Great Week!

With all that is going on, I felt this last week was one of the best weeks that I've had in quite some time. On Monday afternoon, I did some training on document cameras at Leeds. I went over the use of the software and how you can use that during instruction, and the basics of setting up your document camera.

That was very easy. The thing that made the week great was that every day this week I have been at Leeds for a few hours every day, checking in, doing a little re training, going over uses in the classroom etc... Many times with training, you do the training and struggle to get back and check in and see how things were going. It was great to answer questions immediately and get people excited and interested in what we were doing.

As for the Microsoft Settlement, things seem to be progressing finally. I have said that before and bam!! Another road block. We have all the training sites secured and we are ready to start putting dates and groups together for training. About time!!! I'm excited about it!

This week in Instructional Tech.

Spring is a approaching and new life is in the air. We could actually make it to 35 degrees today! Happy to see frosty melting!
I am excited about this week because I get to meet with principals and tell them how we are going to outfit their school with the latest and greatest technology. Things that will engage students, allow teacher efficiencies and breathe new life into some subjects for students. It's really something that you dream about being able to do in my position, so finally being able to see it coming is very exciting! Last week, J&J knocked the summer training schedule out. It's all scheduled and teachers will be able to sign up through mylearningplan.com. I'll be writing purchase orders all week to get these elementary buildings outfitted by the end of summer!

I'll be in some classes at the high school and middle schools helping students with video projects this week. It's really fun to see how they take a online tool that I show them and build projects by mashing things together. Students have been using Picasa and movie maker together. They make picture collages in picasa and then add them to a movie in movie maker.
Stuff on the very near horizon...

• Student email and student logins to computers... This is imperative to our newly improved Middle School Technology Curriculum



• Additional video resources from Safari-Montage



• Statewide Consortium for Online learning



• New software for Family and Consumer Science in HS



• Keyboarding software for the elementaries



• Online discussion board for Library/Media website.



• New fluency software in the elementary schools called Quickreads



• New computer labs at Irving and at West Middle School.



• Quarterly Teaching with Technology award....

Layne