Field-based+Activities+Reflections

Because of the nature of my position as Elementary Instructional Technology Facilitator (ITF), I can easily have over 1500 hours of activities that fall under the standards necessary for the internship portion of this program. I narrowed down all of the activities to the ones that took most of my time and fulfilled all of the standards, therefore my reflections are based on those major activities. Each year my district puts on a 2 day Continuous Improvement Conference to provide in-house staff development for faculty, staff, and administrators. Participants can choose from a great number of different 1 to 2 hour sessions to attend. I usually end up presenting 4 or 5 sessions throughout the 2 days. In order to deliver engaging sessions I put in a huge amount of time when planning the presentations. I want to make sure that everyone can walk away with something they can immediately try in their classroom. Not only do I have to prepare to present during the conference, I also have to physically check with a number of teachers who are also presenting. The technology department is faced with reaching close to 150 presenters in the short time between proposal deadline and the conference. I’ve learned to manage my time wisely in order to ensure that I meet with each presenter I’m responsible for, so that they have all the equipment necessary. I also have to get PDF copies of their presentations to post to our conference website. Most of the time this becomes a training opportunity since many presenters don’t know how to convert their powerpoint or handouts to PDF versions. Putting on the conference is a large task that I’ve come to understand the workings of and made adjustments when necessary. The collaboration between the staff development office, technology department, custodial department, transportation, etc. is amazing. The final show is quite an enormous production that I am proud to be part of. As part of team planning I meet with grade level teams on each of the campuses that I support. While attending their planning meetings, I play a number of roles. One role is that of observer or listener. I like to listen as teams plan for upcoming units. As they mention the concepts that they will be teaching I am continually thinking of ways to integrate technology seamlessly. Since I worked to develop technology embedded lessons for each of our 24 science kits (4 each K-5), I also play the role of curriculum supporter and will offer support when teams discuss plans for science. Yet another role I play is that of model teacher. When teachers feel that they can’t use the available technology, I offer to model a lesson for them if they still don’t feel comfortable after training. I enjoyed the fact that I don’t have a classroom of my own, but when I get to model lessons, the students become my responsibility and I take pride in students’ success. By being accountable for the students, I also have the opportunity to model management strategies when using the available technology. I’ve found that I really have to be sharp and knowledgeable within ALL content areas and ready for any question that might be asked while attending meetings with different grade levels. Our district was awarded a grant at the end of 2009 to provide all 3rd – 5th bilingual classes with Promethean Boards. Since I support two of the four bilingual campuses, I was one of the two ITFs responsible for trainings and timelines that were a required component of the grant. We were also required to meet regularly and develop lessons using the new software. Since we were part of consortium of about 5 districts, we had to participate in a collaborative wiki. We felt that since we were new to the software and new to the idea of wikis, we would develop one of our own to develop a comfortable environment for collaboration among our districts’ teachers. This proved successful, as we were able to post to the wiki at any time and share resources across the district. We’ve always wanted to work with other teachers across the district but never had the means. Using the wiki, as well as meeting monthly helped us develop friendships with other bilingual teachers not on our campus and led to sharing of ideas. The meetings hosted by the other ITF and myself provided training and time to answer questions that would come up. The funny thing is that most of the questions would end up being answered by the other teachers, instead of us, the hosts. The implementation of the Promethean Boards and software was so successful that the day after training, one teacher set up lessons for her students to do while she worked with a small group AND had her yearly evaluation. The principal was amazed and had her supervisor and superintendant visit two days later. About three weeks later two teachers were video taped using the boards and then presented the successful results to the school board a week later. It was definitely a whirlwind of events, but very successful indeed. Each summer I work as part of my contract. The majority of the time is spent delivering staff development for teachers and administrators. The district requires certain classes to be taken and then leaves another day of choice for teachers. That’s where my presentations come into play. Since most teachers do the minimum required training it is sometimes hard to get attendees at our trainings in the summer. But, there are still quite a few that choose to take additional classes in order to learn something new or revisit something that they still feel uncomfortable with. This year has proven to be a busy year for teachers as I look in from the outside. I see the demands and number of meetings (faculty, RTI, parent, etc.) that teachers are required to attend. For this reason I have not been able to provide afterschool trainings as I’ve done in the past. Knowing this, I “advertised” the classes that I would be offering during the summer. I also promised to make them more exciting than most that they were required to attend. I guess advertising works. I’ve seen many of the teachers that I support at the trainings I’ve had so far and based on the feedback, it has been the best training they’ve attended since being in the district. While providing opportunities for professional growth and mentioning district-wide policies in our trainings, we