Action Learning Group Meeting

Today my group met on the AET zone to give each other some socratic questions to think about for each of our projects. It was kind of neat to hear everyone's thought processes. It was also hard to stay on track with socratic type questions. I think I kept trying to give advice. Some good questions that they my group asked was "How are you going to get your school interested or excited about technology"?, "What are your plans or What type of process are you planning to start with for this project?" My first thoughts were to do sometype of survey to find out who is using technology and what types of technology is being used in the school. I also shared with that I thought about doing afterschool workshop with anyone that wants to come or with our 8 first year teachers. For the first year teachers, I thought about doing something that shows them all the technology that available for them to intergrate into their curriculums. Another good questions was, "How do you get them excited to be there and to not think that this is just another meeting afterschool"? I thought about asking the principal if we could offer some CEU's for attending the meeting. For first year teachers, it would have to be something else.....I mentioned there's always candy to give out! So that's what I gained from our meeting today. I think everybody walked away with something to think about for their own project. We also asked each other about , what are some different resources that we'll need for this project. Mine would be my librarian, maybe instruction coach (she's over our ILT's), principal, and of course school wide support.

AL Thought Process

Action learning project- The biggest problem that I see right now with my library is the lack of interest to use technology. I would like to do a survey to see how much technology is being used in the school right now amongst teachers. Maybe see some reasons why.. Then I would like to maybe conduct a small workshop informing teachers on how to intergrate technology better into their classrooms. The only thing I worry about with that is, what if no one shows up to my workshop!!!! I am going to try to think of some other options as well!

Librarian Interview Reflection

Today I went to interview the librarian at my school. I came up with 16 questions that were about the use of technology. My media coordinator has been at my school (a middle school) for two years. Before she came to our school she was at the high school for 6 years. She was able to talk to me about both schools and the amount of technology that is used. While working at the high school, she was constantly using technology with teachers and one on one with the students for research and various projects. She said that there were not many days that the AV cart was not checked out or not being rolled from one classroom to the next. At the middle school level, there has not been as much interest for technology use with teachers. A program that is used a lot is power point for students, but she feels like she is not being used as much as she would like as a librarian. At the high school, she was able to coordinate and teach with the technology coordinator, but at the middle school she has not co-taught together. Right now we are currently without a technology coordinator. Another point that was brought up was that there was a lot more technology programs available for students to use at the high school than at the middle school. At the high school, students were able to use microsoft publisher program for many of their projects, where as, the middle school mainly has microsoft word. We talked about how to get more teachers and students involved with using more technology and she felt the best way would be to have the money to get the better programs, then to educate the teachers on how to use the programs. She said many teachers will say that they don't have time to use technology in their classrooms, but she wants them to understand that it's about intergrating technology into their lesson. Another answer I thought was interesting was that how technology has changed from the time she began as a librarian till now. When she began as a librarian she did more teaching students how to make power points and slide shows. Now it is making power points more intersting with video clips and digital images. Most students today already know how to make power points. Our librarian tries to make everyone aware that she is available for use in the classroom and available to plan with teachers. Our interview was kind of an eye-opener for myself. It made me realize that I should be using more technology in my own classroom.