My first Training

I lead the Instructional Focus Meeting this week. That's our name for inservice training. I received positive feedback. Of course doing a technology training meant I would have a problem with the technology. Irony seems to follow English teachers around. The main difficulty I had was using the remote keyboard. It was being obstinate when I tried to switch between programs. I shifted my focus as of the training. The department had been informed that the school was nearing the allotment of paper. I concentrated the last part of the training on how to use less paper in the classroom. I demonstrated Survey Monkey and provided ideas on how to use this in the classroom. I also showed them how to upload a file to the website. Uploading assignment sheets to the web is a great way to save paper. I asked that the teachers fill out surveys (using Survey Monkey) about the training. Website training and using less paper seemed to be of interest.

I did have some concerns since teachers are the worst students. Some teachers were checking their email or rushing ahead. I had loaded everything to the website so the training would be paperless. Just as I was stating that the future would be paperless, a colleague printed out the click sheet I had created. Oh, the irony.

Another Day, Another Obstacle

Each day seems to bring a new technology challenge. Today we had a training for the new gradebook. It was an optional come and go training. I went to find out how to print a grade sheet without the students that have been dropped from the class roster. It's a simple request. I had tried to figure it out on my own to no avail. It turns out all I had to do was go to a second screen and print from that screen.

All the teachers are adjusting to the new program. There has not been the grumblings that we went through in previous years when we changed software. We are all in the same boat. Even the trainers are trying to get a handle on everything the program can do. We haven't installed all the components of the program yet. When we do this program has the ability to transform some of our instructional practices.

My time on this program is well spent when I focus on figuring out what the new system can do, rather than worrying about how the program is different from the old or focusing on what it can't do.

Sunday Night Reflections

I got up earlier than I normally do on Sunday. However that did not translate into getting more work done. My biggest hurdle today was getting a video to upload to facebook. After trying several times, most of the day was gone and I had nothing to show for it. I realized that since I wasn't using my computer it was going into sleep mode before the video could upload. After I reset the power save settings, the video loaded easily and is now available for viewing.

This week I am leading the first of the training sessions. I have one more thing to complete before Wednesday. The training will be paperless. I have everything loaded to my website for teachers to follow. This is timely since the English department was sent an email this week that the school has almost used its paper allotment for the semester. One thing teachers can do is upload copies of assignments to their websites instead of making a few extra copies for students who lose assignments. With over 250 teachers, saving 2 copies per assignment is a ream of paper. With multiple assignments over the six weeks, paper saving will add up. I hope through this training my peers will see as a resource to help them improve the use of technology in the classroom.

Train the Teacher Thoughts

The primary benefit of the Train the Teacher program is that it is asynchronous. Teachers have busy schedules and cannot always find a block of several hours to do training, but we can find thirty minutes at a time to do the training in segments. The training is useful especially since many teachers finished college before online databases became common. All the regions could make use of this format for all sorts of training. I thought that the handouts were useful and helpful. I didn't like that documents had to be saved. That seems to me to be an extra step. If I liked a handout well enough to save it, I could then save it.