Michael C. Warren

Technology and Education

Archive for the ‘Field-Based Experiences’ Category

August 2010 Field Activity Reflection

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This month was very busy, with our new system coming online, a scheduled training for campus technology assistants/teachers who would be helping their campus with eChalk.  During this time, we had 3 people from our campus attend. Karen James and I are both part of the Lamar University Technology Leadership Program and have been working on the web stuff off and on together for the past year.  After talking with her, I have let her be our gatekeeper in regards to how many things are managed, while I focus on more detailed research regarding some of the tools and deeper technical issues for the school.  During in-service we co-trained our fellow teachers and staff to begin using the new eChalk system. Karen worked in a larger group setting in her training while I focused on helping those that needed one-on-one training.  Some of the more in depth research I did was to see how the student accounts worked, what they could see and what limitations they had. In addition I setup a way for parents to create their own account in the system so they could monitor their students work, and I created an online form for dress code infractions.

This new system has finally broken down some barriers and we have more people involved with keeping up the schools website than ever before. It is changing on a more regular basis and we are having fewer problems than before.

I still feel that we should be sending out letters to parents by the 3 weeks mark, but I have seen in the past that the school often puts technology into place and it will take from 6 weeks to a semester before information is sent out.  That I do not know how to fix, but I know that the kids are excited, and many parents have questions, but we are only getting a small amount of the school and parents involved at this point.

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August 30th, 2010 at 4:23 pm

July 2010 Field Activity Reflection

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As part of our ongoing effort to get users to be more involved with information to their web pages, and because our web hosting service was changing to an Internet Provider only service we decided to switch our web hosting to eChalk. This was approved by School Board last month, and transition to the new service started this month.  We began talking about images for a head banner, and also a design for district branding, which had not been done before.  Scheduled date for training the trainers is for early August.

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July 30th, 2010 at 4:16 pm

June 2010 Field Activity Reflection

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June was a month in which I focused some attention on personal needs. I did not do much in terms of focusing on projects this month. I will be dedicating July and August back to school based projects that will include developing and creating training sessions for our new Content Management System eChalk so that teachers may began to use it during the new school year as both a way to inform parents and utilize the tools as a training system. In addition I will be working with other departments to use the same technology for staff development resources.

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June 22nd, 2010 at 4:11 pm

May Field Based Activity Reflection

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May was a slow month, yet a busy month. It was slow in the sense that I did not get as much as I wanted to do with my filed projects only because I was finishing up with finals at Navarro College and finishing projects with students at Maypearl ISD. The work that was done this month was researching and attending meetings in regards to a new web hosting service. It appears that after years of hosting our website through our Internet Service Provider, the provider has decided to just focus on internet access. This has put us into a quick research and review of some alternative hosting services. We researched two options that included eChalk and School Fusion. While both had their merits, they key is that we want web hosting, email, a basic learning management system, and storage for students. For me, School Fusion was a “shinier” product, but it lacked an email solution.

The last I heard the district was looking into the pricing of eChalk and how that pricing may go if we purchase their complete package. As the current web developer, I am excited about moving to a content management system because it will be managed by an outside organization, leaving more free time for our technology department to focus on other issues. In addition it will be database driven allowing for better control of the structure and layout. Additional features will also be added that are beyond my current scope, and will allow me to return my focus to teaching courses.

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May 30th, 2010 at 10:06 pm

April field based activity reflection

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While last month I started developing my action plan, this month many things started getting put into action. I researched some topics that I thought might be of interest for teachers, such as using Google docs, Google sites, and Survey Monkey. Survey Monkey got the most interest from teachers and they have already started to find ways to use it for their classes. Our Microsoft Certification program was having some problems I worked to get things up from the last part of last month. As a contact person between our IT department and Certiport I eventually worked to help get a solution so that students could run the software over the network. The problem was our firewall, as well as restrictions on the student’s accounts. We created a new account just for the Lab use that goes around the firewall issue, and gives students more access for the application on the workstations.

