CindyPerry

Please go to the Perry Internship Wiki for links to:

 * Final Report
 * Midterm Report
 * Final Reflection
 * Examples of Projects
 * Annotated Bibliography
 * Time Sheets

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After examining a variety of Native American pictographs and symbols, first grade students drew some Native American symbols in Paint. The symbols were compiled together to create this movie in Windows Live Movie Maker. Native American music from FreePlayMusic.com was added to the movie. First graders should be proud of their outstanding work!

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Second grade students researched the Pilgrims, the Mayflower, and the first Thanksgiving. Each student was assigned a question to respond to in MS Word and illustrate in Paint. The questions were based on the book, //If You Sailed on the Mayflower,// by Ann McGovern. All of their work was compiled in Windows Live Movie Maker. Baroque music from FreePlayMusic.com was added to complete this movie.

Staff Development
The faculty wiki staff development session went well. About half the staff were able to come; the other half will come to the make-up session on Monday, November 22—that’s today! The goal of the session was to “invite” the faculty to the CDS faculty wiki and show them how to edit it and add to it. Although it can be challenging when everyone HAS to attend, making it optional was also a deal-breaker. The second session, “How to create a wiki,” was optional and it wasn’t convenient for anyone to attend. I did have people say that they were interested in creating a wiki and we are trying to work together during the day to start this project.

Five individuals who attended expressed a desire to create a wiki and one person asked for help in using Excel. To me, that is a sign of success. If they can get started using a wiki this year and see some of the benefits, we may have others who are interested in using a wiki next year. To me, a wiki is like a book, one of the most versatile tools available for educators. It can be used to post and organize hyperlinks, to post assignments, to facilitate student discussion, to publish student work, to post documents and handouts for students to download, to communicate with parents, and more. The purpose of a wiki is unlimited.

I’m starting to think that the best way to offer staff development at our school is on the few Mondays when we don’t have mandatory staff meetings and on an individual basis. Maybe we can use the faculty wiki to sign up for facilitating this process. This make-up session is on a Monday without a mandatory faculty meeting—of course who wants to go to a faculty meeting the Monday of Thanksgiving week?

Collaborative Teaching and Projects
Two major student projects that we’ve been working on during the past two weeks include first graders studying about Native Americans and the second graders studying the Pilgrims, the Mayflower, and the first Thanksgiving. Working together with the music teacher and the first and second grade teachers, I posted movies, slideshows, and a number of hyperlinks on the CDStech wiki. In addition, I provided a list of other hyperlinks for teachers to use when planning instruction. In second grade, the teachers and I worked together to have students research and illustrate their topics. All of the illustrations and responses were gathered and put into a movie using Windows Live Movie Maker, with copyright free music downloaded from FreePlayMusic.com. I will embed the movie on this wiki as soon as I can get the last student to finish his illustration.

In first grade, students looked at various Native American symbols on the first grade wiki page, in slide shows, and on paper. Then they used Paint to illustrate a symbol. Illustrations were made into a movie using Windows Live Movie Maker with copyright free music downloaded from Freeplaymusic.com. One of the biggest challenges of creating student movies is to make certain that all student work is included in the movie. The organization part is challenging, especially when we use multiple computers, for multiple classes, on a traveling cart. I’m hoping to have our IT guys create more folders on the server so that we can save work more easily for projects like this.

At this time I am also collaboratively working with other teachers: · Ethics teacher –8th grade digital citizenship projects · Math teacher –math wiki page with math games and skills links · Science teacher –science fair project (hopefully creating a wiki for students to organize and publish their work) · Clubs coordinator –to create a wiki link for 7th and 8th grade clubs In general, this has been a productive semester. I feel that there are some relationships developed allowing for technology skills to grow more each year.

