Final Blog Entry

This is the final week of the semester for me here at Digital Bridges. The teacher evaluations went very well. Each teacher seemed very pleased about his or her project and how each looked. I also provided each teacher with a copy of his or her lesson on a flash drive for them to keep which made them all very excited. I gave the teachers the cheat sheet to use which is laminated for long-term use. On Thursday of this week, the middle school teachers are hosting an event with their Smartboard lessons, so I will be attending to see how their presentations go and to take photos. I am nervous and excited for them. At work, I attended the usual staff meeting, evaluated and assisted while Tommy taught the computer basics class at the library, opened the center on Wednesday, and typed up all of my final reports to be turned in at the end of this week. I also taught a Microsoft Word class on Wednesday evening to some students. This was a great way to end the semester here at Digital Bridges, and I am excited to come back and start again in the fall.

(10 hours)

Nearing the end of this semster long project

Over the last few weeks, there have been some minor set backs with using the room at Gnets to practice with the Smartboard because this room is also being used for the end of course testing and CRCT tests. I will be doing final evaluations on each of the teachers this coming Monday to finish up the project for the semester. I have been checking Smartboard equipment, perfecting the lessons with backgrounds, title pages, scanning content material and extra information that the teachers have requested of me.

In teaching the Computer basics classes, I have been leading the classes with either Dawn or Tommy as an assistant. There have been anywhere from 3 to 12 people at a class. It purely depends on the week and weather.

Also as a part of my Gnets project, I did a photo shoot and presented at the GCSU Student Research Conference on my work with technology and teachers in the classroom.

I have also been working at the center at the front desk making sure that people have what they need and answering their questions.

(30 hrs)

This has been a very busy and productive last two weeks of work. I have been helping and teaching all of the introduction computer classes that I can attend during the weeks at work. I have also been finalizing the teachers lesson for the Parent Breakfast in May. We are preparing for our big day on Monday when we go over all of the lessons with the teachers on the actual Smartboard. We will also go through the process of hooking up the Smartboard and getting onto the Smart programming.

There is a possibility that the teachers will not get to do their lessons at hte breakfast where I can evaluate each of the teacher's progress. This means that I need to have alternative ways to further facilitate this reevaluation of the teachers. So far, my ideas are:

To make a new survey
Make a quiz/checklist to evaluate teacher skills in our private lessons.
Have video of one teacher teaching his or her lesson on a Monday afternoon.
Talk to Pat about ways to enhance and encourage the use of Smart technology at Gnets.
Have the cheat sheet I made printed out and laminated for the teachers to use with the smartboard.

I am also preparing for a research conference where I will be presenting a week from tomorrow.

That is all for now.

(20 Hours)

Preparing with Teachers for lessons

The past few weeks have been extremely busy and exciting here at Digital Bridges. The teachers are each working on their individual projects with me. We are getting materials together and all are very excited to see the final projects up on the Smart Board and working! I cannot wait to see the student reactions to the lessons on the board which I will take as an opportunity to gauge the student, teacher, and parent reactions.
The past weeks have had great attendance at the Library classes, and I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to actually teach rather than assist this past week. The class went really well, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves while learning about how to search the internet and navigate the internet.
My time at the center has also been wonderful when I get the opportunity to work with individuals and see them learn something new about computers and technology. I have been gathering information for the teacher projects and pulling materials together. I also had the chance to help out with a different computer class on Thursdays which is teaching about Word Processing.
All of this is very interesting, and I am loving my time here at Digital Bridges. Every day has a different set of problems to solve, and I get a chance to learn new stuff about technology as well.
(20 Hours)

The Summit at Digital Bridges

This week Digital Bridges hosted the Entrepreneurial Summit at the new center with drinks and food from all of the best restaurants in Milledgeville. At the gathering, Digital Bridges had the opportunity to show off our new amazing facility, talk about our progress, and introduce people to the projects that each of us has going on here at this time. There were over one hundred and fifty people at this event, and it was quite a success.
In preparation for the event, I worked on having posters and preparing the space. I canceled my time at Gnets for the day so that I could be fully devoted to the needs of the center. On the day of the event, I arrived early to put on all of the final touches, answer questions, hand out gift bags, and introduce people to the center. We cleaned up after the event, too.
For the rest of the week, I worked on the teacher lessons, tried to locate new materials for the lessons online, work the receptionist desk at the center, and worked with individuals who came to the center. This was really rewarding to see when people got excited about using the computers that they checked out from our center.

