Recently I wrote about professional development and my district's "Summer Academy" activities. There were a number of district participants and presenters, one being Tracy Watanabe, AJUSD's Technology Integration Specialist. She spent one of her days working with the teachers at CCJH, the district's Jr. High, where we have just finished the first year of a 1:1 program with the 7th grade. Next year the incoming 7th graders will step right into the 1:1 environment and the school will be 1:1 all the way through.
The Growth
There have been a number of amazing transformations take place at CCJH during the year and worth noting, but one of Tracy's activities just grabbed my attention. She had small groups of teachers take the district's "College Readiness for All" plan and make the connection to the
ISTE NETS-S. There was great collaboration between the groups and the way they chose to share their information was also very impressive. They had little time to complete the task and the three groups below all chose different forms of multimedia for sharing.Culture Change
One short year ago this activity would have not yielded the same results. Not sure how many teachers would have known what the NETS were and sharing would have probably been on a piece of butcher paper or maybe a powerpoint. The culture at CCJH has changed and there are a number of reasons, great teachers, principal, support staff, district support, board support, that can be attributed to this. The overall point that I guess I'm trying to make is, things can change in the K-12 education setting, you just need to be willing.
Jon,
ReplyDeleteGreat post, and I was encouraged by the same thing. A year ago, it would have taken 30 minutes to just log into Google Apps; whereas now, if I give a task, they discern which digital tool best suits their needs and create something collaboratively. Awesome! They are a great group of educators, and I was exceptionally encouraged by their willingness to embrace change because that's what will make the difference for our learners.
Kind regards,
Tracy
It is exciting to me to see the changes in our district. The fact that so many people have embraced the direction we are going is uplifting. Seeing the next step and watching the collaboration spread is going to be delightful to behold. Our students are going to benefit greatly from the hard work that our tech department is doing. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteElizabeth