Cross Curricular Planning Professional Development

I had the opportunity to work with one of the teacher specialists for staff development in Frederick County, Liz Stiffler. She is the one who is assigned to us because we have not made AYP. She must have a pretty fun job but I can see how some staff may view her as a threat since we are required to attend. So I offered to collaborate with her on one of her sessions. Once again, I am always looking for opportunities to showcase how technology can be used for instruction, even for professoinal development.



The first couple sessions that we attended had some really great ideas for getting students motivated and appeal to different learning styles. I generated several ideas for including technology in those sessions. So when I approached Liz about working together to include a technology componenet, she was more than willing to work together on the idea.

The topic Liz wanted to do was "Cross Curricular Planning." At the beginning of the year, the staff brainstormed ideas of what sort of support the staff development team could give them. One of the ideas was to demonstrate cross curricular planning. So Liz and I brainstormed how to present this in only a 45 minute session. I suggested we make a movie of a sample team meeting where teachers were doing cross curricular planning. This was an exciting idea.

Liz generated a script and we used Inspiration to create a cross curricular planning guide which we would give to teachers are the professional development session. Liz recruited some of her colleagues at Hayward Road and we met to film the video. Later we went back to TJ Middle to edit the video with Windows Movie maker. Finally, Liz 'hosted' a professional development video which we made with VlogIt! software.

We presented the video to the staff on a wintry day when snow was falling. Unfortunately, the snow forced the closing of school early, so we only had time to present to two teams. The first group, made of the sixth grade team did very well. I heard lots of great ideas of how to incorporate skills from other content areas into lessons. The staff seemed to really "get it" and seemed to see the value in it. I am sure many of them already did some cross curricular integration in the lessons on their own, but having a structured time to plan with other teachers usually helps improve a lesson.

As an elementary trained teacher, I firmly believe in the value of cross curricular planning. Students need to see and use skills outside of the content area before it begins to sink in as important to know. Otherwise, they use the skill in math class and walk out the door, never to think about it again. Children need to use a skill 25-40 times before it becomes part of their though process. I know that if I don't do something with great frequency for a while, I will always forget what to do. That's why we can't expect students to divide fractions on Tuesday, take the test on Wednesday and be able to recall that information if they never divide fractions again before the at MSA.

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Inspiration Part 2

The second month of Inspiration focused on more advanced ways to use the software to modify paper organizers and adapt lessons for special education students. The goals were to

• Modifying classroom organizers for special education


• Using Text-to-Speech features


• Adding voice and sound to the diagram as an adaptive strategy


• Adding images from the Internet to the diagram


• Adding videos to the diagram


• Using/Creating templates


• Transforming a paper organizer into an Inspiration diagram

When I presented these topics to the teachers, they were very excited about the possibilities. When teachers tried using Inspiration they found the results very encouraging as indicated by some of their reflections.

They were told that they could use this program to help them organize their thoughts - just like the graphic organizer. After doing a few examples with them, they caught on quickly and began to work independently. One student was having difficulty with generating ideas, so I sat with him and asked him some questions to get more details. He said, "Oh, that's right! I almost forgot about that. This is what happened next . . ." By the end of the period, all three students had a completed/nearly completed graphic organizer with extra supporting details. One even thanked me for helping him remember the events to his story so that he was able to create a very detailed organizer for his letter.

It went very well. As a matter of fact, I saw some other special ed students in resource using Inspiration independently to complete an assignment for their LA class. Seems like this software program is catching on!

These are encouraging reports which show that when students are given tools that are closer to their "native" habitat they are more motivated and willing to stay on task. It gives me encouragement to hear success stories such as these and make me want to continue sharing the information I have with others who will take the challenge to engage students with technology.

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Flexible Evening High Experiences

The Flexible Evening High program has expanded to include satellite locations instead of the single meeting place in Walkersville. That allows more students to access courses since there is a bus stop next to my location at TJ Middle. I was asked to be the acting administrator for FEH at TJ Middle. Being the acting administrator for Flexible Evening High has been a good experience of the little details that administrators deal with on a daily basis. This is a change for me because most of what I do is professional development and not a lot of "administrivia." Some of my duties include entering students into the server at TJMS, troubleshooting log ins, assisting teachers with collecting necessary supplies, addressing discipline, monitoring the school to ensure the other groups using the facility are not interfering with FEH instruction, and making sure all students are safely picked up from school.

One of the lessons I've learned is that teachers will frequently look to you to take care of their problems. Most of the issues that come up are simple procedural or technological. But every now and then we have something interesting come up.


So far, the most excitement we've had at FEH is the night when one young woman who is working toward her HS diploma began to have labor pains. She gutted it out through most of the night but called a friend to come pick her up to take her to the hospital. Since this could have been my first "medical emergency" I needed to decide if an ambulance needed to be called. My first thought was why a "friend" was called and not the father or a parent. I figured it would be a question that didn't need to be asked if she was over 18, so I asked and it turns out she was over 18. So that precluded the "locus parenti" hat I wore as the administrator. She had to wait only about 10 minutes for her friend to arrive and I walked her out to the car. She was in class the next week, still pregnant. It was a false alarm.

