Each grade level has been given ipads to be shared amongst the teachers and used by teachers.  These are not supposed to be used by the students. 

 

Here is the list of free apps that they are using.  I cadged the list from a Title One teacher's list of apps that she likes :)

 

Free iPad apps:

 

Don't forget the Camera which can be used for pictures and videos.

Record of Reading - by Clemson University

An electronic form for taking a running record

Show Me Interactive Whiteboard - Turn your iPad into your personal interactive whiteboard. Can be used with a dongle to connect to the PB

Teacher Kit - A personal organizer for the teacher.

 - captures and generates data on behavior that teachers can share with parents and administrators

Evernote - great note-taking app

ClassDojoload

YouTube. This will make it easier to upload videos to your iPad

Doodlebuddy - may be useful - you will have to see :)

Phonics and Reading with MacGuffy Lite - has all the phonics families. Good for PB?

Ritter letter

December 5, 2012

We got some iPads to be used by teachers.  There is one iPad per grade-level team, so they need to be shared by 2-4 people.  They are intended for documentation, behavior management, evaluation (teacher, not student), things like that.  Not apps for practicing math or reading.

Here is something that I am learning about technology integration.  Guidance is very helpful!  I think iPads could be very useful for teachers.  There are two teachers in the building I know of that were on-board with iPads before this year.  The majority of the teachers are focused on what to do today with their students, and they often do what they have done before.  This is a natural part of working.  We get into a groove, and if it is working, we want to keep doing the same thing.  So when we gave these iPads to teachers, we told them to go and play around with them.  This was not very helpful for them, and consequently they did random, not very educational things with them.  This was only to be expected.

So this last Monday I sent out an email to all the teachers.  Here it is:

My apologies. You were given iPads with very little guidance on what is expected of these devices. Here are some general guidelines. I will visit your teams next week to clarify and answer any questions you might have.

Please note, these are guidelines for the iPads purchased with SINA money. There are other sets of iPads in the building which are for other purposes, purchased with other monies, and have different guidelines.

1. SHARING. These were given to each grade level team, Title One and Specialists. They were handed to the Team Leader, who was asked to familiarize themselves with these things. The expectation is that the TL load some apps onto the iPad for teacher use, and practice using it in the classroom. Then the iPad is to be SHARED amongst the team members. For example, for the Specialist Team, we will meet next week and figure out when each member will use our iPad. No one member of the team should use it exclusively. We are trying to figure out how to use these most effectively in the classroom, and that will happen if we all contribute to the process. I have been told that, since a team member has a personal iPad, they don't need the school one. This is a faulty assumption. Think of the iPads as a type of school equipment, like Promethean Boards. They are to be used for educational purposes, and everyone should try using them.

2. APPROPRIATE APPS. An email was sent out with some apps that have been used by teachers effectively in the classroom. Please try those first. For example, every teacher that does Reading Records should try the Reading Record app, it is getting rave reviews from teachers that use it. The focus for these iPads is for teachers to use them for recording, photos, videos and whatever else would be useful for teachers in the classroom. This does not include games (although Brian downloaded Temple Run on all of them as a test :)). There shouldn't be student games loaded on these iPads. These are not to be used by students, and if you have games loaded on them, I will assume they are for you and will delete them. Same goes for personal apps of any kind. It is important that we be professional in our use of technology.
I have set up a Youtube account for each grade level, Title One, and Specialists. I will set up each iPad so that you can take a video and have it upload easily to your YouTube account, and then show it in the classroom. So the time from taking the video to showing on the PB can be as short as 5 minutes (depends on the length of the video).


3. THERE IS NO EXPECTATION OF PRIVACY. Many of you have set up your email on the mail app. If you do this, please delete that account. It would be better to establish an icon that opens Safari to the Microsoft Exchange login page. That is more private but still relatively easy to get to. Anyone who uses the iPad can view your email if you set it up incorrectly. Jambura or myself (sorry, Jambura, but Culpepper told me you showed her) can show you how to set up the icon more privately. There are also ways to set up restrictions, but that is not much of a problem because students should not be on these anyway, and since we are sharing them, restrictions just make sharing harder. Also, we may rearrange how these iPads are distributed at any time, so again, no personal apps of any kind.

4. SUPPORT. I am still learning, and will continue to learn about new ways to use these devices in the classroom. Please share what you know when you find a great way to use these. I have learned a lot of new things just in the last week that teachers have had these. I will set up a document on the Common Drive with apps and uses in a folder called iPads. Please feel free to add to this, but you can also just email me any new fun things, and I will put them on the Common Drive.

Again, I will visit your teams next week for clarifications and to answer questions.

I have not had much feedback to this email.  I think this is a result of setting up guidelines after the teachers have the technology in hand.  The teachers would have been better served to have gotten these guidelines WITH the iPads and with a list of useful apps that they could try.