Midterm Report
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Reflection # 4: November 8, 2010
During the past two weeks, I feel that I have accomplished quite a bit. Perhaps that is because I am starting to “think” more about my projects this semester. One that I’ve been working on is a staff development with my group from 746. This staff development will benefit the faculty at my school. The purpose of the staff development is for faculty to learn a new way to communicate and collaborate by using a faculty wiki, http://CDSteach.wikispaces.com. In this session, teachers will learn how to use and edit the wiki. Altogether, I’ve made eight Jing tutorials for the staff development. This will allow faculty to learn about wikis long after the staff development is completed. I’ve updated the wiki site with the Jing tutorials, creating little banners for each of them.

Because we have continued to be computer challenged in fifth grade, the headmaster seems to have been reluctant to set the date for this staff development. That caused lots of stress for me. I’m not sure what his thinking was but I could guess that he didn’t want to have a staff development when our technology wasn’t functioning at the level that we’d hoped it should be by now. Fortunately, Spencer and Reed, (IT Guy I & II), have successfully rehabilitated 22 of the 27 MacBooks and feel that the there is still hope for a couple of the remaining ones. Do you know how much stress that takes off of me? Two of the most proficient technology leaders in our school, the two fifth grade teachers, will be equipped with tools that they need to lead the students. That is HUGE!

Now, the staff development is set but faculty wasn’t given much warning so that COULD be a problem. Maybe I’ll have a make-up session for those that can’t attend this first one. However, there is a REAL follow-up to this staff development which will show participants how to create their own wiki.

I’ve been spending a lot of time talking with faculty about technology collaboration and integration. One teacher teaches an ethics class and doesn’t feel comfortable with the older students. It sounds like she feels that they don’t believe her. I suggested that she consider doing some digital citizenship lessons so we are going to try working together. One thought is that the students could pick a way to show a digital citizenship concept. For example, assign them a project in which they need to show a digital citizenship concept. Choices could be: · make a one minute commercial or public service announcement · create a poster · create a cartoon · write a story · do research and share with the class The finished projects could be either shared with the class or published on the school online newspaper wiki. I told the teacher that by providing choices, she doesn’t need to be an “expert” in any of these areas, like movie-making. It would be up to the students to figure out how to do it. She thought that it was a great idea and we are going to work together this week. Now, I’ll have time to help students engage in digital citizenship and multi-media at the same time. J

In addition, I’m in the beginning stages of working with one of the math teachers, trying to plan more ways to incorporate math into the 6th grade technology program. Our math classes are not as long as we’d like so we are thinking of ways to include more math projects or instruction in technology class. She has been quite enthusiastic about working together on these lessons. Can’t hurt, might help. We are going to use some of the technology tools that students should learn about and use a math theme. For example, students can make a commercial using graphs to persuade the audience. Students get to use multi-media and show higher understandings of math by incorporating them into the commercial.

I feel that I am successfully working with the other teachers in planning collaborative lessons that integrate technology into some of the themes that they are teaching. It has been a lot of work and can be challenging but overall, it is most rewarding to see the collaboration. The children are definitely benefiting from our work together and the teachers are more optimistic, especially today as more of our technology is working.

Reflection # 3: October 25, 2010
Wow. It is October 25, 2010 already and I’m feeling like I have a lot to do with little time left to do it. One of my main goals this year is to work more collaboratively with teachers in planning technology skills and integrating technology lessons. It has been easier to work with teachers this year because I know the students, teachers, and administrators better than I knew them last year. I understand the culture of the school and have a better understanding of what to expect from the curriculum. The technology is substantially better for 80% of the students. Fifth grade is having difficulties with their computers and it is hoped that our IT guys will have that resolved within the next week or two.In the meantime, I’m counting on the students to be able to “borrow” computers from another grade level. That will be more challenging but not impossible.

Two of the recent set-backs at our school—Spencer the IT manager, unexpectedly losing a brother-in-law and the primary school division head having major surgery—have jolted our learning environment, setting up a detour. We had to run around a few things but are getting back on track now. Last week, Spencer installed a “missing access point” which severely limited internet access in the middle of our school. Somehow, this access point “disappeared” over the summer. The access point still needs a little tweaking to get maximum use of reliable internet connections but we are close to 100%. I’m feeling better that we are now up and running—sort of—with our internet and technology. Students can now access the internet in classrooms in the middle of the school. We can now implement lessons that we’ve been avoiding due to lack of internet connections.