(10 hrs)

Round 2 Continued

This week I continued to do introduction to Smartboard lessons with the teachers. I am working on making a cheat sheet of the Smartboard tools and what they do for the teachers. This was a great suggestion from one of the teachers who has trouble remembering what each icon does. Introduction to computer classes went very well this week with a high number in attendance. One of the students actually came to the Digital Bridges Center to practice her typing skills later on during the week. At the office, I helped a lady work her computer and become more comfortable with a touch pad. I also worked on my presentation for Tuesday when the Small Business Entrepreneurial summit which will be having their reception at the Digital Bridges building. We are very busy preparing and excited for this event.
(10 hrs)

February 18

This week was a lot more curriculum and planning based because Gnets was closed for President's Day. On Tuesday, I worked with Dawn at our Introduction to Computer classes that are going very well. I am actually an expert at creating Gmail accounts now. Here are just a few things that I have learned from helping with these classes: how to set up the projector and the screen, carry multiple laptops at the same time, set a home page on a computer, get multiple computers on the same network, and communicate silently with Dawn during our classes. I also attended staff meeting where we discussed our preparations for a big event in less than two weeks which is really exciting! The rest of the week was made up of hours working at the Center and developing curriculum. I also wrote up my monthly reports which will be sent to the Knight Foundation to make them aware of what Digital Bridges is doing here in Milledgeville on a monthly basis. Overall this was a very productive week of work.

(10 hrs)

Last Initial Evaluations

Mrs. C was actually back today, so I got to do a real initial evaluation with her. She teaches Math for the 7th and 8th graders. They are focusing on central tendency, word problems, Pythagorean theorem, lines, and area. For her students, all of the math must seem very applicable and useful in the students lives because otherwise they do not care at all and want nothing to do with abstract memorization of concepts from a book. Mrs. C is also a large active part of the team that works on the behavioral aspect of the school. She is working on the students and their impulse control, long term goals, and short term goals. They are learning to express themselves clearly and resolve conflict in appropriate ways. I would rate this teacher as below a level 1. She is interested in the technology and ready to learn. She was more cautious about the amounts of time this commitment would take, but this was because of circumstances outside of her control in her personal life.

Miss P is very excited about this project and its possibilities. She sees how much this could benefit her students and their participation in the lessons. She would like her lesson to focus on the continents and current events which I believe can be tied together very well. She would like a symbol that would represent something famous from a continent, and the student would put it on the correct continent placement. She teaches high school students. Her class was a little more crazy and difficult to get time to work with her because of the nature of her classroom. I would classify her as below a level one with the Smartboard technology. She has not had any more experience since her initial training on a Smartboard which was a very long time ago.

Miss F is a week behind schedule because of miscommunication and her absence at our meeting time. I actually did my first meeting with her a week later than everyone else. Her students are elementary age. She is extremely technologically inclined and so excited about working with the technology. She has actually worked with the Smartboard and also promotes the idea of a media room for the computers and Smartboards within the school as a whole. She teaches all content areas and none of her students can read. She is giving me free reign to come up with a good idea for her lesson. I am going to search through a lot of content, and then I will come up with the best option for her. I would classify her as a level 1 because she is familiar with the basic technology and is not afraid to use and make mistakes with it.

With the teachers this week, I took them through the basics of the tool bar, what each icon does, and showed some examples of possible things you can do with the Smartboard from my computer. I also walked them through how to use the gallery effectively. They were all really shocked and impressed with that. Using the teacher tools, they were able to go to the websites that have the GA standards and found lesson plans pre-made by other teachers that they can download and use for free. All they have to do is search by standard, subject, or content. They all loved me for finding this for them. It really wasn't that hard at all.

During my time with Mr. W, he actually radioed the principal to ask for the sofware to put it on his personal computer to work with the programs at home. I saw this as great progress and a really promising situation. I was thrilled to see him excited about the technology's possibilities.