The only discipline problem I've had to address so far is a student who was on instant messenger when they shouldn't be. According to the FCPS Acceptable Use Policy, high school students can use instant messaging services for educational purposes. The girl claimed she was chatting with students about the work they were doing. I didn't buy it and simply asked her to turn it off and use the built in pager system on the course site if she needed to chat with students in her class. As it turns out, the girl was suspended from her day school for violating the Acceptable Use policy and other infractions. I didn't learn of this until after school was over and she was talking to some friends of hers outside while waiting for her ride. Suspensions from the day school carry over to FEH as well. I explained that to her and she said no one told her. That's probably true since we had a similar situation two nights before with another student. I emailed the assistant principal for night school to find out if there are procedures for letting the FEH satellite locations know that a FEH student has been suspended. It would make sense to have one point of contact at FEH and that contact person would notify the relevant teachers and administrators. I will suggest this to the assistant principal when I meet with her next.

UPDATE 11-13-07: One student left school one night and announced that her ride went to the high school instead of coming here and didn't know how to get to TJ Middle. I thought that was odd since the middle school is about 500 yards from hte High School. She was planning to walk to the high school. I grew concerned because there was once a known sex offender living between TJ Middle and the high school and I wasn't comfortable with a young lady walking at night where there could be a predator. So I asked her to remain on campus. She was very upset with the restriction and I asked her to call her sister, who has gaurdianship of her, to get permission. I spoke with the sister on the phone and got permission. I also asked her to write a note granting permission in the future for the student to walk home. As it turns out, that was not necessary. Since she is classified as a walker on her emergency card, the permission is assumed. Still, I wouldn't want my teenager walking near the house of a registered sex offender.

Update 12/4/07: I have been concerned about students from FEH walking down the street and being picked up on the corner. Since it is dark out by the time class lets out, it's hard to see if the student is a FEH student or one of the students in another program. So I felt it necessary to remind the students to stay in the cement area in front of the school and have their rides pick them up there so we can account for all FEH students. I don't know every student because we have a rolling enrollment policy so we get new students every week. That adds to the confusion so it is best that all FEH students stay where it is lit and where we can monitor their whereabouts.

Update 12/6/07: The FEH courses are in all four computer labs. The Tech Ed teachers have been hiding their printer toner cartridges because they don't want the supplies that are purchased from their operations budget to be used by outside groups. That is a reasonable stance. So I mitigated the situation by asking the Assistant FEH principal if FEH could purchase some paper and toner for the Tech Ed teachers. The answer was very quick "yes." So that made the tech ed teachers happy and FEH teachers will be able to print. We're still waiting for the supplies to come in.

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Processing Office Referrals

Through the regular course of my job, I have many opportunities to work with teachers and present staff development opportunities. If you ask most admininstrators, that is one of the key reasons they would state for becoming an administrator. That is true for me as well. One of the less glamorous tasks an administrator has to do is handle discipline problems. TJ Middle has its share of studens who get into trouble and that must be dealt with in a timely and judicious fashion.



I had a few opportunities to process discipline referrals to the office and they weren't for any major offenses. There were a couple for not serving a teacher's detention and a couple for continued classroom disruptions. Those are the types of referrals that are pretty cut and dry. I didn't have the opportunity to process students with major "drama" such as harassment or bullying, or something like a fight. Those usually require more time to sort out because there are two sides to every story ... and then there is the truth.

The law requires an administrator to give due process to all students who are in danger of losing their property - i.e. their educational opportunity. Discipline must be maintained so that students can have a safe and inviting climate for learning. One of the many observations I have noticed is that a lot of the "little things" go uncorrected. It's always been my belief that is you demonstrate a lack of tolerance for small infractions, then it is less likely to escalate into larger infractions. This is something I would need to study more, however, there has been precident here at TJ Middle for this.

When the building opened in 2000, there were several rules that some teachers thought were childish but I felt were effective in maintaining order. First, all teachers would walk their classes to lunch and pick them up. This is a typical arrangement in elementary school. To me, middle school students are still learning how to be independent and require even more structure at times. I do 7th grade recess duty. It used to be that I would follow the students in from outside and I would see them running and pushing down the hallway. Now, when I bring the 7th grade students in from outside, I require them to walk behind me and don't push. Then I stand outside their lockers. Whomever I see pushing or running I pull aside and they will be the last 7th grader to go to their locker. At first I wasn't sure if I should just write detentions, but I think that being last is more of a deterent that being given a detention because being pulled out of line and kept until last is an immediate consequence. Too often students shrug off a consequence that isn't applied until days later.

The other thing we did was to assign seats in the lunch room by homeroom. It was originally done as a way for students to get to know each other. But it can also provide the structure and routine that students need in a mostly unstructured environment. In recent years, we implemented assigned seats as a disciplinary action. I don't see assigned seats as a disciplinary action but a way to keep caos from insuing. Some will argue that students need the unstructured time to blow off steam for the day. I agree but that is why we have recess. Fewer and fewer students participate in recess because a lot of their day is still unstructured and in effect, a mini recess of its own. There is an old adage that if you give someone an inch, they will take a mile. This is often the case in middle school where students are constantly testing the boundaries of what they can and cannot do.

I'm a person who believes consistancy and routine are good for setting high expectations. If students don't know what the expectation is, then they don't know what they need to do to be successful. That doesn't mean the rule are inflexible, just that it is easier and more effective to grant more independence than to take it away. In the end, fewer discipline problems and behavior issues means more time on task and more learning takes place.

