After finishing up my staff meeting sessions and giving feedback to one of the meeting coordinators I was working with, we decided to have a full staff meeting to review each of the technology sessions and present the next sessions for the remainder of the school year. Each of the meeting leaders gave a short overview of their sessions and the outcomes as well as an overview of the upcoming session they would be leading. I decided not to lead another session for a few reasons. First, I was very disappointed in the staff attendance and participation in the meetings. Second, my team is participating in a year long staff meeting on vocabulary and was not able to attend the technology meetings. My principal allowed me to skip these meetings in the first half of the year so that I could lead the technology meetings. I decided to join my team to complete the vocabulary training for the rest of the year.
The meeting went well and all staff signed up for one of the technology sessions. I was happy to hear the principal make a statement about the attendance at these meetings and how we all have a professional responsibility to attend them. I hope this will make a difference in the future.
Since I will not be leading a technology session and my team has not been able to attend the sessions I have been training them on the Mobi and Interwrite Workspace software during our team meetings. This has helped to keep me involved in staff development while including people that I know will benefit from the training. My team is very dedicated to trying new things and learning more about equipment we already have.
Even though I had difficulties through this process it has been a success. The majority of the staff has and will be trained on several different kinds of technology equipment/software. I would like to continue with technology staff development in future years. I have developed a closer relationship with our media specialist through this process and we are looking at ideas for next year.
Friday, February 17, 2012
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Final Staff Meeting
Last week was my final staff meeting to teach about the Mobi and Interwrite Workspace. A few days prior to the meeting I sent out another reminder about the meeting letting the participants know they would need to have something they created to share. I also said that I would be available for assisting anyone that needed help with their template or lesson. One person did approach me the day before the meeting and I met with her to help her come up with ideas and show her a few things she could do with the software. The day of the meeting most participants came about ten minutes late, which disappointed me again. I asked in the email for everyone to arrive on time so we could share. Seven of the ten original participants showed up.
Once everyone arrived I asked for people to share what they created. No one volunteered but eventually I did get one staff member to show what she had done. I also had a couple of people practice using the Mobi with that lesson. No one else would share and I did save three templates that were created to a flash drive. Overall I left the meeting feeling frustrated again. I tried to offer support to the staff to instruct them in this software and interactive tablet but many of the participants really didn't care to learn about it.
Later in the week the staff development coordinator I had been working with asked me about the session and I explained to her my frustrations. She understood and asked all of the session leaders to email her and say if they were interested in teaching a second session of the same staff meeting or a different technology meeting. I wrote back saying I was not interested due to the lack of participation and respect from my co-workers. Fortunately the other staff members agreed to teach a different session so there will more opportunities for the staff to learn about some of the software we already have on our computers. I also found out a few days ago I will be presenting what my participants created at a whole staff meeting on Monday. We will see how that goes. . .
Once everyone arrived I asked for people to share what they created. No one volunteered but eventually I did get one staff member to show what she had done. I also had a couple of people practice using the Mobi with that lesson. No one else would share and I did save three templates that were created to a flash drive. Overall I left the meeting feeling frustrated again. I tried to offer support to the staff to instruct them in this software and interactive tablet but many of the participants really didn't care to learn about it.
Later in the week the staff development coordinator I had been working with asked me about the session and I explained to her my frustrations. She understood and asked all of the session leaders to email her and say if they were interested in teaching a second session of the same staff meeting or a different technology meeting. I wrote back saying I was not interested due to the lack of participation and respect from my co-workers. Fortunately the other staff members agreed to teach a different session so there will more opportunities for the staff to learn about some of the software we already have on our computers. I also found out a few days ago I will be presenting what my participants created at a whole staff meeting on Monday. We will see how that goes. . .
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