Miss J told me during my time with her that she had needed me with the technology. I asked her why, and it turns out that she did a lesson using the Smartboard without me! The only problem was that she had not waited until I had gone through the basics of using the actual board with her. When her students tried to click on items with their fingers, the board was not calibrated and did not recognize where their actual hands were. I took the time to show her how to calibrate, but unfortunately I did not have a board ready and available to practice on at that time. One of the very next lessons I will do with the teachers will be to go over the basics of using the actual Smartboard and setting it up.

Miss B got some really good ideas, and I could see the light bulb go off in her head as I showed her the sample lesson and possibilities of the technology for her classroom.

The only thing that really did not go as planned this week was that the teachers had a faculty meeting while I was still there, so I did not have time to meet with Mr. C. I promised him that he would be first on my list the next time I am there.

I am debating whether or not we should move on to the actual board for their next lesson or whether we should work with the technology on my computer some more and begin to create a lesson for them to teach. I am now leaning toward teaching them how to work the physical Smartboard for their next lesson.

For my other hours this week:

I worked at the center
Attended staff meeting
Taught introduction to computer class

(10 Hrs)

Ms. K and My Week

Ms. K is the most technological teacher I have met so far. She loves technology but is so limited by her resources because of budgets at this time. For her, the Smartboard has been too much trouble and other teachers hogged the use of it when it was in the room with access by all teachers. Her students are actually less computer literate than she had expected. There were a ton of things on her wish list for Gnets, but her top priority is a scan converter. Her idea for our project would be to create a Morning Message which is what they do every morning. I have seen several of these done before, and I believe we can come up with really fun interactive ways to introduce the date and have some problems for math or vocabulary on the board to get the students thinking in the mornings. Simple concepts like a b c order and word families are appropriate for her class. A calendar could be really cool, too. She introduced me to the possibility of a Sony Smartboard on which I need to do some research. I gave her a level 1 at this point only because of her lack of access to learn the technology well enough to use all of the functions.


I also taught the computer class with Dawn, and it is getting so full. I love teaching those classes because everyone seems to leave happy and proud of themselves. This was also my first week of working at the real center! It is really exciting to see what was just an idea in August. Now it is a fully operating program with many employees. The building looks amazing on the inside. We even have full staff meetings now. I am very encouraged by what I see Digital Bridges doing here in Milledgeville. I am also prepared and ready for lessons with the teachers from Group One on Monday of next week.

(10 Hours)

Summary of Projects

Ms. B: Geography
Central, South America, Europe
Middle School Appropriate
Pre-made Lessons
Make a Level 2!

Ms. J: Science-Life, earth, and Physical
Dissection
5th Grade
Solar Systems
How to Run Smartboard
Webquests

Webspiration
Make a Level 1!

Mr. W: 3rd and 4th Grade
Add Info to Computer
Wii info
Geometry
Manipulate and Build Something
Level 2!

Mr. C: Social Studies
3rd and 4th Grade
Native Americans, Colonies, and US government
Find great websites and games for kids
Make a level 1!

Ms. O: High School
Current Events, Weather, and Regions of GA
Make a level 1!

Ms. K Pre-K- 1st Grade
Morning Message
Sony Smartboard
Level 1

Ms. C: Math
Psych
7 and 8 Grade
Make a Level 1!

Ms. P: All Subject Areas
High School
Continents and Current Events
Make a Level 1!

Ms. F: All Subject Areas
1-3 grades
Be Creative!
Level 1

The Second Round of Initial Interviews

On Monday I met with four more teachers to complete my initial interviews at GNETS. First I went to meet with Mrs. Wolf to make sure that this time was going to be alright for everyone for the rest of the semester and to make sure that she was fine with me interrupting the teachers for thirty minutes every other week. She agreed to everything and all is right on track. I will in the future need to let her know the information that a lot of her staff has given me about how they would like to see technology run in the school.

First I met with Ms. O. She had a lot of ideas about how the technology should be handled in the school. She wants the Smartboard to be stationary in one technology room where everyone could come to and was already set up for group work with the board. This is a possibility for the future because Gnets is actually moving to a new location next year. In the past, the Smartboard was in the pace lab with the idea for all of the teachers to have equal access. Unfortunately, the room was never set up with the equipment ready, and there were never chairs set up when a class went in to use the technology. The expectations of the room were not met and so the Smartboard in the room failed as a whole.