I’ve been working with my small group in the Technology Management class on creating staff development. Our project is to create staff development for our faculty wiki. Dr. Smyth brought up a good point in the last reflection about how we could get teachers to “buy in” to the wiki. We decided to use our CDS faculty to do the staff development. The goal is for teachers to learn how to edit and use a wiki for collaborative communication. The second goal is that teachers will want to learn how to use wikis to communicate and design collaborative learning projects with their students. I created several Jing tutorials about wiki design and posted them on the wiki so that they can be used independently by teachers or can be used in our staff development in November. I also posted these tutorials on the student school newspaper wiki. Hopefully, these short tutorials will guide students in creating wikis.

I am concerned about teacher morale, about teachers not wanting to participate in the staff development. Consequently, I’ve been mentioning it to some of the teachers, asking them to post information on the faculty wiki. My thought is that it teachers contribute to and help design the wiki, they will be more likely to use the wiki. They can provide feedback about what should or shouldn’t be on there. I’m thinking that if teachers can work in small groups to post pages on the wiki. One can be about teaching math; one about professional articles or perhaps a “book club;” a page about technology tools and ideas; and another about Writing and Grammar Tips (especially for when teachers are writing the LONG student comments on report cards). These have been some of the ideas that teachers have suggested to me over the past year so I thought that we could start with their ideas. Perhaps teachers can come up with some other ideas for sections to add to the faculty wiki. I am hoping that we can use the discussion board to “discuss” topics, such as thoughts about using digital books. It would be interesting to see the different thoughts on the discussion board.

I need to finish up some more “how to” documents to post on the wiki. I did create one about printing responsibly and plan to use this with the children as well as with the teachers. I’ve also been sending out more journal articles to the teachers. The last one was about digital books. I need to keep reviewing my goals so that I can remind myself of the original objectives and goals. I’m beginning to become concerned about doing mini-lessons. It seems like people are too busy to commit to something else. Perhaps I need to think of a different way to market that. One good thing is that I still have teachers asking for help with technology issues. I feel a sense of trust and hope that they continue to see technology help in a respectful light. We all have holes in our learning and we need to learn how to overcome our fears, especially the technology ones that will continue to grow if they are not addressed.

**Reflection #2:** **September 27, 2010** At the beginning of the sixth week of school, there are some successes and disappointments for our technology program and my technology internship. On the positive side, most of the student computers are providing students with a tool that is substantially superior to what they used last year. In first grade, for example, students already know how to open and close Word, open Internet Explorer, select a bookmark from the toolbar, and navigate using the touchpad. In addition, students can type their name and change font size, color, and style independently. They can properly shut down the computers and have even adjusted the alignment to center text. I am truly amazed at what the students can do at this point of first grade.

In other grades, student technology skills also seem further developed than at this period last year. Students seem to have stronger keyboarding skills, they use many of the formatting features of MS Word, they are learning to back up their work, and they are managing files and folders on their computers. I feel more confident in developing an effective skill sequence for technology skills for our students. Being at the school for a year allows me to better understand and anticipate special projects and the related technology possibilities. For example, it is our goal to begin the year by reinforcing keyboarding skills, learning to save on a flash drive, exploring digital citizenship, and visiting Word in the Windows format as opposed to the Apple version.

It seems easier to collaboratively work with the classroom teachers, even the new teachers. This is probably a result of us learning together last year and by having more experience understanding the needs of the students, teachers, and the curriculum. In addition, I feel that having Spencer, our new IT technician, has had a positive effect for 90% of the faculty. Most individuals expressed frustration last year with our previous IT manager. He had his own technology plan, shared as little as possible, and made everyone dependent on him. Many of his choices made it more difficult for students and teachers to use technology. With his departure, most people seem to be more positive about technology, even with our current challenges.

There have been many cooperative efforts in the last few weeks to overcome and solve technology issues. In short, this change in IT staff seems to have resulted in team building and better technology decisions. It seems that individuals are seeing that there are more opportunities in our technology education because the administration has made a positive change. Consequently, most teachers seem more optimistic about our technology.