Live and learn!  Every experience I have with this integration project teaches me a lot about working with people.  I am more and more enthusiastic about technology in the classroom.  I am also more aware that how I treat the people that are doing the actual integration, the classroom teachers, makes a real difference in the outcome.  This seems like a very elementary lesson for me to learn, but it seems I must keep learning this all my life.

Next blog, list of apps that could be useful for these teachers!

Twelfth Week

Last week!

This is the end of the 1st trimester, so I will be starting to work with two new grades, 1st and 3rd grade.

I feel like I should do a summary of challenges and celebrations.  I am having trouble thinking of anything that I haven't covered already.  But I will list some for my own benefit so I remember them when I am starting again with new grades.

Challenges.

• Figuring out what is helpful for the grade.  This differs depending on the teacher, level of technology knowledge, grade level, and what they are learning at that grade level.
• Time.  I meet with the teachers during their planning time. This is VERY nice because I talk to the teachers more, but I don't get into the classes as much as would be helpful because I am busy with other things, including my media classes, at other times.
• Buy-in. How do I get them to want to continue this work.  I can set up lovely blogs, great software, and give lists of useful websites.  The classes may not do anything with them.  The challenge  here is for me to recognize when I have done all I could and let it go.  No sense making myself crazy if someone doesn't want to do what I think they SHOULD do.

Celebrations.

• Relationships.  I love talking to the teachers that I have worked with this last trimester.  They are great teachers, they want to implement (useful) technology, they are receptive to suggestions, and they have good suggestions themselves.  Yay teachers!
• Blogs.  The concentration has been on starting class blogs for parent communication and writing in the classroom.  This has been very successful and I have written about it a lot already.  Yay blogs!
• Learning.  I have learned so much more this trimester than I knew at the beginning.  I have talked and talked and studied and read and learned bunches.  And the more I learn the more I want to know.  Yay education!
• Specifically.  Blogs in every 2nd and 5th grade class.  Lots more reference work done with these grades for their content work.  School website overhaul.  Started teaching Google searching to 2nd through 5th grade.  Both grades practiced keyboarding all trimester.  5th grade was introduced to Read Write Gold, a software for assisting students with research.  General yay!
• I wrote a grant for one 5th grade classroom to get 11 iPads for their reading and writing workshops.  More to come on that, the grant was approved but we haven't gotten the iPads yet.  Also, each grade level will get an iPad for the teacher to help them video, photograph, and take notes on best practices.  Best practices both for the teachers and the students.  Yay iPads!

All in all, a good trimester.  I am trying to have reasonable expectations of the next trimester.  I know more about what I want to do, but I do not know the teachers that well, so I don't know what THEY want to do.  And that is pretty important. 

Eleventh Week

The Lowell Website  http://www.waterloo.k12.ia.us/schoolsites/lowell/


Our school website is fairly prescriptive.  All schools have the same template from Wordpress, and each school has a list of features that are required to be in place (mission statement, staff emails, etc.).  This is very helpful in many ways because when I started being in charge of the website I knew what needed to be on the page and didn't have to spend a lot of time re-inventing the wheel.

But as a result of getting all these teacher blogs, I feel that the Lowell website is more and more useful.  The class blogs have been added to the website, as well as the Art blog and the Music blog.  The media/library website is more useful as a result of learning more about how blogs are set up.  We have set up a Professional Development blog for the Math Coach and the Reading Coach.  Both coaches post their information from classes that they teach on Wednesdays, along with useful information and resources for teachers.

Then, as a result of looking at the website more often, we have gotten ideas to jazz up the home page a little.  We now have a "Spotlight on Success" part of the home page where we post student work which is nominated for a Principal's Award.  All teachers can nominate students for these awards.  They are nominated for writing, math, leadership, research, anything that teachers feel is a stand-out piece from a student.  I take a picture of it, and post it.  We spotlight classrooms too.  The Reading Coach spotlights parts of classrooms that encourage literacy.

The Lowell website is now becoming more of what I believe a school site should be, a combination of information and celebration.  A family or student should be able to answer many questions by going to the school site, and also find out how much we value and appreciate students and teachers and parents.  There is more work to do.  I don't think the home page is clear enough, it is too cluttered for my taste.  But it is going in the right direction.

This is a good example of unintended consequences.  I did not start out this pilot project intending to improve the website.  But it has been improved as a result of working with teachers on blogs.  I love this.  I believe that if when we take a positive action, positive things ripple outward like wavelets when throwing a pebble into a pond.  Every time we take a positive action, like help a teacher communicate with parents, more good things happen, like the the website gets better!

Yay blogs!

Tenth Week

Skipped last week.  We went out of town for a long weekend and I never got around to it :)

Subject this week is differences between K-2 blogs and 3-5 blogs.

I can only speak from the experience of Kindergarten, Second, and Fifth grade.

