February+2010

February 2010
Standards I-B, V-A, V-B This month I attended the TCEA convention in Austin, TX. This took place while I was taking EDLD 5306. I even created my wiki while I was in Austin. So when learning about the Internship activities that were to take place I figured I had a good start with one full week of Professional Development. I attended one full day of Technology Coordinator training. I learned about new and emerging technologies and Legislative updates. I also learned that the state was going to allow schools to use a portion of the textbook fund to purchase handheld devices for accessing ebook textbooks. Our school district was on a winter break the week after TCEA. After returning from winter break I met with the Superintendent and explained about the textbook and ebook information and his response was “No, the students will steal them.” My first thought was how sad and my second thought was but not if they all have one. So not only are we behind the times as far as technology is concerned, we are going to stay behind. It was not until the end of February that I was able to report to the teachers all of the new information I gained at TCEA. The report took place during a regularly scheduled Faculty meeting so I was limited in time. I used that time to introduce new technologies that I learned about, new software demonstrations I had participated in and the fact that I visited with representatives from our Student Information Software Company. I ended with a calendar of upcoming afternoon workshop opportunities during the month of March. I learned through this activity that what I think is a most interesting workshop is not always the favorite of other teachers. I needed to really think about how the information I was going to mention was going to be the most beneficial for the teachers. Based on the participation from the teachers I chose the right workshops to talk about and demonstrate that afternoon. One thing I feel I need to work on is how to get the administration to “buy-in” to the future (which should be now) of technology in our school.