Jean Pesce EDET 650, Fall 2013 Internship Reflection 3 SMS Orientation Guide October 28, 2013 It is imperative

e to provide unlimited access to the staff for reserving the various resources available in school. Available for class use are two Computer Labs and the Media Center resources such as the desk-top computers and lap-tops with their charging carts, and printers. Currently, these must be accessed by writing into a paper calendar in the Main Office (for the two computer labs) or through an emailed or inperson contact with the Media Specialist (for resources available through him). Either situation takes timely opportunities to verify (look at the calendar in-person or Mr. Smith checking his schedules) which are not always available with only 28 minutes per day in my schedule allotted for Planning. It would be much more efficient for teachers to have the ability to access these online while planning lessons from their classrooms or from home through the school website. I feel it is also important to create a new floor plan which would be generic in identifying the general population or use of a particular section of the institution (like, 500 Hall/6th Grade). In order to continue the referential nature of the plan, I envision an interactive plan with links to a master list of staff. Another consideration that came to me here was who might be responsible for up-dating that personnel list and any other documents that are included which may also change over time. My thought is that it should be the task of the school webmaster as that person would have the necessary permissions to do so. This is going to be a lot more work than I originally intended but should prove to be more useful also. In looking over the existing resources for teachers and others in the school available on our website there is a great deal of confusion. The Student Handbook is accessible but when specific topics, for example discipline, are listed in the index they are not linked to the same information. Instead, different information is provided. This makes understanding and following procedures difficult for everyone but especially for new teachers. In trying to find a current list of employees to link within the school building, there again I met with difficulty. The staff directory available in PowerTeacher is only available in PDF so I need to have that converted to a Word document before it can be linked to the school floor plan. There is a calendar on the school website for the Media Center but it has no information so it is not useful to the staff. The probable reason it has not been up-dated is that we are short staffed there as in many other departments in the school. The Center cannot even be open after school until 4:00 as it should because the Specialist has now been assigned a supervisory duty at that time. There are both electronic and print resources available here which it would be useful to have cataloged and remotely accessible. The Media Specialist agreed to help me revise the school building floor plan, which I found on the Shared drive, and determine procedures for using Media Center resources. The former is necessary in order to provide a reusable schematic of the school building until a time when it may be renovated. Currently, the plan includes

rooms assigned to 20 out of 47 individuals who no longer work in the building. My concept of the new plan would be generic in identifying the general population or use of a particular section of the institution (like, 500 Hall/6th Grade). In order to continue the referential nature of the plan, I envision an interactive plan with links to a master list of staff so the current occupant of a room could be easily identified and alternately the location of an individual could be linked to their building location. This could be helpful when attempting face-to-face meetings. I now need to find out what program was used to create this schematic if I am to change it. Unfortunately, the intended collaboration on this part of the project has been postponed as the human factor of his latest ailment (a sciatic condition) has indisposed him for two days. I had two opportunities to meet with Mr. Smith briefly the following week. The first time was to discuss what I had in mind for revising the school floor plan in order to create an interactive document that would be coordinated with a periodically up-dated personnel list, and to provide the procedures for reserving Media Center resources such as the desk-top computers and lap-tops with their charging carts, and printers. The second time was to confirm the initial changes to the floor plan which he had begun. Another consideration that came to me here was who might be responsible for up-dating that personnel list and any other documents that are included which may also change over time. My thought is that it should be the task of the school webmaster as that person would have the necessary permissions to do so. In considering other information to be shared through my Guide, I have begun to realize that this would be a convenient way to provide unlimited access to the staff for reserving the various resources available in school. Currently, these must be accessed by writing into a paper calendar in the Main Office (for the two computer labs) or through an emailed or in-person contact with the Media Specialist (for resources available through him). Either situation takes timely opportunities to verify (look at the calendar in-person or Mr. Smith checking his schedules) which are not always available with only 28 minutes per day in my schedule allotted for Planning. It would be much more efficient for teachers to have the ability to access these online while planning lessons from their classrooms or from home through the school website. Since we are expecting a professional development (PD) session on providing district requirements on our school pages, I will ask our Curriculum Technology Specialist, Mr. Cota (and/or my mentor) about the feasibility of this before presenting it to my principal. One suggestion to add if I am able to offer this option through my Guide, is to create a personal record of the scheduled reserved time for verification. Another benefit of this procedure (online reservations) is that teachers could easily free-up or add time slots if their plans change, as they often do due to estimated, as opposed to actual, student time requirements for tasks. In the past, computer resources or even reserved library time has gone unused when the preparatory lessons have been delayed and the reservation was not up-dated accordingly. Another event that has affected scheduled resources is the advent of issues with computerized standard testing which trump all plans. Perhaps, those who are bumped from their time slots could be automatically shifted to the first openings after the testing is complete. A consideration that comes to mind with all of this is that these will probably become non-issues once our school district is up to current educational standards regarding technology when each student will bring their own device (BYOD).

