Tuesday, September 2, 2008

It Begins



Wow, the school year has started and a whole new list of challenges are upon us. Here is the run down of my year so far;
1) Network Restrictions, 2) School Website, 3) Student Blogging, 4) Staff Blogging, 5) In-Tech duties, 6) Personal Training, and finally my wish list.

1) This year our IT guys have attempted to make life easier for the network adminsitrators by locking us off of our servers and attempting to fix all problems themselves. So far, I think they have been overwhelmed with requests. Many problems are fixed easily and quickly, while other easy quick fixes are taking forever. I have confidence in the philosophy but many kinks will need to be worked out.

2) Our school website (Drupal) is up and the staff are working ferosously to get their websites updated. I love to see my staff work on their own to make our school website look good. I am proud to have been a part of bringing in this new style of website and I will promote it along with our awesome staff until I am blue in the face.

3) This year I have made a real push for student blogging. By Christmas, we should have grades 1 to 3 all blogging along with a mix of other classes. I find this to be exciting and the prospect of passing the students blogs from one grade to the next even more exiting. An educational career electronic portfolio already started. I am personally blogging with all of my classes, ELA, Information Processing and CPT. I anticipate some of my students blogs to be very interesting.

4) Staff blogging is kind of my lowest priority goal for this year. I had hoped to have staff blogging last year so they could learn before teaching. This year some will teach and learn at the same time. Our school has instituted a weekly PLC and I hope to incorporate blogging in this.

5) With the change in network admin. I have been given the ok to use my free net. admin. time as an In-school Technology Teacher. I have mixed my preps and net. admin. times together to free up one hour every day that I am available to staff and classes for training. I hope to do a lot of one-on-one work with staff as well as get into some classrooms and co-teach. After two days of school my schedule is starting to really fill up. Who needs preps anyway? (I will regret that statement)

6) Personal training. I am hoping to learn as much as I did last year but I am not sure that is possible. With the guidance of Donna Desroche, I hope to continue catching conferences both on-line and not to increase my abilities and interests. I will begin with the K-12 Online conference this October.

7) Finally, my wish list.
  • Smartboards in the school.
  • Laptop program every year.
  • I phone (personal)
  • Macbook (personal)
  • Motorized webcam to stream school sporting events
  • Faster internet
  • Backchatter that is reliable for my class.
  • Flatclassroom projects coming out of my school.
  • and of course "health"

2 comments:

thekyleguy said...

Sounds like you have got a great grasp on you role. It will be great to follow your experiences as the tech leader. Best of luck and have fun.

Anonymous said...

Smart boards are ridiculous! I used to demo like 8 years ago and I wanted one then. Its a wise choice. So are the macs. Both would make teaching so much easier.

You could always get a camera person for live web casts of games. Make it like a school intensive thing then you don't have to shell out extra bucks.