chapel Hill, and after technology talk all day with no breaks he thought of getting on a writing a blog never entered my head.
Now that most of that busy stuff is out of the way I hope to be putting more work into the website.
I am planning on bringing a camera to school tomorrow to take high quality images of students (no faces) working or of the device itself being used so that their will be some true classroom examples. There is also video that was taken by another technology facilitator with a professional camera that I plan to obtain the files for (once he gets back from New Orleans) and use. They showcase 5 different classrooms of varying subject matter and technology utilization.
Sorry if my blogs have been erratic, I had 7 teachers get trained on OS X Lion and I had to get their carts prepped to go out to them, and I also had to attend a 2 day meeting in Chapel Hill, and after technology talk all day with no breaks he thought of getting on a writing a blog never entered my head.
Now that most of that busy stuff is out of the way I hope to be putting more work into the website.
Friday, February 1, 2013
The Idea
I am very excited about my project. My goal is to build the webpage that shows the successes of my current school with a 1:1 project, and also provides resources to teachers who may now just be receiving new technology. My initial challenge is that I have not really done any kind of webpage designing since I did HTML in high school! The program our school system uses, Expression Engine, seems pretty good, but I want to make sure I make the site as attractive and functional as possible. I have been given access by the webmaster to edit pages and start building the site. I have also started to compile information and to find resources that can be used on the site. I hope that soon I can begin loading some of the information on to the page, and eventually the videos and pictures.
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