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Professional Development Update - Term 1 Recap

Facilitating professional development is always challenging, especially when your school hasn't made AYP. The increased pressure to provide new ideas for meeting the needs of a diverse student population is felt all around. Many times teachers feel professional development doesn't lend any benefit to their teaching repetoire. Other times they feel as if it is "just one more thing to do."
Time is always the biggest objection to meaningful professional development. This year our school has chosen to use an electronic learning community to facilitate the professional development. It was my task to set up and structure the Moodle software we use for an ELC. I've already described the structure of staff development in an earlier post so I won't rehash it on this entry.
Although spirits started high at the beginning of the school year, as they usually do, they inevitably began to sink as the school year progressed. I overheard two teachers talking in the hall how this year they have had more "exta work" to do than ever before. I was also surprised to hear how many teachers felt the Moodle course we are using is not as user friendly as the county provided Blackboard LMS. So what's happening? As an instructional leader, it will be my job to be aware of the attitudes and perceptions of the staff as I guide them to the vision I see.

Initially, spirits were high because teachers were able to choose their professional development strand. Differentiating teachers' choices is just as important as differentiating for students. Each teacher needs to have some ownership of their own professional development. Shortly after the big "kick off" meeting, things began to change.


One of the possible reasons for the change is the decision that teachers will need to demonstrate in some way they have incorporated the professional development into thier teaching. In the past, teachers attended sessions, listened attentively, and then walked away never to think about the topic again. As a response to this, the professional development team meeting the team recognized - and I advocated for it as well, the need for an additional reflection piece. I proposed that teachers would post a discussion message about their experience in the classroom using the new information they learn at a professional development session. I did ask for time to work with teachers to help them learn the new system. But the training schedule was packed and I had to resort to a simple tutorial. In addition to that, I was not able to schedule time with the facilitators of the ELC to help them understand how to use the software effectively. But I was able to meet with them to show them the basic elements of the software so that teachers could participate. Though this allowed the ELC to procede, it didn't give the facilitators any foundation for online teaching pedagogy. I again had to resort to publishing a paper tutorial.

The lack of hands-on training which would have taken about 45 minutes per topic is an example of how initiatives are thought out and well conceived but are ultimately only as effective as the knowledge and experiences of those carrying out the training. Since most of the ELC facilitators did not get the training they needed, they are doing the best they can but are overall ineffective. I can't say I'm a steallar online facilitator but there is a clear difference between how the technology reflections are working and the others. In some cases, no reflections are being done. This could be so if the facilitator simply chose not to use the online piece. But then one of the advantages of using online professional development - the 24/7 availability, is gone.

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Maryland Gifted and Talented Conference

I was asked by the supervisor of Gifted Education to present the work I had done with our Renzulli Enrichment teacher at the 2007 Maryland Educators of Gifted Students conference in Howard County, MD. We were essentially going to be presenting the same presentation as what we did for MICCA. So all we needed to do was massage it for the audience at the conference. What was most exciting for me was that Dr. Sally Reis, the wife of Dr. Joseph Renzulli, was going to be the keynote speaker.




We arrived a little late but caught the last 20 minutes of her talk. It was very validating to hear her speak of the way we look to educate our gifted children. Frederick County Public Schools uses the Renzulli Schoolwide Enrichment Model (SEM). Obviously, Dr. Reis was a big promoter of this model. Until now I hadn't seen any research to support this model, although it appeared to me to be very credible without the research. After sharing how schools who have adopted the Schoolwide Enrichment Model out perform schools who do not use the model on standardized testing, it occured to me that we should be using this model for all students. .

Students all have their own interests that are usually not what is presented in class. One of the stark realities of preparing students for the workplace of the 21st century is that most of the jobs that our students will be applying for have not been invented. When does anyone over the age of 30 remember seeing an ad for a software design engineer in the local paper when they were in grade school? It is well documented that as technology and information advance, there will be a greater need for students who are self reliant, independent learners, critical thinkers, and have strong math, science, and language skills. So the challenge as an instructional leader is to find a good balance of instruction that provides these basic skills while fostering the thinking, language, and personal skills needed to compete in an increasingly globay economy.

The SEM is a great way to differentiate instruction for students in a classroom. It usually starts with a general exploration followed by some more direct group or individual training, and summarized with a self-selected project to demonstrate mastery. Let's face it, even jobs such as a cashier or waiting tables requires many skills that students can acquire from a learning model such as this. Students who are motivated to learn, learn better, retain more, and have greater self esteem.

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ELC Month 2a (Inspiration)

For the October Technology Professional Development session, I worked with our Renzulli Enrichment teacher, Mrs. Cole, to present the concept mapping software, Inspiration^®. Inspiration is a program that allows students to create visual webs and graphic organizers that can then be turned into writing. The process of linking ideas to each other helps students to plan, organize, evaluate, comprehend and analyze their ideas, which leads to improved written proficiency. We spent several hours modifying the existing FCPS Inspiration handout to suit our goals and objectives. Mrs. Cole and I first decided we needed real world examples of how Inspiration is used in the classroom.


During one of our school's PLC dates, she and I covered a class of directed level 6th graders. Our lesson was about the use of "power verbs" and their meaning as it related to taking the MSA. The standard lesson was a paper and pencil pre-test and a PowerPoint slide show that reveals the answers one at a time. Neither Mrs. Cole nor I felt the group of students with whom we would be working would be able to sit through that lesson as it was written. So we decided to have the students use Inspiration software to create a vocabulary concept map for each of the power verbs. The students used Inspiration to create a web of all the power verbs and used the searchable symbol library to find pictures or clip are that best represented each of the words.

The students were still off task a lot while we walked them through the task of typing the power words into their Inspiration diagram. However when it came time to insert the pictures, the off task behavior declined dramatically. Students who worked diligently and completed the task we asked to add the definitions of each power verb to the diagram. These definitions were provided for them on a blue book mark which we handed out to all of the students.

