I’ve got four projects going on which will need whole Staff input in September. I thought I’d share them and how I’ll tackle them in different ways.
VLE: Edmodo
We don’t have a VLE, I’ve been champing at the bit for one so by working with a number of other staff we’ve been trailing Edmodo in ICT lessons for the last half term and in a number of other subjects for the setting of Prep (Homework). It isn’t the most feature rich of tools out there, it’s not the fanciest either. But the children consider it to be “our facebook” and it is proving very easy to use for staff of a certain generation. It probably won’t be what we use long term, but we’re giving it a go now.
It’s going to be the main tool for Prep from September , it won’t be the only tool but we want it to be heavily use. I’m going to tackle this the same way I taught the children how to use it. Working with a classroom full of staff at a time I’ll run them through the first three lessons I took the children through – example tasks using the tool. I’ll follow it up with lots of pestering in the staffroom at break and lunch times.
Office 2010 / New Domain
The network is being rebuilt over the summer. We’ve already got Windows 7, but we’re adding a lot of different tools, changing how the servers work and installing Office 2010. (we currently have office 2007)
For this task I’m focusing on the important things – Staff laptops have to be re-imaged and their documents retrieving and copying into the new work areas. The actual environment isn’t changing that much, so I’m going to give them a simple Demo (about 30 minutes) of the little changes. Office 2010 also going to get the simple demo treatment – it’s not that different to Office 2007, the only thing I can see really is the absence of the Big Office Logo and the return of the “File” menu. I think we’ll cope.
More SMART Boards
We’re now in year 2 of our SMART Board roll out- I’ve been standardising on the SMART 680i Series with the integrated USB Speakers. With the second roll out (7 more boards) comes more staff who need training, and a cohort of staff who are looking for some more advanced training on SMART Notebook.
For this I’ve booked an outside Consultant to run a “Basics Intro” in the morning for staff new to the Technology, and an “Advanced Tools” in the afternoon for original early adopters of the SMART Boards who want to get into using the Lesson Toolkit. I’m encouraging staff to observe others using the boards, but because we’ve removed the original whiteboards from the rooms, teachers have no choice but to use the Interactive Boards. Again, I’m planning on doing some serious pestering.
School Website
E4Education are rebuilding our website at the moment and the new Content Management System promises to bring lots of lovely Web2.0 tools and general yummyness – of course with a new CMS comes a whole new way of using the website it promises to be very good, but it’s a leap and bound above the tool we use at the moment. We’re having the developers of the tool come in and do training with the key stake holders the admin and senior staff who use the website a lot. We are then going to cascade training to the Heads of Departments first, and encourage them to show any teaching staff in their departments how to use it. I’ve not done this sort of training before, but I look forward to seeing how it’ll go.
Conclusion
I don’t think that different technologies have the same training needs: some need direct almost 1-to-1 training, some benefits from letting the users explore and others can be “cascaded” based on needs.
Introducing new kit into schools does have one thing in common – I’m going to be pestering the staff like crazy to make sure they use the equipment we’ve invested in for them to use, because I think there is a critical time period when people will adopt to a new tool or abandon it, and without having someone on their back it’s easy for technology to fall by the wayside of everything a teacher does.
Oh and if this sounds like too much change in one go, I agree but summer is the only time I can do disruptive large scale installs of new gear, I really really needed to fix the network because it’s been driving me nuts all year, and when it comes to websites summer is the best time to take photos that look happy and upbeat.
And next year I’ve got some even cooler changes planned.