Saturday, October 24, 2009

D. Warlick on Technology, Information, and Learning

This is a very insightful article...don't let the title turn you off, though. This is actually from an interview he did a few months back--he didn't choose the title. He even wrote about that choice of the title in his own blog 2cWorth.

Anyway, here is the article about using technology for information and learning:

http://www.interfacemagazine.co.nz/articles.cfm?c_id=21&id=262

Friday, October 23, 2009

Week 11 Oct. 19- Oct. 23

This week was loaded with meetings. On Monday, we started off learning about our ESC's move to a new building. It was quite interesting, I learned a great deal. It's an exciting time.
Tuesday and Wednesday we had Jeff from learning.com here. He showed us how learning.com works as well as we spent some time aligning our curriculum to their product.

As a district we are putting this program out first at Clark and Sunnyside. This is a great program because there are directed lessons in these units, as well as games and skill builders. It is easy to set up and easy to run and navigate through.

This week also had a bunch of the same stuff. Trouble shooting, going out and talking with teachers about technology, and also issues I have no control over :) This job continues to evolve. It gets more and more exciting all the time. I hope with all the budget concerns, they continue to see the value of this position and what we bring to the teachers in our buildings. We have definitely seen the shift in teaching styles with this technology integration. We are beginning to see the shift we have been looking for.

A Little of This and That

That just about describes this week of Instructional Coaching. Monday was my very first Professional Development that I personally planned for as an instructional coach. The topic was on the basics of using the Flip camera as well as classroom applications. Fortunately, I had to address the PowerPoint issue last week (see previous blog), so I was prepared for that. Some had the Flip Ultra, and others had the Flip Mino--which I would highly recommend purchasing the Mino because it can be charged through the USB, while the Ultra goes through batteries like candy. (Unless you buy the rechargeable batteries from Flip which cost $24.99) So, the cost is ultimately about equal. Layne did show me some of the features of the iPod Nano (which also records video) and stores music, pictures & records voice. I think I like that even better.

Tuesday and Wednesday was spent with Jeff from Learning.com reviewing their products (which we have purchased) and how we can map this into our language arts & media curriculum. Compared to our current Plato product, I prefer this much better. It is more user-friendly and has so many different components in a web-based format. I recall thinking on Tuesday, if I was still in the classroom, I'd totally create all my plans in their "My Curriculum" section. The ability to differentiate with this is there as well.

I worked on a "lesson plan" for next Monday's Professional Development involving teacher web pages. My goal was to create a PD session that modeled everything we are asking for in our own teachers: infuse our technology, strong content knowledge, rounded out with differentiated instruction & sound pedagogy.

Friday brought me back into the classroom & I must say I love the engagement with those first graders. We worked on Plato Focus in the lab. Amazing how tech-savvy those little babes are! Even more amazing was watching them interact with Emma Reedwell (the teacher on their monitors). They were counting syllables, words in sentences, and engaging in lessons that reinforce basic phonemic awareness. Good stuff.