In the future, we could modify this lesson a bit more by preparing the diagram with the power verbs already entered. This could reduce the off task behaviors we saw as we led the students through the task of typing each word. The drawback to this is that many students have never used Inspiration and bypassing the basic functions of the software won't give them the opportunity to use such a valuable tool.

When we met as a staff, I wanted to show teachers real examples of how Inspiration can be used without creating a lot of extra work. We downloaded the county's BCR Planing Guide and used Inspiration to make a simple organizer based on this common tool. Unlike many of the sample diagrams which are used to "show off" Inspiration's capabilities and flexibility, we wanted to Keep It Simple. We also showed the staff how to access the sample, and sometimes complex, sample diagrams. This would give them a better understanding of how Inspiration can be used as well as trigger ideas. Finally, we walked the teachers through the creation of a basic diagram. As a follow up, teachers are to use Inspiration in some capacity with students and reflect about how it helped or hurt the effectiveness of the lesson. As a challenge, I asked teachers to export their diagrams as a picture file and include it in the discusion message they post. All of the steps to do that are in the handout I created.

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Hess Alert Meeting

Each year the director of testing and assessment presents information to the schools about how they will not make AYP if they continue on the same level of improvement. This is nothing new. However, this year when the "Hess Alert Meeting" was scheduled, it was handled differently.


Normally, the leadership team will pack into a few cars and head down the road to the Church Street offices for a PowerPoint presentation of our MSA scores. This time, the central office staff, including the superintendent and assistant superintendent, came to our school. Instead of showing us our scores, which we already had, the discussion centered around what it is we are doing to actively meet the needs of our Special Education population, who did not make AYP.

The administration discussed our intervention programs such as Read 180, LARI, and the Math and Reading Intervention teachers. They also detailed our after school "clubs" which are geared toward the students who are "at risk" of not passing MSA. They include the homework club, organization club, girls and boys club, and the technology club.

The intervention classes are what students take instead of an elective if they don't pass the MSA Reading or Math. They get an extra reading class or extra help in math. We have a couple different reading programs which students take. We don't have extra math courses yet but the math intervention teachers pull small groups or co-teach with math teachers to help needy students.

One of the things I have always wondered is if we are spreading our talents too thin. The school day interventions are a success because they have shown to help students - even though it wasn't enough for our special education students. But what about the after school programs? The biggest problem is there is no accountability. How do we know if we are helping students? I know that my club is more of an enrichment club. I have created an assessment tool using the Maryland State Student Technology Standards. I will fill one out at the end of each semester to indicate which of the technology stadard we have addressed and how well I believe the student has mastered them. Of course, since we operate as a club, there are no formal assessments. It is all project based and not always "evaluated" in the sense that I evaluate a Tech Ed project for my sixth graders. This is something I need to get a handle on since students will be assessed on the technology standards at some point.

One Idea I have is to use technology to track students who attend the after school club and then see if their is improvement in their grades. I could create a database into which teachers would enter student information. It would give us a record of attendance (which we take by hand) that would be easily sorted and formated for reporting. The way we track student attendance by putting it in a word processing document doesn't allow for data analysis without a lot of work. This is something I'd probably do if my first school as an administrator has after school programs.

I find it somewhat ironic that the major tools used to improve reading and math are software tools. We use Read 180 for reading instruction and Moving with Math for assessment of students' math abilities. Read 180 is a comprehensive reading instruction program which the teachers have the students work on at least 30 minutes per class. The math intervention teacher tests each student using the Moving with Math program to determine where skill gaps exist and plan for intervention. Once again, it is the use of technology and the analysis of data that drives our instruction.


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ELO Month 2 - Exam View Advanced

In October, we followed up with an advanced session of Exam View. In this session, teachers were given very succinct tutorials of how to set up a test on the local network so that they can disaggregate data for their classes.



Since we had gone over the basics in September, this was the perfect time to dive deeper into the capabilities of the software. One of the key features is the ability of ExamView to generate reports of how students do based on Curriculum Objectives and broken down by Gender, Race, MSA Math and Reading, and Special Ed. Using these categories, teachers can track how their students perform over time using formative and summative assessments. The ability to show data of how well students do on each curriculum objective will allow teachers to target their instruction.

In the era of high stakes testing, administrators need to be able to assist teachers in collecting and analyzing data about how students score on formative tests. These tests need to be broken down into separate curriculum objectives and/or indicators. Teachers need to share this data in their PLC to garner input from other teachers of how to address those indicators which are not being mastered by the students. This can lead to flexible grouping when students are periodically regrouped to be with teachers who have certain strengths within the curriculum. In the ideal world, there would be several teachers whose strengths all compliment each other.

NCLB has forced teachers and administrators to do much more data analysis. My strength is in using technology to gather such data, analyze it, and share it. It is one of the main goals I would have when I become a building administrator.


Handouts from Session

• Importing Students into Test Manager
• Setting up a Test on the School Network
• Giving a Test on the school network
• Using the Learning Focus Report for Disaggregation of Data
• Getting Test Results from Tests on the Network
  

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Summer Recap

So the first month of school is in the books so I figure it's about time to recap the summer school experience. After all, why wait until the last minute? :-) First, this year summer school was much smoother than before. We really had only two students who were considered disruptive and only one more students who caused any real trouble after that. So over all, it was quiet. But here is what I learned.



