Home

K-12 Portfolio

This is a K-12 ePortfolio.

Visit http://myinstructionaldesigns.com/eportfolio for work since 2012.  

 

IT Service Learning 

Greenfield Tech Scouts:  Summer Youth IT Service Learning

Latest incarnation of Tech Scouts, begun June 19th as a volunteer program, evolved into paid partnership. Program fosters self-directed, interdependent service learning and entrepreneurship, spawning a student-run web design firm, Greenfield Digital, staffed by Greenfield teenagers and young adults. Previous versions of Tech Scouts are listed below.  I developed Tech Scouts in 1996 for Central Park East Secondary School.

Teaching and Technology Integration K-12

2011 - 2013

Technology Integration Specialist, Caledonia County Schools, VT

What is the Internet? Middle School Class Video

One of our students was home sick, so we recorded it for her.

Integration Websites: Google Sites from work in Vermont schools (Caledonia County).  Some links and documents may no longer work due to login restrictions.

  • Google Collaboration Training: Managing an MS 1:1 and learning collaborative patterns with Google Apps.
  • 1 to 1 Training: Helping MS students learn basic skills and safety with their new computers.
  • Google Coach: Helping Elementary School teachers learn Google collaborative patterns.
  • Integration Help: Tips for teaching with technology, with a Google Apps / ePortfolio focus.
  • Tech Tips:  Particularly focused on using Google Apps for Education.

Brochure: Technology Integration Specialist Outreach

I used this brochure in encounter sessions with all faculty members at the start of the 2011-12 school year, articulating various ways we might work together, expectations, and recommended areas of focus.  The sessions were universally well-received.

2005 - 2010

Civil War Project: Springs School Case Study (PDF / Web)

Two of the sites below require logins and are therefore shown in screenshots; the third, http://news.springsdistrict.org, does not (students logged in as civil war personas, so no personal data). Work samples:

Tech Scouts at Game Face Web Design: Students as IT Professionals

When my technology coordinator position at Taconic Hills was cut from the district budget five years ago, my Tech Scouts students expressed interest in forming a web development firm.  We created Beyond the Box (http://btheb.com) - focusing on creative sites and Moodle e-Learning courses. I decided to try the private sector, putting all attention on the web business, re-branding the company as Game Face Web Design, LLC (http://gamefacewebdesign.com), encouraging clients to hire students to sit on their side of the design and development table.

2003 - 2005

Technology Coordinator, Taconic Hills Central Schools

Tech Scouts Program Implementations, 4 schools, 1997-2005

Tech Scouts is a student tech support service learning program I created at Columbia Teachers College.  First run as a credit-bearing high school course for Central Park East Secondary School (flagship of the Center for Collaborative Education Schools Network), I also implemented this as a credit bearing course + club at Poughkeepsie High School and University Heights High School, and as club at Taconic Hills, where we also conducted community education classes (eBay for Grannies) and built a Linux Terminal Server Project lab for a local town (Clermont, NY).

"Beat Japan" Economic Simulation

Students took the role of auto company CEOs, applying investment strategies in competition with each other (and, to their increasing surprise, Japan, which played by very different rules). Every morning they would read a news blog, meet as teams, and take new actions; the teacher would respond by creating the next morning's news blog, and informing each team of its financial status.

Spanish Cultural Exchange Videoconference Project 

The Spanish Cultural Exchange Project began by identifying an international classroom partner, securing mini-grant funding, and connecting via videoconferences and forums. The first activity was teacher driven - creating webquest projects for partner comment. The second was student driven - making videos about life in their respective schools and communities, shared over videoconference for reactions.

Info-Tech Titans: Tech Scouts / IT Department Newsletter

Tech Scouts interviewed teachers and technicians and were responsible for 80% of the content for our technology department newsletter.  We also used this as a vehicle for students to present their ideas about technology planning and integration to the technology planning committee, who did not feel comfortable having students at regular meetings, and to highlight the projects of teachers I worked with.

