Joined GAIT

GAIT?  What's that?  Georgia Association for Instructional Technology!  Yes, I joined today....well, technically, I mailed my application and check in today.  I find it humorous that for a technology association - the ONLY way to join...is snail mail!
So, who are they?  They are open to all people interested in improving education through the use of media and technology.  What do they do?  They co-sponsor an annual professional development conference, participate in the annual Georgia Library Legislative Day at the State Capitol, co-sponsor the Georgia Library Media Specialist of the Year Award, and co-sponsor the Georgia Student Media Festival.  Georgia annually has a large number of winners in AECT’s International Student Media Festival, which is hosted as part of the annual AECT Convention. GAIT is a affiliate of the AECT.
Now, I wait on an email or letter back, accepting my membership.  I'm interested to see how long that process takes.

Tech Committee

On Thursday, Feb 2, I attended the school's technology committee meeting with my supervisor.  Our school has once a month planned committee meetings, but this was a called meeting.   We recently purchased iPad 2s for all homeroom teachers in the building.  The reason for this meeting was to look at apps that we have found to this point (tech team members received the first "wave" of iPads), discuss iBooks and using it for the upcoming CCGPS planning, look into using google docs in an attempt to save server space for our school, and then...we split into two groups.  One group worked on the iPad staff user agreement and expectations for daily use.  The second group worked on an iPad training schedule and what the focus of different training sessions will need to be.
I will lead a portion of the training for my site visit in March!  All homeroom teachers should have their iPads by then and have had some time to "play" around on them.  I look forward to sharing some really great apps, troubleshooting ideas, and basic knowledge about the iPads with them.  Some teachers have already had their own personal iPads, but many are brand now to this technology.  What a great tool we now have to use with our students as we prepare them for the future.

Webinar: CCGPS-math

On Tuesday, Feb 7, I participated in a live webinar from Georgia DOE about the upcoming CCGPS - math (Common Core Georgia Performance Standards - math).  The whole thing was interesting: seeing how the new standards will affect teachers, what will change as far as standards covered and how they'll be handled, and then the whole tech aspect of a live webinar!
All the first grade teachers in our system gathered in one location to participate.  At points, it was difficult to get the info we needed because they were using a PowerPoint, but somehow in the filming aspect, only about 4/5 of it showed on the screen...we were missing part of each first word.  Fortunately, with our new iPads from our school, we were able to access the presentation online and follow along, seeing all the information! https://www.georgiastandards.org/Common-Core/Documents/Feb7_10amMath1st.pdf
This is a neat way to share information to many at one time or without having to include travel expenses, but be sure that everyone gets the exact same info.  As schools are beginning to offer virtual components to their curriculum (even high schools), this might be an interesting approach to consider.

Good-bye, grade-level and evaluation

This has been a BUSY week.  First, sadly we said good-bye to our media center paraprofessional as she moved to a new job (I wanted to add the reason quickly as I didn't want you think it was THAT sad of a good-bye).  Our system will not keep media center parapros next year so she will not be replaced now.  I'm sure my supervisor is glad that I need some time in the media center and will gladly help out with some checking out/in and shelving in there!

On Tuesday afternoon, I attended grade-level planning with my supervising media specialist.  As the grade-level teachers talked about some upcoming activities - and the teachers' new iPads, the SLMS searched through the app store for some new apps that correlated.  She found a great one that we were all excited about and I have already used in my own classroom this week - ShowMe.  It's a whiteboard on the iPad - yes, there are plenty of those - BUT this one records everything you write/draw on it AND the audio - so, I had a group of my kids today conduct their own "number talk" while it recorded their drawings and conversation.  It was great to have them on-task and I was able to go back and know exactly what they said and did.

Wednesday afternoon, we met and worked through the school media center evaluation rubric.  That thing is crazy long - ten pages!  Some of the items were easy to figure out.  Some were more difficult.  And sadly (or more frustratingly) some had to be marked basic, but had nothing to do with anything the media specialist can control.  She can't help being assigned to extra duties on a daily basis that move an area to basic! It was very eye-opening.  Guess, in the classroom, I'm accustomed to being solely responsible for my own annual evaluations - I control what is taught, displayed, and how students are handled (now, I can't control their actions all the time!), but several aspects of the media program eval cannot be controlled at all by the SLMS:  square footage of the media center, network connections, fixed/flexible scheduling, outside duties, etc.

We're out of school next week, which after as crazy as this one has been...I think is a really good thing!

Cataloging Books

Cataloged books today.  There were several exciting things about this.  Exciting thing # 1: It was kinda neat; I'm a detail-type person and finding the info, entering it, adding about 50 labels to the book (okay, not really 50, but there were...1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7...yes, 7 stickers on there:  AR label, bar code, shelf location label, AR color dot, then 3 clear cover stickers over those 3 locations!), and even shelving the books.  Exciting thing #2:  This completes a checklist item for practicum!  So many of the projects for practicum are time-consuming, taking days, weeks, etc to finish.  This was one done today.  It feels great to "check off" something for good.  Feels like I'm a little bit closer to finishing this thing!

Grant writing

Well, not to sound like a know-it-all, but I've written A LOT of grants.  I mean. Really. Quite a few of them.  If I had to guess, I'd go with about 20.  Some have been simple, 4-6 question type things to at least one that totaled about 34 pages (of course, it was for over $100,000 so long was logical)... to be honest, this may be one of the simplest tasks I have to work on for practicum.
Anyway, our local Partner in Education and Education Foundation offer up grants each school year.  They're later coming out this year than normal (honestly, we'd starting thinking that with all the budget cuts, this was one of them), but they're due on Sunday so that's what I've been working on piece by piece this week.  I am working on one (with a co-teacher) that we will really submit for some first grade leveled reading materials, but also one that could be submitted for the media center.
I like grant writing. I know many people think that's crazy, but I do.  Finding the right words to use, how to describe the project, its goals, how it will be measured, what outcomes we can look for. I just like it.  Receiving money to buy things for our Title I school/kids that I can't afford to do on my own...priceless.