Students who are in trouble with the law and receive positive reinforcement from their peers, often seek additional altercations with law enforcement. I don't think you have to be a PhD in Child Psychology to know that, but it was clearly evident at summer school. One of the two disruptive students was required to attend summer school as a condition of his release from juveniles detention. He sauntered into the Media Center the first day and with a wry smile greeted me since I had known him from previous school business. I may have looked surprised to see him there but I did my best to smile and welcome him to school. I don't know if I was good at hiding my surprise or not. I took a minute to walk over to him to find out how things were going with his life and he gave me the abridged version. He quickly described to me his dealings with police and judges and said how proud he was that he has six cases pending against him. I don't know if he noticed my sadness but having known this boy one-on-one in school before, I thought he had a chance to make it. Granted it wasn't a big chance but I guess I am an optimist. Shouldn't that be a good thing? When he explained he had to come here because of his probation, I told him I was hoping it would be a good summer for him.

Within a week he was obviously bored and not interested in doing the work. The teacher who was in charge of his instruction tried many times to get through to him but his apathy continued to increase. Finally he became somewhat beligerant to the teacher and she had no choice but to write a referral. Of course, she knew that was what he wanted. Even though the boy didn't pass his classes, he had a masters degree in street smarts. At the principals office where I was stationed, we talked to him about what he wants to get out of summer school and how we can help him be successful. So we did our part to play the role we were assigned. We all saw the writing on the wall that the boy would keep pushing until he left us no choice but to remove him from school. It didn't take long before he started using the "F" bomb and making personal attacks on the admininstrator.

So I had the privilege to walk him out of the building - because he lived within walking distance. But he refused to leave the lobby area. The summer school administrator was just down the hall and heard his opposition and pulled him back into the office to see if he could coerce the young man to straighten up - since he wasn't willing to leave school. Some more beligerance and finally we called the police to have him removed. In an almost comical display of attention grabbing showmanship, the boy put out his hands for the officer to "slap the cuffs" on him. The officer tactfully negotiated with the boy to willingly come with him and be dropped off at the closest house with supervision.

My biggest concern is that it is easy to education students who put forth the effort and try their best. But how do we reach the kids who have resinged themselves to showing off for their mates by getting into trouble with the law? How can we meet the NCLB with someone who knows the game well enough to do the things he or she needs to do to get kicked out?

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Meeting with Special Educators

I have had the chance to meet with some of the special education teachers to discuss their caseload and identify what technology would best help the students be successful. One of the new software items we have at school is a screen reader which will read text on the computer to the student. This could help the low readers with comprehension. Unfortunately, it is a free software download and the computerized voice may be distracting. Another exciting add on is the speech-to-text capabilities. Students who have difficulty writing will be able to speak their responses to the computer, which will have to be 'trained' for their voice, and the text will appear in a Microsoft Word processing document. And finally, there is Inspiration. Inspiration is a concept mapping software that will help students organize their thoughts and ideas before writing. It is also allowed to be submitted as a grade for a brief constructed response (BCR). I believe this will help the students give more information since Inspiration also has speech to text and text reading capabilities. So there are multiple methods for students to get the information into the diagram. It is a good way to tap the multimodal learning styles and to differentiate.

We all agreed that we will try to meet on Thursdays to do some training. So I look forward to scheduling that. I will also be presenting Inspiration to the staff as a whole in November and December, but I'd like the Special Ed teachers to use it sooner. Click to Read more ...

ELC Month 1

In September, we held our first Professional Development session using the ELC. We met in the cafeteria for our usual staff meeting and then broke into sessions about 3:40 - later than scheduled. It left me and my co-presenter less time for our presentation than we thought. As we walked toward the computer lab, I had the idea to separate the group into two. The first group would be teachers who wanted to sit with the handouts and work through the tutorial on their own while the second group would work through it with one of us.


We decided that I would be with the group who wanted to work through the tutorial on their own. For the most part, my session went well. However I checked on my partner and noticed he was having difficulty with his group. He made the same mistake I have made many times which is to get off topic and not bring it back. Later he confided in me that he would have been more comfortable taking the self paced group.

Part of the ELC is to post a reflection on how you implemented the skills learned in the session. In September, the teachers had to respond to these questions.

• In what manner can ExamView be used to help focus instruction on the special needs of your students?
  
• How can ExamView be used to differentiate assessments for students with disabilities?

Most of the responses didn't address the questions I asked. To compound the situation, I failed to redirect them to the questions because I also forgot to keep that in mind. Most teachers wrote generic responses about how easy the software was to use and that they liked it. I did try to elicit more information from them and asked them to elaborate which few did.

One concern I have is that the Moodle software is supposed to email teachers when someone replies to their posting. So far, that is not happening so I'll have to investigate that further.

In October we will work with teachers to use the ExamView software to disaggregate test data to identify objectives with which students need additional support.

Session Handouts

• Creating Classes in ExamView
• Importing Students into Test Manager
• Creating a Question Bank
• Creating a test from a bank

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My Role in Professional Development This Year

I met with the principal to discuss my role in staff development. Since we did not make AYP and I hold the belief that using technology as an instructional tool is a big part of getting students to perform better in school, I wanted to voice some of my concerns and get feedback from her. So we met in her office to go over them. It was a productive meeting which answered many of my questions but as with any new adventure, there are some answers that will just have to unfold as the year progresses.



