TIS Day
                      4/20/07

                    Beth Kassirer

Please submit tracking forms for all of your machines!

                     Bill Russo
Introduction of new staff
Scott?
Marla Witkowski (Academy School)
Jeff Fillipeli (filling in for?)
Peter Hingston (#89)

“Thank you for the Whiteboard walkthroughs!”
We have installed our first demo classroom at East.
There is no solid timeline for installation at this point.

Technology Inventory – Mr. Wheeler is very interested in this and will see this during
first week of May
Include Office, Guidance, Cafeteria, Nurse - not engineers
Due to be completed Wednesday, May 2, 2007
This will be followed up by a peripheral survey (printers, projectors)

Title II part D – the whole class surveys were returned but teacher response has been
limited and is overdue. Please blitz the teachers to get the info!
Beth has the specifics on who needs to respond.
Training – a schedule will be forthcoming for after-school teacher training.
E-rate Wireless TIS group please eat in 419 so that we can meet
Equipment distribution issues on hp desktops – let’s work on issues for distribution and
follow up. Please also lunch in 419
Printer distribution – Beth needs packing slips that came on printer boxes

Reconstruction – 33, 39, 304 & 200 are going home
27, 32, 76, 206, 301 are all moving out
We must meet and discuss what teachers should be told about boxing up etc…..
Please lunch in 424 so that we can meet.
Ken Fuller suggests that teachers be allowed to take machines home because much was
lost in moving. It is agreed that this is a wise suggestion.
If teachers are going to pack, please pack peripherals together in boxes because they
disappear.

E-rate year 7 Tandberg VC schools – we have equipment and need to do walk-through to
plan for installation (lunch in 424)
City Honors, Emerson, Grover, Hutch Tech, Bennett, South Park, 59

eSis – if your teachers are on PC do not move to IE7. Uninstall it and revert to IE6.
Using eMacs (OS 10.39)in Safari has locked teachers into one class. The teacher has to
log out, log back in and move to next class.

At 12:00 a moment of silence will be observed in memory of those who died or were
injured at Virginia Tech.

Summer Questions:
Currently there are no plans for a wide curriculum cattle-call for the summer.
The suggestion was made that a TIS be staffed in each building with a summer school.

                   Robin Wheeler

This is Week 4 here in Buffalo
He comes from a varied Background including:
• Served as Director of International Systems at Coca-Cola (involved much travel)
• This past year - Cooperative Education building an accountability system for Puerto
  Rico
• 4 years in Savannah-Chatham schools
  34,000 students
  53/54 schools
  Mentioned environmental & educational similarities to Buffalo Board of Education
  In Savannah most jobs are geared toward tourism
  Mr. Wheeler showed a PowerPoint presentation (originally for Savanah)
    The main points of that presentation are below….

Objectives:
  1. Revolutionize Learning & Teaching
  2. Streamline the Business of Education
  3. Adaptive Technology Support

Historically schools viewed technology as something that is acquired rather than looking
at the educational outcomes
Defining “success” as 5 students per computer, Internet access, computer “literacy”
Outcomes & Values:
What is the objective, different?
How do we measure success?
Where is technology appropriate
How does this vary by grade?

Three main areas
1. Direct Instruction – what happens in the classroom
    How do we support the teacher in using technology?
    Instructional modality (visual, auditory, engagement)
    Delivery (virtual classroom, skill sharing, student pacing, classroom tools)

2. Applied Instruction
    Authentic Engagement (concept modeling, facilitated research, critical thinking)
    Skills Development (writing/reading, socialization (collaboration), trades)

3. Prescriptive Acceleration
      Prescriptive Remediation-
          ♣ Facilitated lab environment, private, paced to the individual,
            QCC/GPS with integrated testing, advancement based on mastery
      Pre-Teach Model (proposed)
          ♣ Facilitated lab environment, teach-ahead model, targets at-risk, low
            participation students, QCC/GPS based standards, testing, re-
            identifies intervention needs

The key to all three elements is assessment
We tend to focus on some of assessment….We have state testing but not necessarily a
tight cycle of assessment in the classroom to drive the exploitation of the above models.

In Direct Instruction – In-class comprehension & periodic (formal) testing
    Example – in Savannah they used ActivBoards & CPS to develop a science
    program with integrated assessment (over a 2 year period state scores went up
    16%)

Prescriptive Acceleration
Action not Autopsies
Student assessment data was used to plan:
Differentiated teaching
Class objectives (pacing guides)
Teacher-team effectiveness (grade-level time for data analysis to plan…)
School achievement
District Standards

By December this data was used to predict final exam results within 4%

What do we need to do to remediate?

We need consistency across schools in methodologies used in order to predict success
and offer remediation.

