YuperStar

Monday and Tuesday of this week, the entire Information Systems Group met for two days to build a mission statement and to discuss how we want to handle communications internally and externally. I was really impressed with how quickly we settled on a mission statement that worked for everyone– we probably beat some kind of world record for creating mission statements. I really like this IS staff. Smart, responsive, and lots of fun. Mi piacciano. Mi piacciano. So here it is, in all it’s glory… the UCLS IS Mission Statement…..

The Information Systems Group’s mission is to:

• Serve our students by empowering school community members to take full advantage of technology to learn, grow, share, and create within and beyond our walls
• Serve our faculty, administrators, and staff by providing reliable, effective solutions and technical support for their instructional and operational needs
• Enhance our school’s sense of community by thoughtfully applying current and emerging communication tools
• Contribute leadership and direction for school technology efforts

Don’t you love it? Don’t you want to hug it? 

In other news: the geniuses downstairs have installed a new reservation system that is user-friendly and will allow each World Languages teacher to reserve or cancel reservations for the lab whenever and wherever they like. Said geniuses also transferred all of this institution’s previous blogs to the WPMU (WordPress MultiUser) at blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu, so now I can really ham this site up (with the help of another genius who knows Adobe Illustrator better than I). That genius designed a prototype for the new IS web page, which is fabulous.

On Wednesday, I spent all day learning the HR ropes. Found out that a lot of things are due by next Tuesday the 31st, so I sort have to get hopping with that. Today, I learned about retirement and remembered why I should become a real estate mogul in the next 10 years (so I CAN retire).

Thursday, I doodled until I came up with a draft logo for the lab that I’m actually fond of. Needs to be professionalized, but what do you think?
 

It looks decent from the front and the back, which is nice, because it might eventually go up in the hall windows. A cross between the OS9 logo and the headset. I like it because there are 3 faces, which have deep meaning, of course: the face of technology, the profile of the student and another of the student’s interlocuter [ooooo, big word], whether that be a teacher, someone on Skype in Argentina, a parent, a classmate, or maybe even a fellow avatar in Second Life. I’d like to do more to lab decor-wise this year. Looking forward to getting ideas from the department on that. 

Also looked at a bunch of software trainings offered here on campus, some of which I hope to attend before the summer ends. I’m on the wait list now for DreamWeaver and PhotoShop tips. Here at the University of Chicago, we have resources at training.uchicago.edu and it-training.uchicago.edu, the USITE campus computing centers, the Digital Multimedia Lab in Regenstein, and a new language lab somewhere over in Cobb that I haven’t seen yet. 

My Italian class ended this week. I wasn’t able to make it to as many classes as I wanted to, but it was just the sort of refresher that I needed. A great teacher with a lot of engaging, peer-based language activities. She moved very quickly and kept things fun and the few 3-hour sessions that I did attend always seemed to fly by. I just found a great audiobook on iTunes, by the way, that I really like: Dr. Blair’s ITALIAN IN NO TIME. I really like the way he tells stories and slowly integrates grammar in a simple and very limited way. Now I’m wondering if I can actually visit Italy during the Holidays. Wouldn’t that be loverly…

Cleaned out the electronic cords and stuff from the faculty storage area. I have a pretty good idea what is in the “inventory” up here now, cable and software-wise. The furniture people still haven’t come back to me with drawings, so I haven’t been able to order the lock cabinets for storing all this stuff. Piles abound.

Started a rudimentary filing system and began putting the YuperStar notebooks together. My ideas about the program keep morphing. I think Blue will represent doing something to learn the technology itself–at home, school, work–with no special concern for classroom application. Green will be the application, experimenting with stuff, failing, succeeding, and whining, until finally … Yellow = landing on an application that really works for each individual teacher — saves time, is engaging, AND an effective language acquisition tool. I’m thinking that whenever a teacher finds a YuperStar application of technology, I’ll shoot a 30-second synopsis video of the activity, starring the teacher of course, and post it here and on the /wll blog. oh yes– and my other brilliant idea: an almost weekly drawing for anyone that has accrued dots during the previous time period, no matter the color. iTunes gift certificates, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, a Friday breakfast roll, or something fun like that as a reward. I’m sure the department will have ideas. 

I picked our fearless leader’s brain for more ideas on technology integration. Here were some of his words of wisdom.

