First Workshop: Success!

This week we ventured into Holyoke to hold our first workshop concerning Microsoft Excel. Our class size was three staff members and as there were three of us, we decided to each take one of the teachers or administrative staff and give them a one-on-one lesson. We ran through out basic introduction to the program, discussing what each of the buttons did and how to conform the workspace to the needs of each individual task. In order to maintain sustainable teaching our group developed a packet with all of the basic information so that the individuals could reference the directions in the future. So, after the basic lesson we went on to teach lessons in gradebook creation, attendance lists and finally a budget sheet. Overall, the feedback was postive and the staff members seemed happy with what they could bring back to their professional and private lives.

In looking to the future, we hope that our packets remain with the individuals so they might never be hindered by basic excel techniques again. Also, for the next workshop we may continue to advance the project of each individual or we may have a different crowd with different goals. Adaptability will be imperative as we move forward. Also, we do have a lesson plan for the next workshop and a packet to accompany it. We have enjoyed our experiences with Peck School thus far and we cannot wait to go back!

Meeting with Megan at Peck

Today Janey and I met with Megan at Peck to discuss the different parts of our project and get her feedback. Overall the meeting was very successful. We decided that the survey we were planning on sending to the teachers is probably unnecessary since we already have a pretty good idea of what classes we want to do and Megan knows when would be best to hold the classes. So we went ahead and scheduled the two excel classes. They are tentatively scheduled for March 7th and March 14th. We are also planning on doing an i-Clicker workshop (run by an i-Clicker professional) either the last week of March or the first week of April.

On Monday, Megan is going to check with the computer lab at Peck and send us an email to confirm that we can use it on those dates. Our next steps are create the documentation and handout for the class, create a flier to send out to the teachers, send Megan the lesson plan (when we send the flier), figure out how we want to handle RSVPs and check with Carol on the i-Clicker purchase.

Meeting with Arts Integration Working Group - 2/13/12

Today Travis and I met with the Arts Integration Working Group at Peck School. The group is a collaboration between the Enchanted Circle Theater and teachers at Peck. They are hoping to get the arts into as much of the curriculum as possible and are hoping to expand their ideas to as many schools as possible. We discussed the possibility of a wiki to store their various lesson plans and other resources. The Arts Integration group likes the idea of a wiki so we are going to proceed with that plan. They are going to work on compiling the materials for us to upload to the site by the beginning of March. In the meantime, they asked us if we would create a template that they could use for the lesson plans. It should have the headings below:

• Learning Objectives
• Materials
• Room Setup
• Instructions with time expectations
• Adaptations and Extensions
• Resources
• Attachments and Media

The site should be organized by grade (K-8) then subject (ELA, Math, Science, Social Studies) then theme (immigration, magnets, etc...) which will be added as we go.

We discussed who would have privileges to update the site and determined that it would be best if the Enchanted Circle Theater group has control over the site including hosting and updating.

The last thing we discussed was a list of steps that we need to take to complete the project and came up with 5.

1. Set up account
2. Create template
3. Receive materials from group
4. Upload materials
5. Create documentation and teach group how to maintain site

Meeting with JC Sawyer

This morning Kevin and I met with JC Sawyer from OIT to learn some of the basics about i-clickers and other personal response devices. Ms. Sawyer was involved with the process of introducing i-clickers to the UMass campus, and her tutorial was very helpful for us.

Setting up the i-clicker system is very easy and only requires a USB drive and a basic operating system (i.e. doesn't require Windows Vista). Ms. Sawyer demonstrated some of the helpful features including an instructor remote which allows teachers to ask a question with the simple press of a button, different ways to represent data, and demographics. Purchasing an i-clicker instructor kit for Peck would cost $200. Student clickers would be about $20-$40 each. Ms. Sawyer provided us with some contact information for if we do decide to go with i-clickers and recommended that we check out ebay/amazon for cheaper options.

We really appreciated Ms. Sawyer's help, and her tutorial will be helpful as we move forward in developing out project.

Team Meeting 2/3/2012

On Friday we had our weekly team meeting in the Campus Center. Our agenda for the meeting included making adjustments to the timeline, preparing for the meeting with the Arts Integration group, and preparing for the meeting with JC in OIT. Unfortunately, Megan was out this past week so we were unable to get her feedback on the teacher survey.

In the coming week we hope get her feedback and make the necessary changes so that we can distribute it as soon as possible. We will continue to research the possibility of obtaining PRS devices for Peck, and continue to develop further lesson plans.

Spring 2012 - 1st Meeting (1/27/11)

On Friday January 27th, the four of us met to continue where we left off from the previous semester. During the break, Laura and Janey continued to communicate with Marcie on the status of the survey, which is almost 100% finished. In addition, we collectively decided to separate the teacher workshops from the AIWG online resource project in favor of simplicity and streamlining the completion of both projects.

Teacher Workshops

Laura got a headstart on developing our Excel workshop, showing us a mock gradebrook she used in another class that she could show teachers how to make. She also showed us an early draft of the lesson plan that she hoped to use in the upcoming month. We also briefly discussed the breakdown of the rest of the workshops - given the strict deadline we had in completing our project, we decided to cut down the total number of workshops from 5 to 4. At most, each workshop would be comprised of two parts (as we don't want to take up too much of the teachers' extracurricular time).

Our hope was to finalize the technology survey and have it distributed to Peck teachers by next week - however, Megan was seemingly MIA all week, and we could not get a response from her, delaying our plans by a week.

Arts Integration Wiki

While we had not kept in touch with Priscilla throughout the duration of winter break (mostly due to the fact that we still at the time weren't sure what we would be able to do for AIWG), the proposal of developing a wiki sounded feasible, and we decided to go ahead and tackle two projects at the same time. The only thing left for us to do before development begins is to formally meet with AIWG and get a full understanding of their needs (as they still don't know about our idea of making a wiki)!