Regarding TIS duties and hardware:
A heterogeneous environment is more difficult to manage
The more complexity you have to manage – the less you are able to get into the
classroom to help teachers!
If you are always managing hardware issues you cannot be in the classroom

Direct Instruction: Modality Support
Visual Whiteboard, reading, math

Auditory- United Streaming video, brain based auditory

Applied Instruction:
College prep – AP College program
Middle/High – Plato Science, Math, & Virtual School project
Teachers Intel Teach to the Future

Prescriptive Acceleration:
Remedial – Plato Remedial Reading & SuccessMaker Elementary (math, reading)
Pre-teach – Pending project

Assessment – REAL TIME
Formative
Classroom: project ignite/CPS real time assessment of student achievement etc……

Technology Support Goals
Research and quantify grade specific technology models
    Pilot projects with clear objectives
    Expand range of pilot projects
    Build the case for funding
Improve technology integration
    Develop instructional material
    Overcome slow instructional adoptions (Static LOTI scores)
Expand assessment tools
    Immediate teacher feedback
    Formative assessment action
    Peer development (teachers)

              Hank Milette (Atomic Learning)

Home page after logins shows info about updates and new tutorials.
New highlights include Office 2007, Vista

Tech tips come in a newsletter format (Q & A) with tutorials used for the answers
Subscribe to Al’s weekly tech tips to get them in your email
Newsletter archives are also available on this screen

Tutorials play in Quicktime and in Flash
There are tutorials available in Spanish as well

You can filter by Mac or PC or alphabetical to find the software you are searching for
Listed by software name, publisher, platform, CC available (by default this is off and
must be turned on)

There is also a Key# which enables you to directly link to a tutorial (found in “How Can
you use Key Numbers)

There is a string in which you add the key# in order to directly link (different for Flash &
Quicktime)

Resources for Classroom
Lesson Accelerators are complete lesson plans that integrate technology.
Ideas are provided as to how to adapt these lessons to other curricular areas as well.
There is a downloadable pdf available which offers description and info about all lesson
accelerators including title, description, software, environment, curriculum area, and
whether the lesson is adaptable to other areas.
There is a sample video to show what the project looks like.
These are also sort-able by platform and alphabetic order.
All lesson accelerators are available in downloadable zip files that contain all the
resources that you need to complete the lesson (lesson plan, copy of final project,
graphics and video clips if necessary.

Teacher to Teacher lesson plans have been developed by a third party company which
Atomic Learning purchased. The supporting tutorials are not provided here. These
lessons were developed by teachers for teachers. The lesson plans are in pdf form.
Workshops include step by step tutorials and documentation which can be used for PD.
They are filtered by platform and alphabetic order also.
Any of the workshops include an introduction and then have topics broken out.
If there are downloadable files look for them on the right navigation area.

Storyboard Pro Application is free and downloadable in 3 versions (OS9, OS10,
Windows) for planning video projects. The zip file installation is all that is necessary.

Video Storytelling Guide – is broken up by topic and uses text and video

Self-Assessment is available for technology literacy profiling – users are directed to
sample tutorials
Assessment information can be emailed to anyone (such as TIS) for collation and training
planning
It is anonymous

Training and Support tab
Contains 3 short tutorials
  1. Overiew
  2. Our tutorials
  3. Resources
Getting Started Guide which can be downloaded
FAQs
Form to request help is available here and also in the Contact Us sections
    This form can also be used to submit suggestions! (this is where much of the
    content originates)
User Forum is new – questions can be posted and users can read various threads
    People are using this to submit links to material used in their own classrooms

                     Language!

This program is for intensive students in grades 7,8 & 9
The teachers get one Sortegories CD disk….this can be blown out through the lab
(Sharon has already set this up a disk image on the itech site with instructions)
Teachers need to set up the class with user names and passwords (first,last & #) This
should correspond to what is in the grade book.

There is a tutorial with screen shots that will be sent to Sharon for distribution.

Teachers are also given an eReader CD which goes with all of the stories in their text. It
may be only Windows based.

Words for teachers CD has printable and editable worksheets for teachers.

Instructional Planning Tools CD provides lesson plans in Word so that teachers can
individualize and use the documents

Placement tests for Model B will be given to 6th graders. They will be given the last week
of May.

                   Connected Math

The list of available software is posted on the itech site!

Falmouth Schools Moodle Site
stowle@fps.k12.me.us
 log in as a guest and choose “FMS Connected Mathmatics”

All of the Connected Math and other activities are combined on this site

CMP website
The homepage for students (grades 6,7,8) does not require a code.
Homework help offers hints for specific assignments
There are a myriad of activities that are included such as practice activities, vocabulary,
multiple choice

The teacher homepage offers additional practice worksheets – these are only available
with a code

Michigan State offers a CMP Web site
There are homework tips and an excellent glossary (in Spanish as well) which can be
given to parents

Geosketch pad is full of interactive problems which the students can use along with plans
and documents…..
You do not want the students to save the changes to documents after they have used
them. Keep a clean copy!

The virtual manipulative Website is also amazing….

There is interest in having a Moodle or something similar to be developed here in Buffalo
for our students to use.

                  TeachingBooks.net

This site contains videotaped interviews with authors enabling students to experience an
interview with the author of their favorite books. These can be searched by author or title.
The books are also read aloud (excerpts).

                      Palm

There were several handouts (from Palm) with screen shots galore!

NEEEWS! By Resco will go out and find feeds for news feeds is a good news reader

Tomtom is a GPS device that works with the Palm for less than $200