Reflection – Early days
- Sarah Hodgson
- Sep 6, 2017
- 2 min read
As well as sharing my thoughts and ideas here, I’m also documenting my own learning journey. Taking time to reflect on how things have been going in my new role as ICT Integration Coach (commencing August 2017). These posts will also serve as documentation for my annual appraisal.
I’m five weeks in.
What I’ve been working on:
Initial start of school – getting teachers ready to roll with students. The beginning of a new school year is always a CRAZY busy time for all involved. While I am new to my role, I was extremely thankful that I was not also new to the school this year! I am a ‘twobie’, not a ‘newbie’ anymore. Unfortunately some systems on the tech side of things had broken down during the long break, so I felt that the first 2-3 weeks we were just playing catch-up. I’ve already started discussing this with the Head of Tech to ensure this does not happen again next year. We will have better systems in place by then.
Seesaw – very steep, but relatively easy, learning curve. One teacher in the school was using Seesaw as an electronic portfolio tool last year. This year every class in the Elementary section, EC to Grade 5 (25 classes) is using it. I’m managing the administration side of things, and I’ve already presented three PD sessions to staff (two for teachers, one for TAs). Mind-blowing that I’ve presented those – about a platform I barely know… yet I’m feeling very confident with it already. Very grateful that one of the new teachers is a Seesaw Ambassador! I can troubleshoot most things that have come my way so far and Seesaw have given us amazing online support (we have the Seesaw for Schools paid version and it is totally worth it).
Reinventing the Lab space – last year it was a computer lab with 20+ Mac Minis. I wrote this proposal last year to transform the Lab into a makerspace. I’m part of the way there. It will come together. I have some little projects that I will be working on very soon – watch this space!
Promoting Digital Citizenship – the school has some great things already in place (ISTE Standards and Common Sense Media), but I feel as if most students and teachers are not aware of them – hoping to raise the profile of Digital Citizenship throughout the school – have already been in touch with our counselling team and also the secondary school ICT teacher – looking for a school wide cross-campus approach on this one. Good things will happen!
Developing the Tech Coach role – we have a team of Tech Coaches assigned to either a grade level or specialists. No one really knows what the role(s) of those coaches are… so am trying to establish and understand how they work. We met this week and I presented this to them, for discussion with their teams:
Oh, and… one more thing! I’ve been working on this for a little while… but I just became a Common Sense Educator. Gotta keep on learning, no matter what.
More to follow soon…
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