Technology Action Plan

As we all know, as teachers, our everyday lives and our professional lives are often entangled.   (Just look at how we are spending our summer taking this class.)  Such is the case this summer with me.  My everyday life involves working on next year’s school schedule.  While this dampers vacation plans some, it does offer me a good opportunity to begin using some of the web 2.0 tools in a professional manner, thus giving me a jump on implementing my action plan.

First, I plan to do more electronically, saving paper.  Google docs is the perfect tool for this.  Instead of printing documents for distribution, I am going to save them in Google docs and share them with the appropriate people.  I have also recommended to the principal that we use Google docs to share the schedule with the staff instead of printing it.  The fact that, if appropriate, we can collaborate on the document after sharing it, makes this tool even better.   My plan is to work with my team of teachers to create and share documents where we can manage students academically and behaviorally.  While I have been on teams that have discussed this in the past, I did not know how to make it happen.  With my new skills, this is one of my high priorities.  Additionally, as one of my summer assignments is to begin the distribution of lockers, I have already started this practice.  Instead of emailing out the list, requiring the teacher to complete it and email it back so that I can share the information with the administration and security, I am in the process of creating the lists in Google docs.  I intend on sharing these with the teacher, the administrators, and security.  This will simplify the process and ensure everything is completed in a timely fashion. 

Next, with all of the practice that we have had this summer with our blogs, I plan to start a blog for my classroom.  I feel that it will offer me the best way to post important information for both the students and the parents.  I believe that I will be able to post homework assignments, at least weekly if not daily.  I have found that posting is very quick.  If I make it a habit to post the information during my planning time each day, it should take less than 5 minutes and will be very accurate.  This will allow parents to know what was assigned and take away the excuses.  It would also allow students who were absent to stay on topic of the material and not fall behind.  Through a blog, I believe that it will improve my communication with parents.  There is so much useful information that I would love to communicate with parents, but I just do not have the time or resources to contact each parent separately.  This will help to solve that problem.

Moreover, as we learned about wikis, I thought that was the cure; however, I am no longer convinced.  I like the idea of collaboration and will spend this year practicing with wikis and asking more questions of our test coordinator/orchestra director, who is an expert at wikis.  I would like to incorporate wikis into at least one project or activity this year.   While I just have not figured out how that will work, I am hopeful to find a way to utilize wikis for my year-end project.  This project requires students to work together to present one of the MSA standards.  This past year I moved into the digital world by including PowerPoints for the first time.  My plan for this year is to find a way to incorporate wikis use into this project.

Finally, I think diigo may be one of my big saviors this year.  I know that in the past I have spent hours searching for just that perfect idea to use in my classroom.  This involved scanning many websites that were either not the right information, not appropriate, or, worse yet, not even related to my search.  By joining groups on diigo, I am able to see the websites that others have already accessed, possibly used, and liked enough to bookmark.  I can also see their comments, which may assist in lesson presentation.  Therefore, my plan is to join diigo groups this school year that are related to my content.  This may involve middle school math, algebra, pre-algebra, or other appropriate topics.

In essence, my plan for this year may not be very specific, but I believe that it is very ambitious.  I will begin by using Google docs to share information with my colleagues.  I will also start a classroom blog to post important classroom information, work to incorporate wikis into at least one project this year, and join diigo groups related to my curriculum.