She said that if the technology was readily available to her, she would have her students using the board at the very least three times a week. She knows that her students would get a lot of experience, fun, and learning out of using the technology. As the teacher is such a setting, he or she needs to know the technology inside and out in order to maintain order in the classroom and keep the emotional outbursts to a minimal at a psychological education center. She would also love to have a setting where the teacher could sign in under her own name and all of her personal content and lesson plans would be right there. For her lesson, she had many ideas. She wants to be able to share current events with her students like the earthquake in Haiti. She also mentioned doing a unit on weather in science class. Because she needs to work the breakfast where the event will be taking place, we will put her class presentation later in the morning so that clean up will not be an issue for her and her class. I will research all three of her topics to see which has the greatest possibility for a lesson. The main example that she seemed the most excited about was studying the regions of GA.

On the scale, I would put Ms. O below a level one. She is very willing to learn the technology though and excited.

Gnets Project Begins Two

One of the teachers was not there for the meetings because of circumstances outside of her control. The other teachers were kind enough to give me some background information about Mrs. C. She is the other middle school teacher and teaches Math. Her class is focusing on area, perimeter, integers, algebra, and measurements right now. I will need to spend actual time with her to gauge her level of comfort with the technology and to discover exactly what she wants the technology to help with in the classroom. I want to not only cover the teacher's content but also to encourage her to enjoy the technology and further the student learning in the classroom.

Next I met with Mr. W. who is a 3rd and 4th grade teacher of all subjects. His situation is very different because he does not have access to the Smartboard in his classroom. I asked about his access to a computer in order to be able to create the Smartboard lessons, and he does has his own personal laptop, but the screen does not work. He connects his laptop up to the classroom computer in order to see the screen from his laptop. Mr. W has had experience with Smartboard technology a little bit from playing with the one in his wife's classroom. i would say that his skills are where he could quickly be proficient with level 2 of the technology with an introduction and refresher course. He also introduced me to the idea of using the Wii Remote as a piece of Smartboard technology, which I am going to further research. The lesson he wants to create is one about geometry where he can have his students manipulate and build something on the Smartboard to get the students engaged.

The final teacher I met with was Mr. C, who wants to create a lesson for social studies. His 3rd and 4th grade class is learning about the Native Americans, colonies, and the United States Government today. This is a part of their citizenship learning. He does not have much experience at all with technology and does not consider himself comfortable at all with using technology, but he is more than willing to learn. Like Mr. W, he is excited and sees the potential of the Smartboard as a learning and behavior tool in the classroom. I would rate his level to be below 1 because he does not have a clue about the technology as far as how it works or what it is capable of as far as enhancing his classroom. I want to make him more aware of other great websites and games on the Internet that he could project onto the Smartboard and allow his class to participate together in the activity.

At the regular computer class at the library, we had the most people that we have ever had come. Dawn and I actually had to split the class, so that I could walk through setting up email addresses while she worked with our regular group about archiving and organizing emails. Everyone seemed to have a great time and learned a lot. Our regular group has come a long way and really works hard to master the concepts that we teach before returning to class the next week. Dawn set up two private lessons for later on the week because one woman had a particular set of computer problems that could not be answered adequately in the classroom setting. A nurse also brought in a special needs man who wanted to learn more about how to work a computer, so we scheduled him a separate class in order for him to get the most out of his learning experience.

I came to help Dawn with the class for the man with special needs because that is my field of study. I only wish that his helper could have or would have given me more background information about this mans abilities because I could not very well gauge his strengths and weaknesses for the class. I just kind of had to fly blind about what we were going to learn and try with him. He has a great capacity for learning technology and its difficult concepts. His touch pad skills improved drastically over the course of the lesson. He also understood the concepts of closing, enlarging, and minimizing the page on the screen using the Macintosh formatting. One great challenge with him was that I do not believe that he can read, so finding what he wants on the Internet is going to have to be accomplished through visual cues like pictures. He really enjoyed our lesson and talked more and more as the lesson progressed.

As you can see, a lot of my time was also spent blogging and make connections. This was a very productive and successful week on the project!