still managed to offer exciting and useful trainings. We changed our format and instead of offering 1 class for the whole day, we offered 4 classes and gave the participants their choice of three. Again, we’ve had nothing but positive feedback because of the choice we gave participants. I look forward to sharing the feedback with my supervisor and the staff development department. Maybe this can have an affect on future trainings. As ITFs we meet monthly to discuss technology related issues and events. Our meetings are always packed because of the number of responsibilities we are given. Not only do we provide support to our teachers, our main audience, but we also offer technology related training to our administrators in a monthly Tech Admin meeting. At the beginning of the year we were asked to create an elementary and a secondary version of a cyber-bullying brochure. With this, we also include rules of netiquette. As part of the meetings we also discuss available resources and what to tell teachers when they ask questions about available equipment. Since we passed a rather large technology bond, schools were outfitted with various technology equipment, such as student response systems, projectors, and carts. The meetings serve as a resource for a wealth of information and always prove helpful. It’s nice to get away from the hustle and bustle of the district and do some learning for myself. Many people ask how I learned to do this or that and I tell them that I attend conferences, hear about a feature I didn’t know or learn about a new product, and then go back to try it for myself. Like anything else, you only get better with practice. Being able to attend TCEA, ASCD, and the Tech & Learning Tech Forum, I’ve been able to attend various workshops of my choosing. I’ve grown professionally after seeing others present on topics that interest me. I’ve found that it is hard to remember all the wonderful sites to visit or to remember to use new features I’ve learned about. What works for me is to pick two or three of my favorites and include them in my future trainings. Many times I practice on my family and then incorporate them in my trainings if they prove useful. Some sites or resources are just for fun and may not have an educational use, so I will try to stay away from those. I attend with a purpose each time I go to conferences. I’m either looking for a replacement product for our district or I’m looking for resources that would benefit a particular group that I support, such as bilingual teachers. Because there are so many workshops of interest to attend, we try to split up to cover more ground. When we return to the district we have sharing sessions in which we share our learning with the other ITFs in our group. This has proved to be a great strategy since there is no way that I could attend all the sessions that I want. As part of my position as ITF I am responsible for delivering technology training to teachers who are new to the district as well as returning teachers. When new teachers come to school a week before returning teachers, I meet with them to provide information on email, setting up their website, and most importantly district policies for acceptable use. When the rest of the teachers return a week later, I have to meet with all teachers from the campuses that I support. The meeting is not one that is hands on, so it can be done via powerpoint presentation created within our IT department. This ensures that every teacher across the district is receiving the same information, whether they choose hear it or not. Working with each of my campus principals to get a small bit a training time proves to be challenging. I’ve found that open communication and a flexible attitude have helped to get the necessary time for training. I understand the lack of time for everyone due to district required training, campus requirements, and teacher needs. This year will prove to be another learning experience as we hand over returning teacher training to the campus Instructional Coaches. Some are comfortable with technology, while others are not, so it should be an interesting change. I will try my best to be there to support them, but with the number of campuses that I support doubling, it will be challenging. Each of the elementary ITFs takes a content area to specialize in. My particular specialization is in Science and I work side by side with the science facilitators throughout the year as well as with science teacher leaders, teacher representatives from each campus. The science department is currently on the fifth year of a 5-year plan to develop science curriculum. Science facilitators have included ITFs from the beginning in the development of science kits for each grade level, K-5. We now have grown to have 4 kits for each grade level, or 1 kit for each of the four 9 weeks period. During the process I’ve worked with various grade levels as a resource for ideas to seamlessly integrate technology. Now that we have all of our kits developed, the teacher leaders next task has been to review the new science TEKS scheduled to come out next year and compare them to the TEKS addressed in the kits. We’ve found that some kits no longer match the new science TEKS and will have to be adjusted, changed, or completely removed and redeveloped. This has proven to be a time-consuming task. I really appreciate the insight the science coordinator had when she developed the 5-year plan. As we continue to revisit the TEKS and kits I will continue to offer support and remind teacher leaders of resources and ideas to seamlessly integrate technology.
 * Reflections**
 * Continuous Improvement Conference:**
 * (TF Standards addressed IV.B, VII.A)**
 * Team Planning:**
 * (TF Standards addressed I.B, II.C, II.E, III.A, IV.B, V.C, VI.E, VII.A)**
 * T3 (Target Tech in Texas) Grant:**
 * (TF Standards addressed I.A, II.A, II.B, III.B, IV.C, V.D, VI.C, VII.A, VIII.A)**
 * Summer Workshops:**
 * (TF Standards addressed V.A)**
 * ITF (Instructional Technology Facilitator) meetings:**
 * (TF Standards addressed V.B, VI.A, VI.E, VIII.D)**
 * Professional Development Conference Attendance:**
 * (TF Standards addressed V.A, VII.C)**
 * New & Returning Teacher Training:**
 * (TF Standards addressed VI.A)**
 * Science Curriculum Team:**
 * (TF Standards addressed II.A, II.F, III.A, VI.C, VII.A,)**