A future development of my Guide could be a slightly varied version for general community use or to provide sections with teacher-only access. For the most part all of the information should be available to the community but items, such as the above-mentioned online school resources reservation portal, would need restricted access. Any item that could be manipulated would need to be available to staff only for security. For this reason I may add a Teachers Edition subtitle to this first Guide and then, with advice from administration, offer a read-only General Use edition. After getting all my photos organized even into a separate folder for my Mid-term Report I thought I would get started creating it on Blendspace (formerly Edcanvas). Unfortunately, with the learning curve just a little more shallow than Id like, after three attempts I still have no initial product and will need to try again tomorrow with more patience. I dragged my images from Dropbox but somehow when the image showed instead of the file up-loading I would try to return to what I had been doing only to begin again from the start. Arggg!!! A check on my survey results was a bit more encouraging than the previous task. I now have five more online responses (500% more than previously) to add to my two paper responses. I wonder what the is secret to a successful survey? Ive left this one open for yet another week in order to gather as much input as possible. I know the weeks fly by for me so Im sure everyone else is in a similar frame of mind. I am not sure if my suggestion to provide an interactive schedule for reserving computers will be accepted with the latest development in that area for the school. Our principal, Dr Young, has decided to commandeer the computers in the library and labs to accommodate a schedule for the ELA classes to share them both for one or two periods for most of the day on Tuesdays through Thursday. The purpose of this is to provide more practice on the COMPASS Learning program to improve MAP and eventually PASS scores (standardized tests). She has not explained how to reserve them for the little time remaining among about 36 other teachers trying to use them. After personally reserving the appropriate days for my six classes in three different courses, I was scrambling to find alternatives or else face re-doing my long-range lesson plans for the second semester. Dr Young offered a cart of Notebook computers which would be OK for research but lack the programs and probably the processing to create a presentation product as my students are expected to do. I feared we would need to go back to printed references and oak-tag posters in order to complete the assignment. I have found an acceptable solution which was conceived by the Media Specialist. Out of the two carts of laptops which do not all work for various reasons (like worn-out 7 year-old batteries), we should be able to find enough for my rather small 8th grade classes. As mentioned before, this is a cumbersome method of operating which almost necessitates a face-to-face meeting in order to accomplish a simple scheduling issue. I found an interesting source of what were termed principles of interaction design(or) heuristics.. This was a business that conducts user experience research for the benefit of designers called the Nielsen Norman Group. They identified ten considerations to improve the human interaction with a digital object. I find this pertinent in that I want users to feel comfortable and confident when independently using my Guide.

Research into the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) was conducted to support my plans to create an audio-visual tour of the school building and grounds to aid in the rapid recognition of the physical aspects of Schofield Middle school (SMS). Surprisingly there were some changes in this concept that I had not anticipated. There is more consideration given to the adult population which prompted the change in wording from student to learner. From understanding this perspective on learning I believe providing the information in my Guide both in text and graphically online will better accommodate those who need to use it.