Technology Week at ETHS in Review
During the last week before break, and fresh from my attendance at Google Teacher Academy, I decided to offer presentations and workshops for our faculty and staff during all three lunch periods. Details, links, and reflections for each workshop follow below, and all presentations can be found here.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Tablet Training 101: At ETHS, we have rolled out 250+ Tablet PC's to our faculty. This year, English and World Languages teachers received tablets. I decided to focus this workshop on the basics of using a Tablet in class to ink on MS Word and MS PowerPoint files.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
SharePoint 101: During the past year, we have adopted MS SharePoint as the main vehicle for our teacher websites, displacing both Moodle and MS FrontPage. It has been one of my main responsibilities to help teachers learn and use SharePoint especially since our webmaster's departure earlier this year. This workshop focused on a brief discussion of SharePoint, how to log on to department SharePoint sites, and how to begin creating a new site.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Tablet Training - Full Workshop: At ETHS, we have opportunities where teachers can apply for a "Curricular Wednesday" where they would receive professional development time (and a substitute for their classes) during the school day. On this day, I led a 3+ hour workshop that incorporated both the basics workshop that I led on Monday along with an in-depth look into MS OneNote. This workshop included several hands-on activities, including what was the highlight for most: a trip to the copy center to scan a paper document into a PDF which they were then able to ink on.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Discovery Streaming: We've had United Streaming access for several years now, but since Discovery bought United, we set up new accounts for all teachers and students this year. Discovery Streaming is still an underutilized resource at ETHS, but that may also be due to our limited bandwidth. Still, teachers were impressed with the quality and selection that DES offers.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Google Fun: During this final workshop, I gave a brief overview of Google Apps for Education, and showed examples from the pilot project that I've been organizing for the past 2 months. I concluded with a handful of examples of other Google tools including Earth, Maps, Blogger, and Alerts.
Attendance throughout the week was rather limited, with 10-15 teachers attending on each day on average. The timing of the workshops may have been questionable, though I chose the week before break to offer the opportunity for teachers to explore a new technology over the winter vacation. I do plan on presenting each of these again throughout the second semester. Overall, the presentations and workshops were a solid primer for my first regional presenter experience, a poster session at the Illinois Computing Educators conference in February.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Tablet Training 101: At ETHS, we have rolled out 250+ Tablet PC's to our faculty. This year, English and World Languages teachers received tablets. I decided to focus this workshop on the basics of using a Tablet in class to ink on MS Word and MS PowerPoint files.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
SharePoint 101: During the past year, we have adopted MS SharePoint as the main vehicle for our teacher websites, displacing both Moodle and MS FrontPage. It has been one of my main responsibilities to help teachers learn and use SharePoint especially since our webmaster's departure earlier this year. This workshop focused on a brief discussion of SharePoint, how to log on to department SharePoint sites, and how to begin creating a new site.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Tablet Training - Full Workshop: At ETHS, we have opportunities where teachers can apply for a "Curricular Wednesday" where they would receive professional development time (and a substitute for their classes) during the school day. On this day, I led a 3+ hour workshop that incorporated both the basics workshop that I led on Monday along with an in-depth look into MS OneNote. This workshop included several hands-on activities, including what was the highlight for most: a trip to the copy center to scan a paper document into a PDF which they were then able to ink on.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Discovery Streaming: We've had United Streaming access for several years now, but since Discovery bought United, we set up new accounts for all teachers and students this year. Discovery Streaming is still an underutilized resource at ETHS, but that may also be due to our limited bandwidth. Still, teachers were impressed with the quality and selection that DES offers.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Google Fun: During this final workshop, I gave a brief overview of Google Apps for Education, and showed examples from the pilot project that I've been organizing for the past 2 months. I concluded with a handful of examples of other Google tools including Earth, Maps, Blogger, and Alerts.
Attendance throughout the week was rather limited, with 10-15 teachers attending on each day on average. The timing of the workshops may have been questionable, though I chose the week before break to offer the opportunity for teachers to explore a new technology over the winter vacation. I do plan on presenting each of these again throughout the second semester. Overall, the presentations and workshops were a solid primer for my first regional presenter experience, a poster session at the Illinois Computing Educators conference in February.
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