One unfortunate set-back during the past two weeks is that Spencer, our IT manager, has been out due to an unexpected death in his family. Although he had an assistant come in a couple of times to work on some of our IT issues, we need more help. Many computer and technology problems have been put on the back burner. Because of the sensitive nature of his absence, I’ve tried hard to solve as many problems as I could in his absence and most staff members have been understanding. On a positive note, it seems like I successfully repaired a computer that wouldn’t work and I’ve helped teachers set up workstations for Accelerated Reader testing. Our  needs are escalating and we need Spencer back on campus to do some catch-up work so that our positive technology outlook can continue to progress. As a result of a suggestion by Dr. Smyth, I’m trying to think of ways to involve more of our teachers so that they will buy into our technology program. One of the questions on a survey that I did last week was asking faculty if they would be willing to share their technology skills. Surprisingly, nine out of fourteen individuals said that they would be willing to share their technology skills with a colleague if asked. To me, that suggests that we need to do some more asking, highlighting our teachers, encouraging them to share their skills. It seems like we have a garden that is ready to blossom. Providing enough water, sunshine, and nutrients as well as tending to the distracting weeds, can make this garden into a delightful, satisfying place to grow and blossom.

In the next two weeks, I intend to work more on my wiki project and my annotated bibliography. However, developing these relationships with my colleagues, helping individuals realize success with their technology, is also critical. Spencer needs to come back to campus and help us resolve technology issues to make a more technology friendly environment. I am hoping that he is ready to come back so that our technology program can continue on its positive, forward growth.


 * Reflection #1: September 13**

Choosing to do my internship at Charleston Day School was a no-brainer for me, since I began working here as the technology specialist last year. This year, my new title is technology coordinator and instructor. My responsibilities including teaching technology skills to students in grades one through eight and helping teachers with technology skills and with technology integration into their respective curriculums. Some of the challenges last year included two sets of student laptops that were slower than slow, couldn’t hold a charge, and were constantly breaking down. When put up for sale at the end of the year, our best offer was $10 per laptop.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Students in different grades used different operating systems—Linux, Windows, and Apple. The server and printers were frequently offline and all passwords were reset every 45 days. Computers in the primary grades were reformatted three times during the year. Instructional time was filled with problem solving; teachers were frustrated with computers and technololgy. Our IT person procrastinated and avoided helping with our technology needs.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">I had a year to analyze and learn about the needs of the school, the teachers, and the students. Observations, discussions, graduate classes, research, and many conversations with administrators led to technology internship goals for this year. Although I learned a lot about teaching technology skills last year, this year is the year that I hope to make the Charleston Day School develop a more effective and efficient technology program.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">CDS heavily invested in new laptops for students this academic year and decided to work with a new IT consultant instead of the former full-time individual. During the summer, seven members of our faculty participated in a technology workshop at Porter-Gaud School in Charleston. This was followed up with a first week of school workshop from SC ETV presenters, Debbie Thompson and Donna Jarrett. In addition, because of an expansion at our school, there will be two more teachers working with me to help with our technology program.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">This internship is my opportunity to show CDS that these decisions will enable them to have a stronger, more streamlined, more effective technology program. I hope that I am able to inspire the faculty to participate in more technology staff development and become more confident users of technology. In May 2010, I created a teacher wiki and plan to expand upon it during this internship. This wiki will include "How to" instructions, technology tutorials, technology links, samples of student work, digital citizenship lessons and information, and more. Having reliable equipment will help our students use instructional time more for learning and practicing skills. I feel more confident in understanding the needs of the students and the teachers, which should help me develop a stronger curriculum.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">If teachers see students being more technology independent, teachers will be more confident in students using computers in their lessons. Although most individuals at the school are enthusiastic about the change in the IT personnel, there are a couple of individuals who are uncomfortable about the change in the IT staffing. I am confident, however, that once the beginning-of-the-year wrinkles are ironed out, everyone will be on board.


 * November 22**