Issue #6: Professional Development Needs Assessment

As due dates fall in my rearview and Thanksgiving looms in the near future, I finally finished Issue #6.  

This issue was about Professional Development - something that I am very interested in, because I know how difficult teachers can be to work with and how much professional development is needed.  This Catch-22--a need for more technology training with a lack of training time and cooperation--has interested me in my recent years as a teacher.

Unfortunately, this assignment did not interest me as much (sorry!).  The idea of writing a Needs Assessment was not only not interesting, but brought back dreadful memories of late nights spent working on my ID project a few years ago.  With that said, I completely agree with the rationale of a Needs Assessment and the necessity of, well, assessing the need for particular teaching & training.  On the other hand, I also completely agree with the rationale of root canals and taxes.

I was a bit confused as to what was meant to be done.  Were we to actually perform a needs assessment?  How would one go about assessing the needs of a make believe staff of teachers?  After some discussion with Dr. Ingram in Palace, I got a better grip on what was expected for this assignment and was able to proceed.

Once I started working on the assignment, I did find it interesting to consider where the levels of our teachers really were.  I assume that some are technological luddites, but what can and can't they do?  In the position of a technology director, it's obvious that there is a need to assess where one must begin to bring all teachers up to level.

This project helped me realize what a daunting task training a staff of teachers with varying ages, varying levels of technological experience and varying levels of motivation could be.

Current Issues - Week 8 - Part 3

Today, I finally completed my Issue #5 assignment and, with it, Week 8 of Current Issues.  I wrote about CMCs.  I found it to be a rather time consuming project, to research and write about which format should be used and then to research and write about a plan for designing and implementing the particular CMC.

I ended up selecting a wiki.  I really feel like wikis are a great thing and are very useful and will be beneficial for any businesses or classrooms that adopt them.  They are capable of enabling so much learning and production.

In the process of reading about wikis I also came across an article about Google Docs, something that I had not looked into or learned about yet--despite hearing it mentioned often.  I was very impressed and excited about the potential of this tool.  I plan to suggest that our school's math teachers use Google Docs for things that we are creating together, like assessments or lessons.  What a great resource!