• Don’t try to master new curriculum and new technology at the same time.
• Take Small Steps
• Not everybody has to do the same thing at the same time
• Prepare scaffolding beforehand to expedite process.
• Doing it well takes way more time than you think
• Always have a plan B. Technology will fail sometime.

For more where this came from, visit IS Director Curt Lienick’s blog.

why the name YuperStar and where I am going with this blog because you’re not going to read it if I don’t offer you something useful here pretty soon….ok,ok, lezmesplain.It’s simple. A glorified tracking system, basically, but I think of it as a kind of game, with teachers listed across the top and technologies available to them listed down the side (exactly the same as the categories you see listed on the right side of this blog). I know how busy teacher’s are, so I’ve been trying to think of reasonable goals that they can commit to that leave them feeling MOTIVATED rather than OVERWHELMED. This is what I’m thinking. At the beginning of the year (probably not this year), at the first faculty meeting, we’ll split up into three groups, maybe by language (there are about 30 in the department: ~6 French teachers, ~8 Spanish Teachers, 3 German teachers, and 2 Chinese teachers). I’ll ask them to skim through all of the technologies and identify two that they are willing to try out over the course of this year. The only stipulation will be that they cover as many distinct technologies as they can between their group members. That way, they aren’t all learning the same thing. By spreading it out, the hope is that someone in their small group will have some practical knowledge about each technology by the end of the year.So once each teacher has identified which two technologies it’ll be, we’ll put an empty circle in that spot on the grid.The object of the game is to accumulate as many points (dots) as possible….

Blue dot = Beginning. “I’ve watched someone use this technology before and I’m starting to use it myself to solve a problem or complete a task. I’m not thinking yet about how to apply this to education; I’m just learning how it works.” SHOW ME HOW IT WORKS.

Green dot = Getting there. “I’m starting to think about how I might integrate this in the classroom and I’ve even tried a few things, with varying degrees of success. Sometimes it hasn’t worked so well, but I’m willing to try again, a little differently. I’m figuring out how this can really work for me, my students, and my curriculum.” COACH ME. ENCOURAGE ME.

Yellow dot = yeah baby, I’m a YuperStar! “I’ve used this technology enough that I don’t need anyone there to help me. I can handle it on my own. I’ve refined exactly how this technology can work for me in the classroom and come up with a duplicatable project that is effective and may even save me time in the future.” APPLAUSE. CHOCOLATE. AWE.

Red dot = Ridiculously Brilliant and Ready to Train. I am now better than the tech coordinator and can train someone else on the technology using variety of integration strategies. I will use these posts to share what I have learned works best when training teachers on different technologies. I CAN TEACH YOU HOW. I CAN TEACH YOU HOW TO TEACH.

SO. The goal for the year could be for each teacher to accumulate one yellow dot by the end of the year. The thing that’s nice about this program is that we don’t all have to be perfect with the technology to accumulate dots (or chocolate). Each small effort is rewarded, as it should be! I’m guessing that a typical learning curve will probably go something like blue dot, blue dot, green, green, green, green, green, YuperStar yellow!… and then maybe red, if they get so good at it, that other teachers will want to learn from their experience.Diane says this department likes chocolate. So maybe for this first year, we’ll just give out chocolate each time a teacher does anything tech-related and not worry about the colors. The colors are for me — an easy way to organize my training materials.But long term, I can see this kind of scheme going in a very productive direction. Imagine next summer, getting together for three days and learning from each other what works and what doesn’t. A of ridiculous amount of red dots…and tons of chocolate…in 3 days. That would be way cool.Oh, and I almost forgot the notebooks. There will be three notebooks on my desk, in beginner’s blue, getting-there-green, and YuperStar yellow. The Blue Notebook will have sheet protectors with a bunch of one-sheet wonders from this blog and other sources. Teachers will grab the sheets of interest, meet with me for assistance during walk-in hours, and ask questions, until they feel brave enough to start integrating.The green notebook will contain integrating sheets, also from the blog and other resources. When teachers try or create an activity, they’ll simply write a short note about what worked and what didn’t, and then drop it on my desk, in order to get their chocolate dot. I will be the all-powerful dot-meister. Then I will take all of this collective wisdom from the notebooks and keep updating the blog based on what works.The Yellow notebook will have PLAN B sheets for each teacher, just in case technology ever goes down in the lab. It will also have a record of tried-and-true activities with all the details spelled out, so that other teachers can try them too….ok, so we’ll see if this kind of thing flies. If not, that’s okay. I’ve got plenty of paper airplanes up my sleeve.