Ramping up

As the calendar year comes to a close it's exciting to look at how things are really starting to ramp up with the TLLP project.
Now that Jennifer has carried out what sounds like a tremendously successful day of job-embedded professional development, Cheryl and I are getting into the details of how a similar day will run at her school.  Administration is completely on-board, recognizing the benefits to staff as well as leveraging some of the monies available for release time.

Some of the equipment we've ordered has already arrived and I've already had some very positive feedback from using the LiveScribe pen.  For running records it's an invaluable tool, completely non-threatening and natural to use.  The portable document cameras should be tremendously effective with mobile device demonstrations in particular.

It's amazing to me the way that small, very subtle changes in approach can have such a big difference in focus.  I say this because of Cheryl's very careful wording of the release time being offered by her administration to support PD:  Instead of "sign up for a technology workshop that interests you", she's made teachers think about the all-important "why", and asked them to consider a student or two who is at level 2 or below, and come to the workshop with that student's specific needs in mind, with the intent of leaving with specific strategies to address those needs.

This is going to make a huge difference.

I've been to many, many workshops that have been billed as, "Paul's going to show us how to use the (insert tech toy/software here)", with teachers attending only mildly interested.  In these cases I find I'm constantly having to create hypothetical contexts for the usage of the tools:  "For those students who might benefit from seeing the lesson again on their own time, use this...", or "If you have a student who is shy, you may want to try this..."
But with teachers arriving with "those" students already in mind, their focus should be laser-like, with pointed questions and specific lessons in mind.
Can't wait.

I love my job.