As always, my biggest concern is my lack of time to work with teachers. I wear a great number of hats in this building from Tech Ed teacher, ISS facilitator, to computer repair guy, to Technology Resource Teacher Specialist, to Technology Coordinator. All of these jobs have important roles in the school to maintain an orderly school envirnoment and make learning possible. However, the one role I have that I don't see a solid connection to making AYP is being in ISS for half a day, every other day. It is the way it is but I needed clarification on why a highly skilled, highly qualified teacher is needed to fill that need. The answer was straightforth and simple: it's a staffing issue. The front office people are frequently needed to cover classes where a substitute teacher doesn't show up. That was something I didn't realize was so frequent. One other possiblity it to have the Community Liason cover ISS for one block. That way we all have one block to cover and that's definitely a good compromise. Apparently, our community liason is also called out for substituting frequently. I'd still be willing to structure so that if they are needed to be in a classrom, I can just do ISS for them. At least that will free up some additional time.
I feel that my talents are underused but it's not a concious choice to under use them. The situation is what it is. However, if I were an administrator, I'd want my staff with the skills that can help the school make AYP in the position they need to be in to get the students and teachers the help they need. Sometimes, I feel devalued because my vision is not shared and/or it is not communicated in a way so others see the great value and potential it has. So, the ISS situation is the way it is.

Since I always try to find compromise in any situation, I suggested that I work directly with the Special Education teachers since they are working with our SpEd students in a dedicated resource room this year. My hope is that I will be able to share ideas on how to use technology to capture the attention of our students and to provide accomodations for the more needy students. In turn, I hope the Special Education staff will share these ideas with the classroom teachers who will then apply them to their regular instruction. At least the theory sounds good. It reminds me of "Trickle Down Economics." We'll see how well this works.

Scheduling will be an issue because the SpEd teachers are all over the place. The only day when they are not scheduled to be in a classroom is Thursday when IEP meetings are held. The IEP schedule changes weekly so some SpEd teacher will be available. Of course, if it is an ISS day, I may not be available. We'll have to do the best we can.

After the meeting I shared my idea of working directly with the Special Ed teachers with the team leader. She thought it was a good idea but concerned about another "meeting" that the teachers had to attend. She suggested that my meetings with them be used in place of the required ELC participation. I felt that was a good idea and I told her I would discuss it with the principal.

I believe this is a good plan on paper, but I'm not sure how it will work. I know that we are scheduled to get about 100 new computers that will take weeks to set up, I have my own staff development presentations to create, I have my Tech Ed class to teach, I have to troubleshoot problems on a network I am not intimately familiar with, I have to take my last grad class, I have to plan for my ELO club after school, and I have to be home immediately after all official school business is finished so my wife can go to work and I stay with my children. So this is going to be quite a juggling act. Only time will tell if it will work.

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Network Migration

FCPS has switched from Novell servers to MS Windows 2003 servers. The predominant theory is that it will make maintaining the WAN more efficient since FCPS has so few IT specialists. It provides a more centralized method of control and allows for the technology services people to keep an inventory of every machine connected to the network. This step makes sense since there isn't the time or resources to have actual technicians work on the workstations. The new LanDesk makes this possible.

The Technology Coordinator of each building was asked to be present during the migration period since the techs who would do most of the work may have questions about specific hardware and locations in the building. I spent several days with the techs as they upgraded the system. The process wasn't too complicated and the imaging of the computers was done from the server, so no CD-ROMs were required to be carried around.


Overall the new system is very nice. However the security policies are much stricter than before. One of the biggest drawbacks is that staff members cannot install printers. This is because the county is concerned about licensing issues. Too many staff members would install software, knowingly or unknowingly, without the proper software license. So the decision was made to prevent software installation by anyone other than the network administrator. This creates some more work for me but it is manageable. One of the things I like most about the new system is the ability to remote control other computers. This really helps me to assist teachers when I'm in the ISS room and cannot physically be in front of their machine. Of course, if it doesn't turn on, then I can't remote to the machine.

When the staff returns, there will be a small learning curve, but I don't anticipate to be too difficult. The concepts are the same; only the environment has changed.

The decision to migrate to Windows from Novell makes sense for the current situation. However I would love to do more research into the total cost of ownership of using Linux based servers, thin clients and open source software. While students will always need to use MS Word and the rest of the office suite, many of the software titles we use have freely available open source equivalents. The use of Linux servers and open source software in a thin client environment can save 100s of 1000s of dollars over time when compared to proprietary software and operating software. A major paradigm shift such as that would have to be done very slowly over time and would require buy-in from a lot of stakeholders. But that's where the fun begins!
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The TJ Middle ELC

Mr. Lininger and I met to discuss how the ELC would be laid out. He wanted an area where the latest news of what was going on in the professional development process could be posted for teachers to read. He also wanted a way that staff could sign up for their chosen topic for the month. At first we talked about how to create one professoinal development "course" with many topics. But I suggested that one course site could become cumbersome and difficult to use as we continue to use the ELC and the amount of information grows. So I offered the idea to separate each professional development topic into its own course site and have a "master" site with news and information about professional development. I knew that Moodle could "link" courses together using the meta course option, but I had never used it before.



Now that the decision has been made to use an Electronic Learning Community, I finally get to showcase what Moodle can do. One of the great featurs of Moodle is the creation of a Meta course which acts as a "master" course. A meta course may be used as a common area to allow Participants in specific courses to interact with each other, such as in an ELC with multiple topics which should logically be separated. Although I hadn't set up a meta course before, the documentation with Moodle made is easy to figure out. All I had to do was check a box for the main ELC course site and check a box on each of the 4 professional development topic sites to link it to the main site. This also made maintenance easier since all I had to do was enter staff names and log in information on the main site and it was automatically copied to the linked sites.

