Oh busy! busy! busy! As I am starting on the various little tasks that this school year has given me, I thought I would give a quick synopsis of our technology plan and some of the little ideas. This post will be short as I have spent most of my day writing down the plan.
This year I am working on the school’s technology plan. It has a promising end result, but the hours devoted to research and development seem to be adding up. As I am looking at the information, I can start to develop a direction in which I would like to take Technology at SRS. I know that I want to add programs, such as parent education, continue with the sharing days with other Technology Coordinators, and begin looking at system to upgrade the labs.

I have introduced Google Apps to the Technology Task Force. I have asked them to use this tool as we begin our document- we are building this tech plan on a collaborative effort of many people.

Last spring we hosted the Spring Fling- we had close to 30 participants from various schools around the archdiocese. This year we decided with the energy that the Spring Fling we could not keep our energy bottled up- so we decided that we would host a day in the fall. We affectionately called the day, “Techtober-Fest”. The morning started off with Dorothy presenting (Dorothy’s Presentation) about how learning is the most important, technology comes second. After a bit of a discussion with our participants, I presented on the Tools We Use (My Presentation). The presentation was to be a starting point to share the resources we use- I learned about several new tools, including backflip- which looks much cleaner and nicer than del.icio.us.

I am hoping that these days will be able to further generate a discussion about the importance of 21st century learning.

Today was the last article in the series- it talked about looking forward. As I read the subtitle it said that the school would move forward with whatever tools they had. Looking at SRS, I find it interesting that we move forward with the tools we have everyday.

When I first started I learned that every teacher was 1 entire operating system behind.  The students had newer tools. I started simply by introducing some of the new laptops to our middle school teachers and then buying each of our other classroom teachers a new computer. The changes were immense. Student computer upgrades followed. However, I am reminded about an interesting incident.

Our first visit to the Stillwater Area Schools was a real eye-opener- they said to all of us, “Before doing a large scale intiative, take about 3 years to plan.” So year 1 would be 2006-2007 and we would be ready for our initiative by 2009-2010. Then one of our teachers said, “3 years… look how far we are!” She was so right, even though we did not have the cutting edge tools- we were moving forward with what we had. Each day we continue to look forward and plan.