Our current web hosting service that also provides our broadband connectivity has told us that they will not be offering web and mail hosting for us next year, so we are in the process of starting to look for a new hosting provider. As part of our search we have a meeting planned in May with eChalk, but I have started to research what services eChalk provides. From what I see so far they have been around for a while, and offer a number of good services. In early may we will have a teleconference and I hope it answers some of the questions I have regarding technical offerings and specific web manipulation. If we go with one of these new services I am hoping we can also use it as an online learning management solution as well. I have talked to our counselor and she is interested in offering additional staff development for things like TAKS in an online environment to help teachers make sure they do the allotted training required.

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April 30th, 2010 at 7:44 pm

Document camera and computer projector

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Today I had the oppertunity to work with a fellow instructor in beginning to use a document camera to help with his classroom teaching. I walked him through the process of how the computer, document camera, and projector interact and need to be connected. In addition I showed him how he can switch between document camera and projecting his computer. He has the oppertunity to project his computer in mirrored screen and extended desktop.

The teacher is excitied about using the new technologies as it will allow him to show multiple students in a more precise manner than he has in the past when trying to describe Microsoft office functions and how documents should look.

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April 14th, 2010 at 11:46 am

1st Week of Tutorials

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My first real attempt at doing some field projects for my Masters has not been very successful. My first tutorial was to cover Google Docs, and my second tutorial is to cover Google Sites. Both of these are geared to show teachers how they can use these tools to engage students and increase productivity.

The first tutorial I had no one show up, however the tutorial will be offered again and be placed on my classroom website.  The second tutorial has to be rescheduled because of a required TAKS training that has taken precendence.

 

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April 13th, 2010 at 8:17 am

March 2010 Field Activity Reflection

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Over the course of this first month after receiving information regarding what is required for the Internship I have begun to realize some things are already being set into motion. I also know there are many other things that I could place into my logs if I go back and look at what I have been doing since the beginning of this program. One of these items that have been in motion for a while is our continuing development of our web site. Since I redesigned the web site two years ago, it has continued to expand and we are offering new opportunities for teachers to create their own pages using Adobe Contribute. I have been focusing on training staff at the elementary and intermediate schools, while cohort Karen James has been offering training at the high school level. This month I provided some basic training as well as support for some issues were having with their software. In addition to helping teachers with Adobe Contribute I have put together some ideas to offer staff development training to teachers who would like to learn about Google Docs, Google Sites, and Survey Monkey and how they can be used in their classrooms.

Besides work that has already been in development I have started to work on offering students an opportunity to take the Microsoft Certified Application Specialist for Microsoft Word. This is something we are hoping to grow over the next few years by offering more and more certification options for students. This year we only have 5, but I am hoping in the future we can offer the test as part of the curriculum.

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March 30th, 2010 at 7:27 pm

February 2010 Field Activity Reflection

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This month was pretty light as a week was spent at the TCEA conference in Austin.  There was a small amount of time in which I helped a user solve some problems with their laptop, and also helped solve some web editing problems that users were having at the Intermediate Campus.  Still can’t encourage the administration office to make their own changes to the website, so I still receive updates from them.

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February 26th, 2010 at 3:55 pm

January 2010 Field Activity Reflection

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This month’s biggest problem occurred when we came back from Christmas holiday to find out that our hosting provider moved servers on us. None of our Adobe Contribute keys functioned so they had to be reissued for ever user in the district.  There were certain items missing from the web site that had been placed within the past two month.  Because of this I had to find out the new connection information, working with the provider to set up ftp.maypearlisd.org instead of an IP address so that if further server changes ever occurred, it would not disrupt our process, and keys would not have to be made again.  I am still having issues with administration not wanting to post their own work and the current scenario is that I am still updating certain non-teacher related information on the Secondary campus site.  If we could focus attention for some of the staff to learn the new system it would be much more efficient for me during the time I teach.  I did spend some time helping the IT department troubleshoot a failed hard drive. During this time I researched the error code and contacted the manufacturer to see if there was an alternative to replacing the drive. In essence checking for a system check.

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January 30th, 2010 at 3:42 pm