Holaway


 * 1st Semester Report

Our Technology Collaborative met and discussed the possibility of offering Tech Tuesday's for teachers to come and get training/support in technology. We will have a variety of class offerings based upon teacher's needs and interests.

One Curriculum mapping refresher was delivered to all faculty by myself.

Teachers who have SmartBoards have been sharing the use of their SmartBoards with other teachers during their specialist times to allow other teachers to experience them.

Because of a lack of time alotted for inservice time, I am disappointed in the overall effectiveness this last semester. However, we are having an inservie on January 31st that will have a short general session addressing copyright and publishing on the web information as a result of a huge increase in student publishing going on at our school.

The Tech Tuesday's will begin in February also!**


 * __2nd Semester Report__**

§    Implementing your Technology Professional Development Plan I did accomplish my goals to some degree. Of course, I would have like to have seen more integration of the SMART Boards as far as using them within the curriuclum and seeing more students use of the SMARTBoards. Having the Holaway Technology Academy was one way that the goals were met. After the workshops, there was evidence of more collaborating among teachers to further their learning. §    Building Capacity I built capacitry at our school through the evolution of our Technology Committee into a Technology Collaborative made up of teachers adn specialists with varying degrees of experience. They were all very enthusiastic and supportive of the teachers that they mentored. §    Incorporating 21st century learning skills and tools There has been a big push towards student publishing at our school this year. The skills being taught were mostly focused upon writing and the process of writing.The tools used have not been varied though. It seems that Microsoft Word is used most often for publishing. However, with the introduction of student publishing being put on the web, there has been more motivation for writers. Much more focus needs to be put on actually adressing the 21st century skills with our students at all grade levels. §    Evaluating Effectiveness With the new Holaway Academy style of inservices, more teachers were enthusiastic about the new learning. This also formed some great mentoring between teachers on the Collaborative and other teachers. As a result, more sharing, mentoring and modeling of technology took place. This had a direct effect on the students' learning. For example, many teachers created Photo Stories with their students that never felt that they could! Differentation was provided first by providing choice of topics learned, alsoo through the options of having lessons modeled, and more hands-on learning as well. One specific indicator of succes was the great increase in the use of word processing as evident on the survey results. Another area of growth for our school was more frequent use of online research to solve problems.