My first full time job was to monitor in-school suspension at a middle school in Eureka, MO. Somehow, even in the less than authoritative position I managed to be a member of the technology committee. A role I continued to fill when I became a full time teacher in University City the next year. It was also that year or the next that I learned about the Midwest Educational Technology Conference. The first time I attended it was at a hotel on the St. Louis riverfront. It has since moved to the St. Charles convention center, and I have attended almost every year that I have been a teacher. I share what I learn there with my colleagues especially in our collaborative interdisciplinary class called Exploratory. I have an example of the project I developed last semester linked below. I have always had a strong working relationship with the district's technology coordinator helping to guide our district's technology policy. I even applied for that position the last time it opened up. Unfortunately, due to budget cuts the position was eliminated. We now employ outside consultants, but each year I attempt to cultivate the relationship with whoever fills that position. This year for the first time in over five years they actually have someone in the curriculum office. He started a Google class called Teacher Innovation Cohort, which I immediately joined. I can't link to the class, but I have provided and example of some of the information that we discuss.
Artifacts
Teacher Innovation Cohort - Website
As I have mentioned elsewhere, I was the driving force behind our school adopting Google tools a full two years before the rest of the district came on board. In fact we created so many student accounts that we were accused of being bots. Since then our school has been using the original Google docs as well as adopting new tools as they come out. I started a shared drive for our collaborative class next year, which will hopefully eliminate issues the staff had with finding shared files such as the ones below. The first is a website that I am developing for next years class. The other is a spreadsheet of aggregate student data pulled from a variety of sources. I shared this with the entire staff, and we use it to make decisions about the appropriate steps to take with students who are struggling. I am currently working on a Google Form so that the school's part time counselor will have an easier time entering the data.
Artifacts
The best example of adaptation of digital technologies is the ever evolving nature of our spoken word CD Alternative Voices. What started as students speaking into a stick mic hooked to a desktop with copyright free music to back them up has turned into a trip to a professional recording studio with an opportunity for students to work with high end equipment. In between we have had varying success with different recording and music making applications. We have had to move on from CDs because a lot of the students barely know what they are, and now have added videos to accent their words and music. It is still a work in progress. When I need a new tool, I generally go to Google and type in "free (whatever tool I need)," but during my courses I was pleased to find out about archived online tech conferences, and even happier to find a group of colleagues to collaborate with to find new tolls. The efforts of this collaboration resulted in the "Top 8 Website" below.
I mentioned before that I have always worked on the districts tech plan, and I have evidence below in the form of some notes I took in 2008 and a finished plan from 2013. The 2013 plan is the last one I worked on because it is no longer required to have a district plan. I, however, like to have a plan. As an English teacher at the alternative school it is hard to take on a leadership position, but at least for the six teachers that I have daily contact with I try to share my enthusiasm and keep an open door so I can suggest a technological solution to any pedagogical problems they may encounter.