I feel pretty good about this set up. It seperates the differnt topics so the information doesn't get "muddied" as time goes on. It's clearly defined and easy to use. I put up extra menu blocks to help make navigating from one Professoinal Development site to another easier. Hopefully, teachers will find this easy to use.

One big question will be how much training time will I get with the staff. As I have stated before, the greatest professoinal development will be ineffective is staff do not have enough time to process what they are learning. Since few teachers have participated in an online course, and fewer have used Moodle, it will be critical to have at least two opportunities to present the ELC to the staff members so they can be introduced to the site, have an opportunity to practice, and then provide an opportunity to come back together to and ask questions or help each other.

Irregardless I will have to prepare detailed documentation for each staff member to help ensure this ECL works.

The other big question is how to train the facilitators. Since I have taken a course about online facilitating, I will have to rely on what I learned from that course. The general rule is to post a discussion forum that teachers can respond to and encourage discussion among the participants for that month by requiring the participants to read and respond to at least two other teachers' postings. It is also a skill to avoid the "That's a good idea" or the "I agree" response. Sometimes adults can be like students and do as little as possible to claim they have done the work. It's hard when we are all so busy, but I believe it will pay off in the end.

I have contacted one of the instructors, who is an FCPS employee to get advise. She said that my ideas so far are good and she'd be happy to help train the facilitators in any way they want to be trained. Hopefully the facilitators will be open to this.

EDIT 8-23-07: As I was afraid, teachers only had one 45 minute session with me which I feel went really well, but since it happened the first week back, I worry that there will be many questions when the end of September comes.
I had only one 45 minute session with the facilitators where only the bare minimum of information about using the ELC was given to them. I have noticed that forums are not set up in the most efficient manner, facilitators don't participate in their own discussion, and they are generally ignored. There really needed to be two sessions, one on how to use it, and one on how to facilitate.

EDIT 11-8-07 Teachers have voiced conecrns over how to use the ELC. They say it is not as user friendly as Blackboard. Others say it is much easier than Blackboard. In any case, most of the confusion appears to be from the infrequency of using the ELC, the lack of facilitator encouragement of continuing discussions, and that some of the discussions are just not set up well. I have offered to do another training with the facilitators but I haven't had anyone take the offer. So, where does that leave the ELC? As an administrator I would absolutely want to make sure the staff and facilitators are comfortable using the tools of the ELC. But I wonder why none of the administrators have come to me directly to ask what can be done?
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Summer PTSA Executive Board Meeting

This year we have a new PTSA president who is very motivated to get more parents involved in school functions and to improve communication among the teachers and students. We met at her house as the summer ended to talk about the coming school year. As usual, I made a pitch for the increased use of the web site to continue the lines of communication from school to home.


One of the issues we have been having with the school web site is that our web host, Xecu.net has not upgraded our server to include the latest version of MySQL. Most of the software we run on the web site requires a version of MySQL higher than what's on the server. So we are unable to upgrade. The reason we need to upgrade is to take advantage of new features of the software and new security patches. We are getting our web hosting for free so we don't have a position to make a request such as upgrading. So I suggested to the PTSA that we look into paying for hosting at Xecu.net or another hosting company. They asked me to look into options and one of the parents suggested a company she uses for hosting.

I had been using GoDaddy.com for a while and was pretty satisfied with the service. So I checked into their hosting plans that may suit our needs. I subscribe to the basic plan for $3.99/month and it has all the features we need: PostNuke CMS, Moodle LMS, PHP and MySQL with the correct version. The major drawback to their hosting plan is that is doesn't allow Secure Shell (SSH) access to the virtual server. This is a very important tool for managing a web site. It does allow FTP but I prefer SSH because it creates a remote console on the server so I can manage it as if I were sitting in front of the actual server. Of course, many security features are applied so I don't get total control, but enough to do what I need to to do. I believe that we could manage the site without SSH and since I don't know how much longer I'll be at TJ Middle before getting an administrative job, it probably won't matter. Not many people know how to use SSH. FTP is more common.

I have always considered communication to be one of the most important aspects of leadership. Communication brings together all the stake holders of the school and allows for dialog and the passing of information that will directly or indirectly impact each stake holder. The use of a web site to pass along that information, and in a more perfect world, to gather information from the stakeholders will allow me to make better judgments about the culture and climate of the school. When I eventually leave TJ Middle, I will want to continue using a web site for communication.


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Professional Development Planning Meeting

With the school year underway, the Professional Development Team met again to solidify the schedule for staff development this year. The administrative team presented the calendar of events for the Professional Development team to review. One notable change was that we are now required to attend six ninety minute staff development sessions. We decided at the summer meeting to use that time to work on our ELC topics. However, the decision was made to add SITE facilitation to our schedule. So we now have a ton of professional development options each month. We are required to attend three separate and seemingly unconnected training sessions: Our selected ELC topic with a required implementation and reflection, our monthly Special Ed topic with a required implementation and reflection, and the SITE facilitator session which has no required reflection. I got me thinking about how much can teachers have thrown at them and not shut down?



As each meeting of the professional development team occurred, the growing number of professional development experiences we were required to participate prompted me to write my concerns down in a file which I want to share with the administration. I have a meeting scheduled soon. Essentially, this file reflects on my hopes and concerns for the upcoming year. I identified a lot of "problems" I see with the plan, but I also know that sometimes, administrators are not given an option. The required SITE facilitator training is one of those instances. The Central Offices requires them to come in to give us training since we didn't make AYP. I wonder why they only do that when we don't make AYP? Why don't they do that proactively? Something to ponder.

