Wendy+T

Mentor Report



Technology Mentor Report Wendy Thomas Month: December and January

1. Goals for the Month:

•	Offer support to HP notebook teachers, as well as the District notebook teachers in Minto. •	Resources: Organize the internet resources I am finding. •	Compile a list of anchor activities that students with notebooks can use that apply to their subject when they are finished their work on the notebooks. •	Bring back useful PD from the FETC Conference in Orlando. •	Continue to promote blogging and podcasting in the District. •	Offer support to the teachers doing collaborative projects. •	Offer support to teachers in the district interested in doing technology-related lessons and projects.

2. What did I do to bring about success in achieving my monthly goals?

•	I have offered support to the Harold Peterson and Minto teachers by setting up blogs, and doing class blogmeister training sessions in classes with the students. Also, I have went into classes and did a “Citing Sources” mini-lesson. I found websites that will put sources into a correct bibliographic format. Then students are able to cut and paste from the generated reference. I explained how to do a “Works Cited” page and reinforced the importance of giving credit where credit is due. As well, I have compiled some interesting writing lessons for one of the teachers who attended the conference and sent them to the LA teachers.

•	In terms of resources, I have been social bookmarking all the sites that are sent to me on Del.icio.us. As soon as these are organized, I will be giving the links to the teachers to use. I have a loose organization of subjects, but am working on a more detailed organization in order to save teacher time.

•	I have been gathering a list of anchor activities that teachers can use with their students when they are finished their class work. What I have noticed is that activities can be finished by some students quickly, while others take longer. Sometimes this happens because their keyboarding skills vary from student to student. I will be dividing these anchor activities by subject and will put them on the portal when they are complete.

•	The FETC Conference in Florida was an excellent PD experience. Seven of us attended: A technology supervisor, two tech mentors, two teachers from the notebook school (one of them is the VP of the school), and two technicians that work on the project. I really enjoyed the Google Earth session that I attended. I have been practicing the things that I learned at the conference so I can pass it on to others. What I was really amazed by was the fact that in so many of the sessions wireless was discussed at great length. I think they have wireless issues and bandwidth problems there! I also was interesting in hearing about how they are using ipods in the classroom to take notes and review for tests, and how laptops were an ideal many schools were striving towards.

•	In terms of offering support to teachers doing collaborative projects, I have been out to visit Faith Moore in Gagetown. I was amazed to see how easy Grade 2 students were doing powerpoints! Faith says that the smartboard she has in her room allows her to model what the students are to do on the notebooks. (They have a class set of ibooks).

•	I have been doing extensive training in small groups and individually with smart notebook software. The high school teachers are especially interested in receiving training on this. I did an inservice with the high school English teachers and found that bringing down two boards helped. I did the training in three parts. For session one, I used two smartboards and divided the group in half. Each person was able to hook up the smartboard to their notebook. I have realized that wires can be very intimidating for first –time users. In the second session, I showed teachers the features of smart notebook using a hands-on approach. The last session will be curriculum related.

•	For personal pd, I have started reading a book called Wikinomics which discusses the power of collaboration in business using wikis. I have also been learing how to use Google Earth, and have been experimenting with class blogmeister to see how teachers can use the site for different subjects and to use the layout in new and creative ways.

3. Challenges

•	Communication and meeting to discuss the project with all parties involved in the notebook continues to be a challenge.

•	Another challenge I encountered in using Class blogmeister was setting up student accounts for one class. The teacher wished to omit the last names of the students when she was setting up the site. But that glitched up the login process when students tried to login. A nice solution she came up with was to register all students with the same last name. For instance, instead of registering a student as Andrew T, the teacher registered him as Andrew Panda. (Panda is the name of their team). Each kid received the same last name so not only was it easy for the students to remember when they were logging in, but it also ensured privacy of names. •	I am finding that collaborative project leg-work challenging. For instance, I will be following up with one group to ensure that the project gets off the ground. I see that it is really important that teachers fill out the project outlines, goals and dates so the project doesn’t die before it begins.