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!