Practicum Week 3

January 28, 2019 - 2 hrs.
This week is off to a wonderful start. Today I participated in my first collaborative planning discussion with Mr. Siegmund (Clarke County Instructional Technology Specialist) and Mr. Weaver (4th-grade teacher). This meeting took place at Barrow Elementary here in Athens. Mr. Weaver had reached out to Mr. Siegmund requesting assistance with adding technology into his social studies lessons. Together we discussed the curriculum, analyzed the overall goals for the unit on Western Expansion, and shared ideas that could be incorporated. The team settled on using a hyperdoc template that will be completed in the coming weeks. The team also discussed how to incorporate Flipgrid as a means of students sharing their work. The team will be getting together in the near future to continue the planning. Once the doc is completed and Mr. Weaver is ready to start the unit, the document will be pushed out through Google Classroom.

January 30, 2019 - 3 hrs.
Today I was fortunate to have been given a gift. The gift was a field trip by all fourth grade and fifth-grade students and this equated into the precious gift of TIME. This freed me and my site supervisor up for 3 hours to discuss the needs analysis for my professional development. We used this time to discuss the best approach to collect the necessary data. We settled on creating a Google Form that targets a variety of elements. The form was created and it will be sent out in the coming days.

February 1, 2019 - 2 hrs.
Ms. Hudson and I met up after school to complete the interview requirement of this practicum semester. We had a great discussion which began with the given questions but quickly encompassed a variety of other topics, concerns, and wishes. She shared her personal desires for our school and county. One such desire is the need for Clarke County to provide each school an Instructional Technology Specialist. She feels that the time for an increase in personnel is now. What's the purpose of having a one-to-one initiative when teachers are left on their own to implement strategies. This was a well-spent couple of hours.

Practicum week 2

January 23, 2019 - 2 hrs.
I sat down with Tanya Hudson, my site supervisor, and discussed the technology being used in the different grades. She shared that many of the iPads in the school are currently outdated, also, many of the iPad mini’s are currently not been used by homeroom teachers. This led to a long discussion about the lack of a technology initiative in our county. We discussed the need to conduct an inventory of devices that are becoming antiquated. The majority of time was spent sharing ideas for upcoming assignments.

Practicum Week 1

January 16, 2019 -2 hrs.
This week has been a whirlwind, but my practicum semester is now underway. On January 16th, I conducted my first observation with my site supervisor. We took the time to talk about the semester and the various projects that I will be completing and her role. I was also able to observe her teaching a fourth-grade class on the topic of westward expansion and how it affected the slavery discussion.

January 17, 2019 - 1hr.
On January 17th, our school held it's annual spelling bee competition. At the request of our principal, one of the counties two instructional technology came and set up a live stream of the event. I was able to assist in the process of setting up the live stream and had the opportunity to ask a few questions regarding the process and procedures. Mr. Siegmund shared that he has learned that the best method for streaming events is to create a landing page (a google slide or doc) that has a bit.ly link to the youtube live event. He is then able to share the document with those who would like access. In this case, the document was shared with Chase Street Elementary teachers.
In addition to the landing page link, I found his use of a second computer displaying the live stream to be brilliant. This allowed him to monitor the visual and audio components which were connected to a different laptop.