Get carried away

We want to change the way our faculty members view technology. Technology should be used everyday in our classrooms. Our students attend computer class once a week which is not enough. With the use of our new netbooks, we want to show teachers that they have the world at their fingertips. They need to bring the digital world to the students they teach.

We want to teach our faculty about the many valuable ways they can use technology in their classrooms. We want to show them all of the Web 2.o tools that we have learned about in the Ning. We want them to get out of their comfort zone and explore new ways to teach our students using Web 2.0 tools. The tools that the teachers can use will not only help the students but also the teacher using them.

We have set up three faculty meetings to be used solely for our project. The first two meetings were used to present a number of Web 2.0 tools to our faculty members. The PLP team presented and demonstrated a number of Web 2.0 tools that the teachers could use in their classrooms. The third meeting will be used for faculty presentations of some of the Web tools that we showcased in the previous meetings. The faculty must come to the meeting with artifacts that they have collected from the use of these Web tools. This will be our way of knowing if we were successful, thus far, in our plan to implement more technology in the classrooms. In addition, we have created a teacher website listing all of the Web 2.o tools that we have learned this year. Our hopes are that the faculty utilize our website to bring technology into their classrooms and help to make good digital citizens out of the students that they teach.

– September 30: PLP Kick- Off (Overwhelmed but excited for our new journey!)

– October: This month consisted of exploring the NING and becoming part of the community!

– October 28: Elluminate Session # 1

– November: During this month we were participating in the NING and trying out different web 2.0 tools that we came across.

– November 29: Flip Video Arrives at SFA!

– December 2: Elluminate Session # 2

– December 3: Project Meeting: Beginning stages of our project were developed.

– December 21: Project Meeting

– Januray 27: Elluminate Session # 3

– March 30: Presentation # 1 of Web 2.0 tools to Faculty

– March 31: Elluminate Session # 4

– April 7: Presentation # 2 of Web 2.0 tools to Faculty

– April 14: Elluminate Session # 5

– April 14: Project Meeting (Begin final plans for May 5)

– April 27: Faculty Presentations of Web 2.0 tools used and Data collected

– May 5: PLP Culminating Event

When we started our project we were a little overwhelmed at the amount of web 2.0 tools that were out there. Our biggest concern was “What” web 2.0 tools were we going to bring to our faculty at school? So we had a meeting (our PLP team) and we wrote down all of the web 2.0 tools that we have learned either in the NING or on the Elluminate sessions. We had a very extensive list at the end of our meeting. So our next concern was “When” were we going to present ALL of these tools to our faculty without making them become totally overwhelmed? We decided to take four to five tools and present it to the faculty in two after-school sessions. “How” will we know if they learned anything? After our presentations to the faculty they had two weeks to play around with the various tools that we presented. In a final after school session, it was the faculty’s turn to tell us what they have learned and present their thoughts on video. We recieved a lot of positive feedback which made us extremely happy.

After the faculty evaluated our findings, we needed a way to keep thier motivation going. We decided to create a website where they could find up to date web tools to use in their classrooms.

Our website is still in it’s beginning stages…We are very grateful to have been a part of such a wonderful group. We would especially like to thank Sheryl, Will, Lani and Nancy for guiding us into the future!