On My Way...

THE GAME PLAN #1

3b. Collaborate with students, peers, parents, and community members using digital tools and resources to support student success and innovation(ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 2008).

Even though utilizing edline and beginning to create my own webpage on there does somewhat get me closer to meeting my first game plan goal of using technology to collaborate with students, peers, parents, and community members, I feel that this method does not allow for creativity. The goal of our district adopting this method of online communication is for the factor of the pages appearing more uniform. I really feel this is not a good reason to buy a website building program. In addition, I believe that education does not consist of constant uniformity such as theses webpages. There should be more creativity involved with webpage development, especially since we are dealing with the business of education. It needs to be exciting and appealing or the students, parents, and community members won’t use it.

I researched the possibility of utilizing a blog in my district and found many roadblocks. First of all, the technology director of our county is pushing the edline website method within all the schools so hard that we must get permission if we want a blog. She wants what we do to be uniform where I want to add more creativity and interactivity with parents and students using a blog. In addition, the speed of our internet, she feels is not fast enough to support students accessing the blog. However, I want to purpose that we access it as a class until the faster lines are installed in few months. The next problem I faced involved finding a blog provider that allows no one outside your class can view or participate without your permission and that is free. I know the point of blogging is that we share with the world. Yet, I would like to begin the process on a smaller more secure level at first.

I have learned that classpress offers secure blogs at a price of 29.95 per year, which isn’t half bad when you see the blog’s relevance. However, my goal was to go with a blog that was free, but secure. This is really a trial run that I prefer not to pay for. I think that when you add the privacy factor of the blog to protect students, you are looking at the blogging service that is no longer free. I searched and searched for the possibility of a trial blog through this company but my search proved unsuccessful. Maybe Santa will give the gift of a free and secure site for me this holiday season. One can hope!
I have also looked through the current blog provider I am using and found that I can adjust some privacy settings. I will embed a video below this post that seemed to enlighten me on bloggers privacy settings. Yet, I am still unsure of exactly which setting adjustments I should make. Should I make parents authors by adding their email addresses or should I set it to where I must approve each person that views it? I want this blog to be resourceful and easily accessible for students and parents, yet still remain secure and safe for my students allowing only the people I permit to view the blog. I would appreciate possible suggestions that any of you may offer me with this.



THE GAME PLAN #2
5b. exhibit leadership by demonstrating a vision of technology infusion, participating in shared decision making and community building, and developing the leadership and technology skills of others (ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 2008).

We just met for our second technology committee leadership meeting this week. There are a great deal of Promethean Boards getting installed within our school which is very exciting. I suggested that we offer Promethean Board training sessions for teacher assistants based on the fact that both of my morning and afternoon assistant showed interest in learning more about using the Promethean Boards so they can be utilized during their times in the classroom.

My plans to encourage the rest of the team with conducting more weekly computer lab time that integrates reading by coordinating lessons with the lab assistant and continuing to add lessons to the student share drive so students may access the programs is coming along well. The lab assistant and I have already met and worked together with finding time slots in the lab for our 5 kindergarten classes. Turns out, after 1:30 almost every day is available, although this is not the reading time in our day, administration approves us taking this additional time to integrate technology into reading. We have been warned that if the teachers and students do not begin to utilize the lab we may lose it so I find it very necessary that we try to make a lab like Sarah Anderson’s school labs where it is difficult to use it because so many are utilizing the resource. We have already met and everyone is on board.