Kindergarten and Second Grade

These blogs are mostly used for Parent/Family communications.  The Kindergarten teachers post every evening what the class worked on.  They post dates to remember like PTO meetings and conferences, and things to work on at home like number sense and reading tips.  They have gotten great feedback from parents on this.  It is a great tool for teachers, but students are not involved in the posts or replies.

Second grade also uses their blogs as communication tools.  They post pictures of activities and websites that families can use at home to reinforce concepts learned in the classroom.  Again, good communication tool, but the students are not involved in the posts or replies.  This may change toward the end of second grade but it hasn't yet.

Fifth grade, on the other hand, is using the blog strictly within the classroom.  The teacher who uses it most effectively posts a question each week as part of their reading workshops.  The students comment on her post, and their answer must be approved by her before it is published.  The teacher then comments back to them if their comment is posted, and a conversation is begun.  The students in the last 5 weeks have posted increasingly thoughtful and sophisticated comments.

The fifth grade blog cannot be accessed without a login, so students can log in from home, but they cannot post anything without the teacher's approval.  So this can be read by parents and families, but it is really a teaching tool in the classroom.

I appreciate both of these uses, and would like to see the younger grades give students some say in what to put in a class blog, and older grades use the blog as a parent/family communication tool.  But the whole point of this pilot project is to take technology and get teachers to use it in a way that makes sense to them.  As an example of expanding the use of blogs, one Kindergarten teacher has just been accepted into a Kindergarten Around the World project, where two Kindergarten classes correspond by Twitter and blogs for a school year, get to know one another, and expand their world as a result of these interactions.  I think this is a very exciting project.

After the teachers are comfortable using these blogs, I will ask them to try using them in new ways.  But I am not in a hurry.  Ideally, as the teachers use these blogs, they will do more things with them than I could ever think of.  I would love that!

Eighth week

I want to talk more about relationships with teachers, and how that affects my work.

I have always felt that my job is to support BOTH students and teachers at school. This can be with books, helping find the right book for the right person, with research or teaching about research, or with technology or teaching about technology. But as I look back, I have concentrated on helping students, and only assisting teachers when they asked for help.

This pilot project has forced me to try to help teachers when I wasn't even sure that they wanted any help. My job is to "help teachers implement new technology in the classroom." That is a big statement, and I have spent a lot of my time this first trimester clarifying what that will look like. Clarifying has been very helpful and I will continue to do that.

But what has been the best surprise of the project is getting to know some teachers that I did not know before (very well, anyway), and building professional relationships that I value greatly. I have three teachers now that I regularly talk to, ask advice of, and share things with. They have enhanced my understanding of teaching -- and they are great to know!

For example, my principal just asked me for some advice on spending some technology money. Whereas before I would have asked other Media Specialists for help, today I went to a couple of teachers and talked to them. This makes a lot more sense, because the money is for MY school, and I want to use technology to specifically aid OUR students. So it was very fun to go to these teachers, get their input, kick around some ideas, and know that we will continue to talk about what is best for the students.

Yay teachers!

Seventh Week

My Role in this Pilot Project

Yesterday our Lead Teacher came into the Media Center.  She wanted to rehearse the Professional Development that she would lead today.  She asked two questions, one about PowerPoint and the other about YouTube.  I knew the answer to neither question.  BUT, here is what happened. 

The PowerPoint question I googled.  There was a PDF online with the steps to do what she wanted to do.  I printed it out and handed it to her.  Turns out she needs administrator rights to her computer in order to download something in connection with these PDF directions.  I knew how to get her that.  Sent her an email with that information.  First question, done and done.

The YouTube question I needed someone else in the district to answer.  I emailed him.  He answered the email quickly and with the needed information.  I forwarded this to the Lead Teacher.  Second question, done and done.

When I was in Library School we took a class called Readers Advisory.  In this class we learned about finding out exactly what a patron is asking for and then figuring out how to provide it.  This can sometimes be a fairly long process, because people are not always able to articulate what it is they want. Of the two, it is easier to FIND what they want than to FIGURE OUT what they want.

So I am excited to feel like I am doing some Technology Advisory work.  The example from yesterday was easy, because she knew what she wanted, so I just needed to FIND what she wanted.  That makes me feel useful.

But my biggest challenge, and what I feel my role in this project is, is to FIGURE OUT what people want, especially when they think they don't want it :)  When I started thinking about technology, I was overwhelmed by all the web tools out there that are helpful to people.  As I learn more about the web tools, they seem like the easier part of the equation.  It is figuring out what is helpful that is the hard part.  

This figuring out part has to do with listening and developing a relationship with a teacher so that I can ask intelligent questions about their work.  That is what we learned in Library School.  I feel that this is happening slowing but surely with the teachers I am working with this year, and it is very educational and rewarding for me.  I hope that it becomes so for the teachers also.