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jrcoach |
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| Jeff |
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 About Me |
The following is a short bio and what may be of interest to others: I began working as the Secondary Technology Coordinator for the Warwick School District in 2002. Prior to joining the Warwick staff, I began my career with the Solanco School District. My work at Solanco consisted of 22 years as a regular education classroom teacher and 2 years as a technology integration specialist.
My years in education have brought about constant change. I believe an open mind towards different types of technology and continual changes in instruction have allowed me to be an effective teacher. I am proficient in the use of many types of technology but am master of none. While in the classroom I created a virtual reality tour of the Robert Fulton Birthplace with elementary students, built websites, created online lessons all the while helping the district move forward with technology integration. Since moving to the coordinator/coach position I now serve as technology staff development leader for all secondary initiatives including: training staff; locating or creating training materials; assessing the need for additional staff development; and co-teaching/planning technology lessons.
Our technology department continues to work as a team and we have successfully; implement an embedded technology curriculum K-12, created an online web grades portal, an easy to use online teacher web development program, Parent Portal for parent involvement, as well as rolled out several web programs: My Access - writing, Moodle - online course creation, Turnitin – plagiarism program, Brain Pop - curriculum, United Streaming – video/movies, Nettrekker – curriculum, and Destiny – online library. With the addition of Classroom Performance systems and the Classroom for the Future initiative we have outfitted all core classrooms and about 50% of electives areas into Smart classrooms. Each room has a mounted interactive white board, ceiling mounted projectors, and speakers. Our district has been proactive by putting technology into the hands of the teachers. A big step for sustaining our program happened when we initiated a lease program for all teacher machines. Each teacher receives a new laptop every 3 years. We are seeing laptops in the hands of the teachers allows them to change instruction at a pace they are comfortable with allowing for integration of technology tools into instruction to be a more natural less stressful experience. We are now focusing our energies to increased teacher awareness of the technology tools needed to educate students with the 21st century skills. My job keeps morphing as new technologies and skills emerge.
Technical skills that I could share with the group include: As stated above, my job allows me the pleasure of creating and leading many different staff development opportunities. My most recent staff development proposals have been: Web development, Turnitin, TeacherWeb, Easy Grade Pro, WebGrades, PhotoShop Elements, Streaming Media, NetTrekker, SmartBoards, CPS (Classroom Performance Systems), and Moodle.
Coaching skills I could share with the group:
Flexibility in teaching style is very important. Depending on the level of technology understanding and modality of teaching styles your students bring to the table will vary the way courses need to be taught. Use open communication that is clear and to the point at the level of the intended audience. Reduce stress levels, increase performance and improve motivation towards the use of technology by working to build a professional working relationship with teachers (we are all in this together attitude).
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User is Offline.
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| User Joined: November 26, 2006 |
| Last Login: July 26, 2008
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 Active Rank: #107320 |
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