(10 hours)

Gnets Project Begins

I went and did my initial evaluations of the teachers on Monday at GNETS. The whole experience was very positive. I got to meet with four of the five teachers that I was scheduled to meet with. One seemed slightly reluctant, one was overjoyed, one was interested, and one was grateful for the help with technology. I am very excited to be a part of this project. We talked about their subject content and how I could help integrate the Smartboard into their classrooms. Now my responsibility will be to help them begin creating lessons and ideas for the parent breakfast presentations in May.

For Mrs. B, I will be creating a lesson about geography focussing in central or south america and/or Europe. Mrs. B brought up the interesting issues about how these students will not read or do homework, so powerpoints and technology cut out a lot of the fluff and excess that just confuse these students and do not increase their understanding of the concepts. She has also found that the Smartboard technology that is available is geered towards the elementary level of entertainment. I am going to work to make the lesson appropriate for middle schoolers, and I am going to look into the pre-made lessons that I found the other day to see what is available on the internet for 6th grade curriculum. The pre-made lessons would also fight the teacher's fear of the Smartboard taking too much time out of her day in planning.
On my initial evaluation, this teacher can turn on and preform the basic concepts (level 1). I do not believe that she is at a point where she is capable of using the Smart Notebook technology to its full extent. So we will be working for Mrs. B to be on level 2 very soon. I actually could see her going beyond level two very quickly and becoming a media rich teacher at level 3.


For Mrs. J, I will be working with her on a science lesson. She teaches life science, earth science, and physical science. I am going to look into dissection programs for her to use in her classroom. One idea she had was to have her students build a machine on the Smartboard. Her 5th graders are also learning about the solar system right now. I found and showed her a solar system program that came with the Smartboard technology. She is surprisingly just a beginner on the technology. I was very upset to learn that she is one of only two teachers in the building who has access to the Smartboard in her classroom but did not have the software on her computer to use to plan lessons. She had no idea how the Smartboard actually worked except for as a projector. Her Smartboard was not actually in her room but placed in a side room. She is also interested in learning other technology programs like webquests. I would also love to introduce her to the idea of Webspiration which would be so cool on a Smartboard! I took the time to load the software onto her computer and show her how to run a few basics. I asked her to play around with the programming at home some this week so that she will be more familiar with the technology next time we meet. As for her level rating, she is truly going to need a lot of help to get to level 1. We need to start with the basics with Mrs. J. She was so excited about everything I showed her and we talked about during our time together. She hugged me, told me that I was the best, and said that she loved me. I definitely won her over for sure.

(8 hrs, 10 min)

Computer Classes and Spring Plans

I am helping Dawn to teach introduction to computer classes on Tuesday nights from 5:15 until 6:30. In December, we had a slower time getting people to come, but now we have a nice following that come every week and are improving on their computer skills. I love being able to help these people learn more about computers and technology. They are so sweet and eager to learn. It has been an interesting challenge to learn about English Language Learners and cultural differences in dealing with different backgrounds when it comes to technology.

The next project is on its way with a proposal written about the Smart Boards. I have also been trained on the Smart Board technology and have the software on my computer to work with and make new projects to help the teachers. I will be meeting the teachers in 30 minute increments over the next two weeks at GNETS. I will be assessing each teacher's level of comfort with the technology and what their overall classroom goals are. Then we will begin to make lessons for each teacher to present to the school on parent day in May. I will be gaging the success of the project based on the improvement in the teacher abilities and whether or not the Smart Board adds to the overall goals of the teacher's classroom.

Right now I am working on coming up with initial evaluation questions and ways to gage each teachers proficiency on the Smart Board. I will be asking the teachers to turn on the machine, set up the machine, calibrate the machine and write on the board for their basic level of understanding. Then I will move on to gage the teacher's abilities to use the programs the are provided through Smart Board. The final level of ability is going to be if the teachers can take outside media and integrate this into the daily classroom and the Smart Board.

I am also preparing for speaking at two conferences this spring on the topic of Smart boards in the classrooms. In the near future, I will also be working as a receptionist in the Digital Bridges Center when it opens for a few hours a week.

This is just a quick overview of what is going on right now.

(11 hrs 50 min)