calendar?
you know you’re new to a job when you wake up in the middle of the night with a calendaring solution. geewiz. Haven’t I got better things to dream about? I think I’m going to go with Google’s online calendar (until UCLS settles on a school-wide solution) and color code by major players (Tech Coord [RED], Diane-the departmental liaison [ORANGE], faculty training [YELLOW], DiLL [GREEN], WorkStation Projects [BLUE], and G5 Multimedia Projects [PURPLE], Information Systems & other meeting commitments [GRAY]). We’ll start there.
A Spanish teacher by the name of Becky came in today and introduced herself. The first teacher I’ve met besides Craig, Steve, and Diane from the second interview. I asked her about teacher availability for technology training. She seems really motivated, but even so, it’s a lot to ask a teacher to stay after school. I don’t blame her, because if I was a teacher, I’d feel the same way–”Like a bat out of hell” pretty much sums it up…unfortunately, but realistically… anyway, Departmental meetings happen once a month, I learned. I’m thinking that if I can get multimedia projects set up that require no teacher training, just student DOING, then the teachers can just learn from their own students. Right. If I can have 6 tech-savvy students from a language class for 30 min sessions beforehand and prep them a little, then maybe we can plant one leader in each special project group and things can just take off, whether or not the teachers fully understand every nuance in Garage Band, for example…I’m not trying to estrange teachers by thinking this way. I’m just trying to think how I can save the teachers time, engage the students, and design projects that will actually do a better job of improving language acquisition than traditional classroom methodologies. And that is a TALL ORDER.
I read the DiLL teacher’s manual today and logged in for the first time. Very intuitive, easy software. I’ll be interested to see how the lessons are uploaded and how the audio responses are stored for retreival. These are all things I’ll get trained on last week.
The other good news is that I found an artist in Singapore who may be willing to design window decals for the windows facing the hallway. That would add some color and character to the room for sure.