Anyway, the big deal for me as an administrator is to construct professional development that has common threads and are connected in a way that teachers can digest. Since I'm part of the Professional Development team I can look at the big picture and connect the dots (sort of). With disjointed training, it becomes task mastering instead of skill building.

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Professional Development Team Summer Meeting

We did not make AYP in 2006-2007. Our Special Education students did not make the mark. That's not so surprising. If you look at our MSA scores over the last few years, it is clear that Special Ed would be the first group to fall below the line. So now we have decided to focus our staff development on helping students who receive special services.

Our Professional Development Team Met on July 23 to discuss how to meet the needs of our Special Education students. The data from the MSA was not encouraging but it wasn't dreadful either. So the administration team had decided to move our Professional Learning Communities into cyberspace to form an Electronic Learning Community (ELC). This was great news! I have been advocating for using courseware such as Blackboard or Moodle. I have even detailed it in the paper I wrote for Supervision of the Schools.

The premise of an ELC is simple. By putting staff development information online, teachers can access the training 24/7 and participate in a time table that fits their busy life. The greatest challenge is to facillitate the online learning process. I have completed a course in facilitating online learning this past Spring so that experience should help. The plan is to have each teacher choose one of four topics: Technology, Behavior Intervention; Instructional Strategies, and a Book Talk. I am leading the Technology strand.

The team brainstormed what technology would be presented. My two top choices were the ExamView test creation software and Inspriation. For use to really pinpoint in what skills students lack and in what skills student are proficient, we must be able to give tests that are correlated to specific curriculum objective. My plan is to teach the teachers how to use this software to give pretests that can be used to find skill gaps and skill strengths when planning their instruction.

I really believe that all students can benefit from using Inspiration software. It is a concept mapping software that duplicates the traditional concept web that teachers would draw on a large flip chart paper. Using the electronic version allows students to organize their thought when the create brief and extended response answers. The software has a large library of clip are that can be used to create more visual webs to help students identify pattern or relationships. Inspiration is also identified as a research based product that has been shown to improve student performance.

We also have Audacity audio editing software for creating podcasts and other audio presentations. The premise is that students use and listen to audio files on the Internet and to have them create the files they use in their "play time" would make it more engaging and motivating for them.

In addition to the other titles, we now run Windows XP and Office 2003 which has Speech to Text and Text to Speech capabilities. That can be a big asset for the Special Education teachers.
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Foundations of Technology Online (MCPS Course)

I was honored to be asked to help with the devlopment of the Foundations of Technology online course for Montgomery County Public Schools. It was my first opportunity to do real development on a real online course. So I was very excited to get started. I traveled to the Department of Online Learning in Montgomery County to work with a team of 3-4 other teacher specialists who were each performing a role for the course development. My role was to develop hands on activities which were directly connected to the technology standard of ITEA that students would do to demonstrate understanding of the concepts and material for the lessons. All together I would create about 20 hands on activities with assessments.

View NBC 4 Report about Student Online Learning in MCPS.

Working on this course was a challenge because we were under a tight deadline. In fact, the course went live the third day I was there. So we were always trying to stay at least one day of the students. What I discovered was there was a tremendous amount of disconnect between the project manager and the supporting teachers. It seemed that none of the supporting teachers had produced the products they had promised to produce. That was one of the reasons I was called in to work. They needed the help and I have worked with them in the past and they have relied on me and been satisfied with my work.

There were also communication problems between the project manager and myself via email. After the first week in the office, I worked from home since I had other obligations. We would check in via email and discuss the development of the activities. I found that a meaningful phone call was much better than email because words sometimes are misconstrued in an email when spoken language is often better understood.

I would classify the climate working there this summer as somewhat toxic. There didn't seem to be a lot of mutual respect when it came to meeting deadlines. People seemed to short with each other or smile and say what the other person wanted to hear and then ignor them. It seemed that a few people did the bulk of the work and since I was an outsider, I tried to keep a low profile.

My experience lasted about 200 hours in total but I chose not to count all of them toward my internship since most of it was task oriented. I had to use my interpesonal skills many times to help defuse tense situations and I frequently relied on my democratic reasoning to help find common ground when there was disagreements. But this experience definitely put my leadership skills to the test so that I could produce a product that Montgomery County could be satisfied with.

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Summer School Staff Training

Summer school was held at Frederick High School this year. The high school had already been migrated to the new Windows network. So it was up to me to bring all the teachers up to speed since most of them worked at schools were not already migrated. Unfortunately, I hadn't been shown how to use the new network either. So I set up a meeting with the FHS Technology Coordinator so we could walk through the process of logging in, adding staff members and students, and some basic trouble shooting.

The system seems to be straight forward and easy to use. So I created a short tutorial for the staff and called a brief meeting on the first day teachers reported. I handed out the login convention and we went to the computer lab to practice. There were a few teachers who had trouble getting on but after 10-15 minutes of practice, they all had the hang of it.

As a leader, it's important to help ease the transition from the old to the new. This time as simple handout was sufficient to get the staff online and working. Sometimes, as in the case of many of my technology staff development, more gradual and detailed information is needed to help the transition. Knowing when a short and sweet transition is appropriate and when a longer, more gradual transition is needed can be the difference between as successful new program and one that doesn't work. Click to Read more ...