When technical difficulties are troubling you....who are you going to call? Jimmy's Team! You guessed it, we had a day full of technical troubleshooting for all EVM users. The day started with a users support study hall for all EVM users to handle any current problems or issues... and the user support sessions lasted for the remainder of the day.
Here's today's agenda:
- User Support Study Hall
- Individual User Support Needs
Jimmy (and I) took mostly help desk calls for the morning and remainder of the afternoon. The questions included issues such as:
- How to convert Cobra to SharePoint files
- Need for naming conventions
- CPR (Cost Performance Report) Assistance
- RBS (Resource Breakdown Structure) Assistance
Few Observations:
- Organization of schedule, data and materials is essential to success!
- Need to be motivated for what you are doing or you will not do your best work.
Classroom Applications:
There was ample time today to begin to structure my presentation and ways to incorporate concepts into my classroom. Initially, I'm thinking that my presentation should include information about the tools & technology that are used daily, types of 21st century skills needed to be successful, teaming interactions, overview of responsibilities and real world applications in the classroom. The following is a list of technologies and/or skills that I plan to use @ least once during the 2009-2010 school year:
- Classroom Wiki (including announcements, calendar, discussion, homework, pictures of teams, team goals, makeup work, syllabus, class materials, etc...)
- BCPS Website (including link to wiki, course descriptions, announcements?, etc...)
- Study Hall
- Teaming (including roles, responsibilities, cooperative learning, discovery learning, etc...)
- Long Distance Communication (possibly class-to-class using synchronous online system)
- Mission Statements
- Core Values
- Ground Rules
- Performance per class and per team displayed... and used as a challenge and motivator
- Daily agenda/task list including calendar
- Microsoft Excel
- Classroom auditing
- Team Check-in Meetings About Performance (beginning of week and end of week using a rating scale and share with the entire class, team grades based on this performance, measure against a high performing, medium performing and low performing team)
Here is a tentative list of possible Performance-based Criteria for the team meetings:
- Communication
- Collaboration
- Completion of HW
- Completion of CW
- Completion of Tests/Quizzes
**This list would include metrics and criteria for what to measure against during the team meetings. The beginning of the week checklists could include weekly schedule, objectives, tasks to accomplish, questions, products and what the team will improve upon during the week. At the end of the week, teams will be able to determine if they have followed the schedule, mastered the objectives, completed the tasks, followed up on questions, completed products and improved their performance as individuals, a team and whole class.
