Instructional Technology At Andover High School Week of February 3rd -February 7th 2014 -Daniel Downs

I had the opportunity this week to meet with Anil Navkal from Solarize Andover to discuss how the help desk can support his website and social media campaign to help bring awareness to Andover residents the great benefits of solar power. A student in Andover Innovation Lab will be taking ove rthe Twitter account set up and editing of his website. There is also a current program within the Art program in the Andover Public Schools to help create some student artwork related to bringing awareness to solar power in Andover. We look forward to developing this relationship at the Innovation Lab and partnering with outside organizations.

On Friday I was able to participate in a software/hardware training with EMI in the Foreign Language Lab at Andover High School. EMI sent their trainer Josh Martin to display the use of the Sanako Language software in the Foreign Language lab. I was able to participate with Tom Powers Spanish Teacher at the High School and Dr.Jorge Allen the Program Advisor for Foreign Language.

This software helps prepare students for the AP Exams in their chosen language. The software engages students in continuous practice and repetition with dialogue lessons which the teacher can track over time. This is a great resource for the language department and enables a level of fluency development which is just not possible in the traditional classroom.
On the left is a photo of the interface doing student voice analysis.

 








 
 
The lab also has the capability to act as a server for department
resources. What this means is documents and files saved onto this space can be accessed by any teacher in the department from their Macbook. I am currently writing the tutorial document to assist teachers to connecting with this resource so they can collaborate and share collections. This space provides a unique space for students to immerse in language study.

 


 

In the Social Studies Department I had the pleasure of working with the teachers to

introduce a shared Wikispace for collaborating with shared resources and links from course content. I will continue to work with them at their next department meeting and go over some of the benefits and features of their chose platform.

The new students who are part of the Andover innovation Lab this semester have posted their profiles to our blog. We like to provide students and opportunity to share what is special to them and why they wanted an opportunity to learn more about a specific area of technology. Check them out to learn more about their interests and projects. The students have also begun their first weeks of work in the Innovation Lab/Help Desk and have posted their progress as well. 
Check these profiles out at this link!

Digital Learning Day was Wedneday! Even though it was a snow day in Andover and many other places WGBH Education Sponsored prize pack giveaway for teachers who went on the WGBH Education Page and commented on lesson resources from PBS-Click Here to see the lessons and resources available from PBS! 

http://wwe.wgbh.org/learn/resources.cfm

Well that is the instructional technology update from a great week at Andover High School!

Instructional Technology Update Andover High School Week of January 27-January 31 2014 -Daniel Downs

This week at the Andover Innovation Lab & Help Desk we got off to a great start with the addition of 10 new students beginning projects using technology. The student projects range from learning Java, creating websites and also developing business plans for innovative products. In the next week we will be posting blog entries from the students describing their first week at the help desk/innovation lab.

Some of these students have been able to assist teachers in their role at the Innovation Lab/Help Desk  with a variety of technology. Students have assisted in setting up wireless projectors,adding email accounts to phones and downloading the Chrome browser on the new MacBooks.

Students at the Innovation Lab are also piloting the use of district based Google Drive accounts. Students in the lab will be urged to use these tools to assist in their research,share documents,videos,images. At the end of this semester we will ask students about their use of these tools and use their opinions to help develop a list of benefits these tools can bring to the district.

Photo:Help student Viabhav Patel installs PC for Innovation Lab students at help desk.

This week I worked with Adriana Gonzalez a teacher in the Foreign language department. I assisted Mrs. Gonzalez with creating shared Google Documents which contain her course homework. These documents enable real time updates of assignments and provides a consistent and reliable link for parents and students . Using a link shortener named Bit.ly we were able to also shorten the Google Links to personalize and shorten links. These links were then placed on the X2 portal.

Teachers are also beginning to use Google Groups to create collaborative web portals for students to ask questions,post comments and share acquired knowledge. The groups enable teachers to organize a collaborative web based environment on individual emails. Students and the teachers are sharing information simultaneously and are notified whenever someone adds to the discussion. These groups are widely used in higher education for collaboration I have included the link from Brown University who uses these groups consistently.

Link To Brown University Google Tools Site

Lauren Ream Social Studies teacher has ambitiously developed a blog to host her course materials this semester. Mrs.Ream has organized her course materials and hosted a variety of web based documents using Google Drive on her Blogger blog. Over the course of the semester she will have students commenting on discussions directly in class and will also enable students to share quickly and efficiently the course assignments and homework postings.

I was able to work within Mrs. Reams classroom this week and assist her with adding existing lessons and editing them to be posted on the blog. We also added students to become readers of her blog.  Her students blog posts engaged students with not only with learning technology skills but also improved engagement with her content. At the end of the class students could scroll through student responses and view a variety of opinions related to subject matter content. These changes will enable Mrs. Reams class to continue to develop  web based lessons and ready access to assessments.

In the coming weeks I will be offering out to teachers

more technology training after school to assist in understanding their MacBooks “System Preferences” and “Commonly Used Web Apps” such as Evernote and Skitch.

Additional training opportunity will include beginning teachers with Google Drive and Documents. I want to enable to teachers to improve their adaption of tools to their existing lessons and classroom environments.