ProfessorTOSA Blog

A portion of my work this year was lead by the goals I set in August. The purpose of these goals ranged from providing professional development days, website trainings, increasing tech proficiency among students and staff and creating a more equitable resource base throughout the district for students, parents and teachers. Easy? No, but my success was substantial, and I owe all of this to my capable colleagues who took on more than their share of “new technologies” and methods within their curriculum and, very bravely, took chances with their instruction. The following is the survey that I created on SurveyMonkey as an assessment piece to my work. Enjoy.

Interestingly, of those who responded in the above question, many who I would categorize as “advanced” placed themselves as Proficient. I imagine that in this case, those who are truly advanced, understand the magnitude of what they do not know and therefore underestimate their abilities.

This is a good result from an increased focus on technology. More specific filtering showed that those who used technology “daily” did so with their document cameras or LCD projectors – items not fully integrated throughout the district. Therefore, next year should see a significant jump here considering another large influx of new technology across the district.

Similarly to the last two questions, the above represents growth at differing levels. Those who increased their proficiency typically are early-ish adopters and those who set personal goals to increase their technology skills. Those areas of “significant” and “appropriate” growth tended to have individuals who worked well to increase their abilities as well as those who already work at a high level of proficiency, therefore having less room to make significant jumps. Finally, after filtering the results, those who demonstrated less than appropriate growth were those who don’t typically work with computers at all, didn’t come to any trainings, or didn’t set any appointments with me concerning goals or projects with their kids.

Awesome!

Interesting. This graph shows a significant increase in student use of technology. Looking closer to those who responded “no” here shows some results from those a bit more hesitant to adopt new technologies, but what is more present is the issue of lack of resources (LCD, document cameras) and time to figure out new technologies and how those technologies might work into the curriculum.

Finally, the comment or essay portion of the survey allowed participants to express specific areas of interest and specific strengths of the prof days. Those areas most frequently mentioned were:

• Favored half-day schedule
• Keynote training
• Garageband/Podcasting
• Grade level grouping
• Time to “play” or work
• TOSA available for follow-up training/ working with classes
• Timely and free resources
• Presentation of current research/ state of technology in education