  • Spring 2004 issue (PDF) http://et.btheb.com/sites/empower/files/info-tech-titans.pdf
    • Cover Page: Article Leads
    • Scouts Report: Student Technology Planning Input
    • Computing with Clusters: a teacher profile written by a Tech Scout, showcasing my "classroom cluster" initiative.
    • Other Teacher Projects: The Periodic Table project was a close collaboration with me. Wwritten up by Tech Scouts

Poetry Powerpoints

Students chose from among three poems, created Powerpoint presentations designed to accompany their interpreted readings, and performed the readings before the class (and videotaped).  This was the most popular technology integration project I supported while at Taconic Hills, and it was showcased by the superintendant to kick off the following conference day.

2001-2003

Computer Applications Teacher, Hudson Middle School

Computer Curriculum, Grades 7-8

Students met for 5-week rotations to learn basic computer applications (Microsoft Office & Mozilla). I strove to integrate applications as part of inquiry projects, and give students local experiences of empowerment through social publishing. The course was very popular with students, and discipline was rarely an issue. 

Biology Conference: Cellular Structure

The Biology teacher and I teamed up for this unit, with classes meeting alternately in the science lab and in the computer lab during free periods. Student teams began with pond cultures, identifying protists and keeping a journal of drawings, diagrams, and behaviors, using computer lab time to research the organisms and background information. The unit culminated in student teams presenting "findings" in the form of Powerpoint presentations for peer review.  Students would quiz presenters on the content of their presentations (making sure each student knew the content) and asking questions to extend thinking.

1998 - 2001

Technology Director, Poughkeepsie City School District

Minigrant Conference

This was the first major initiative as Technology Director.  As part of our initiative to link technology projects to state standards, I developed a linked competitive RFP and project development in-service course, using district teachers and BOCES instructors to run the sessions.  35 participating teachers developed standards-linked projects, and 10 submitted qualifying projects for funding and implementation support. An all-day conference gave each teaching team 30 minutes for presentation and participant feedback.

Project Oaxaca

The Oaxaca Project is cultural exchange project between 4th grade students in Poughkeepsie, NY and the residents of San Agustin, a small village near Oaxaca.  After local news stories of a San Augustinian community in Poughkeepsie, our project design took advantage of community interest to secure a grant from IBM to send teachers and a computer (with dial-up Internet) to the Mexican town. A bulletin board sustained shared communication, and students collaborated on a website and a move about life in their school.

Technology Implementation Plan

A technology plan was in place when I joined Poughkeepsie, but without a mechanism to connect and coordinate goals with resources and timelines.  This "implementation plan" was an action plan, choosing and budgeting for a subset of goals.

1:1 Initiative: Authentic Science Research

This pilot, with grant funding from IBM, placed a cart of wireless internet laptops in the hands of upperclassmen who performed authentic science research as virtual lab assistants to university professors they cultivated individually as mentors.  I played a major role in helping the district adopt this initiative, training faculty to train students to use the laptops.

Program Home Page: http://www.albany.edu/scienceresearch/program.htm

1994 - 1997

K-12 Projects Coordinator, Institute for Learning Technologies, Teachers College

A Small School's Technology Planner

Initially created for Living Schoolbook Project partner schools at the Institute for Learning Technologies  when I served as K-12 projects coordinator, this served as my road map for work at Poughkeepsie and at Taconic Hills later. I have updated it slightly in moving it to The Empowered Teacher.

Design Studio Model: 6 schools

As coordinator of K-12 Projects for the Institute for Learning Technologies, I helped design and facilitate this two-week project development workshop for teachers in our participating schools. See http://et.btheb.com/design-studio.

K-12 Projects: 3 schools

I co-designed and supported cutting edge technology integration projects, including American History Archive (Forest Hills High School students  pursuing document-based questions with support from the Morgan Library and Gilder/Lehrman Institute), Student Poetry Showcase (School of the Physical City students sharing multimedia readings and presentations with the Teachers & Writers Collaborative), and Time Detectives (Ralph Bunche School 4th graders exploring the American Revolutionary War from digital artifacts and sharing via videoconference with partner schools).

Powered by Drupal - Design by artinet