Chanatown

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 ShareP...

Well, I took a super big gulp of the Google kool-aid on Wednesday during the Google Teacher Academy in Washington, D.C. Admittedly, when I first saw the agenda, I was curious as to how much there would be to it all. For example, Breakout #1 featured Google Docs, Sites, and Video. Having been closely working with teachers during our pilot rollout for the past 2 months, I'd probably be breezing through the presentations, right? Wrong. From the minute the "Lead Learners" (Google Certified Teacher alumni) began their sessions/presentations, it was a non-stop ride for nearly 12 hours. Some of the advice given to us prior to attending was to take a deep breath because our heads would be spinning with all of the new information. Again, I wondered how this could be since we were all the typical tech-savvy teacher types. Case in point: despite the overwhelming overload of information presented, nearly everyone was still multi-tasking either working on email, twittering,...

What a busy two days it has been. My first professional development conference as a Tech Staff Developer has invigorated me even more as I come back with new ideas, visions for the future, and key contacts to reach out to in times of need. A daily summary of the trip: Thursday, November 19, 2009 After making the rounds through the Exhibit Hall, I went to a small meeting room for my first presentation. The topic was SharePoint, and I was excited to see and hear what other districts were doing for their Intranet sites. Since Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) is relatively new , my timing is good in that I'm entering during the beginning phases of the technology. I was immediately at home when I saw the familiar SharePoint look of D230's sites. It was refreshing to see some design elements that I can mimic at ETHS, but most of all, I was relieved to learn that they were using the same features that our teachers use, so my work with the ETHS faculty thus fa...

I'm heading down to Springfield, IL for the Illinois Educational Technology Conference for Thursday and Friday. Just looking at the schedule is rather overwhelming, but I'm uber excited about learning from other tech leaders and beginning to network those in similar positions. This will be my first professional conference as Tech Staff Developer, so I'm eager to soak it all in.

I'm sending the app later today, but here's the video I created using animoto.com. Educators can get a free all-access pass by applying here . Enjoy!

It's been a whirlwind these first 2 months as Technology Staff Developer at ETHS . Here are some of the projects that have been keeping me busy: Tablet PC Rollout / USB Wireless Installations: We've rolled out over 250 Tablet PC's to our staff with almost every department involved. This past summer, Humanities (English and History) along with Fine Arts teachers received the Lenovo X61 Tablets (I'm loving these especially when they come wtih XP and not Vista as their Toshiba M300 counterparts do). I've been training teachers on how to get started with the Tablet, basic inking in MS Word and PowerPoint, followed by how to use MS OneNote . I've also been installing Atlona wireless units to projectors so that teachers can connect to their projector wirelessly from their tablet. Microsoft SharePoint : Since our web developer left in mid-September, I quickly became the SharePoint guru, so I've been learning a lot by trial and error. I've ...

I've been putting in the hours and laying down the groundwork for the upcoming year as Technology Staff Developer at my school. In the past few weeks, I've been becoming intimately familiar with Microsoft Sharepoint and eSchoolPLUS. I taught myself Quia the other day and then gave a workshop to two colleagues who will use it later this year. I'm growing fonder of Sharepoint by the day, and I think that our teachers will find it very useful.