I
have been informed by my principal that we have been awarded a grant
of $10,000 to implement the use of technology in the classroom.
Because this is a pretty tight budget, I am tasked with making the
most of the resources that we have to work with. In
order to make this work, I realize that I am going to need some
assistance and input from others on the campus. Also, because those
people are not highly familiar with this type of project, nor are
loaded up with tons of extra time, I realize that I need to lay out a
plan for success for our team.
To
make our team as successful as possible, I will call on the
assistance of those people at our school who are most likely to be
involved with the implementation of the technology once the program
is put into place. Those people include: the Instructional
Technologist, the Technology Director, and at least 3 other teachers
who will use the technology. So that we can be efficient and not have
anyone feel like they are being imposed upon, unduly, I will start
the process by delegating to each person a specified set of tasks
that are to be accomplished in a set order. Because we need to work
as a team, the tasks will be interdependent on the tasks of other
team members. For example, the teachers will be assigned to develop a
set of rough plans for how they will use the new technology in their
classes. Those plans will be passed to the IT who will use them to
research technologies that are within budget and still meet the
largest number of needs expressed in those plans. As the project
progresses, we communicate progress, roadblocks, uncertainties, etc.
As needed, I will guide the participants to develop solutions to
perceived issues. Then, there will be small rewards along the way as
we reach different goals that will help to keep us all motivated.
Those rewards can be as small as time to just sit and visit with each
other or as elaborate as me bringing a meal for the team on a day
when we have reached a particularly important or difficult goal.
Whenever I am part of a large planning committee I always worry about the many uncertainties that can come about especially when it comes to technology. Recently we launched an Ethics course that everyone at our company has to take and sign an electronic document agreeing to abide by the terms.So far about 2/3rds of the people have taken it and successfully signed the document without a problem, but there are alwasy a few that run into some tech issues. I was asked to look into the course as being the problem, but after checking the attendance of completion and matching the number of signed documents it was clear that the course that was being served by the LMS was not the issue. It was clearly an issue for IT services to resolve for those specific workstations. I always find to hard to make sure that we design the technology to meet the demands of training and to design it with the lowest common tech skills.
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