CraigWheatley

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= =**iPad Implementation in Lexington School District One**= =**A Staff Development Course**=

**Links to other Pages**

 * 1) Time Sheets
 * 2) Annotated Bibliography
 * 3) Final Paper
 * 4) Final Project


 * My Reflections:**

I would like to personally say that this has been a very enjoyable experience and I am very pleased and thrilled with my product, I know that Lexington County School District One will benefit from this project. To let you all know this is a teacher led staff development course that participants will earn recertification credit in when they take the course. Also at the end of the course is a reflection portfolio project where participants will reflect on the course and share their feelings. This will act as the survey.
 * Final Class Reflection Report To Class**
 * December 7 Reflection**

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This has been a great past two weeks with my internship, things have slowed down at school and I have been able do more on my internship, these past weeks I have uploaded a wiki site to put my content on, this is a working progress, but it will be where each participant is able to go and access materials for the course. I also confirmed that I am on the calendar for the spring dates that were picked for the course to be taught, and our teachers are looking forward to the class. As I mentioned in my time sheet, I took time to sit down with one of our math teachers Mrs. Thomas, she is very nervous about the iPads in the class and had a meltdown the other day and I tried to put her at ease. She mentioned to me that I am young and I should know this stuff and I told her that even though I am young that I am still learning myself and this is a learning process for all of us. I think the part that she does not like is that we have not gotten any help, it is like, here is an iPad, use it. If these students get them anytime soon, we are going to be in a ship up the creek with no way out. After hearing Mrs. Thomas' concerns, I decided she was a great candidate to practice one of the sessions with. She really liked the session, and said she learned. I think a lot had to do with the fact someone actually took time and explained something to her. I think most of what I am learning from this internship is that I really do help out my colleagues and show them that even though I am young, I can be a major asset to them, where the district left off, I pick up. Also I have uploaded my wikispace which contains materials for my final project, here is the link, you may also click on final project to access the link as well. http://edet650finalproject.wikispaces.com/
 * November 22 Reflection**

I am being honest, I have not worked as hard these past two weeks as I have all of the other weeks. There has been so much going on that I have not had time to breathe. One major event that did happen was our student council installation, the high school is eleven years old and they never formally installed a student council before and this was awesome to do as it was the first in our history, so with that any my students, my time was taken up. However these past few weeks, I did get my powerpoints done for my lessons, they are very nice and will be added to the wiki very soon. I am planning on doing powerpoints which will be used in the instruction of the iPad, the powerpoints have step by step instructions, and can be converted into keynote so that they can be viewed on the powerpoint. I am looking forward to seeing how my group is progressing and what we can do to help each other out. I believe that the group help is very beneficial.
 * November 8 Reflection**

We are progressing, slowly but surely and while communicating with my group, I think we are in the same boat, each of us have run into snags that we cannot help, such as problems with our school administration and timelines. However with all of the snags and hustle and bustle, much improvement has taken place. I am so glad that I have the support of my group in this project and that I know each of us are going through the same things. While having a discussion with fellow teachers, I found that many want to know what kinds of great apps they can use, so I decided to take my lunch period and planning to look up some apps on the iPad. There is a whole lot out there that can be used, which will benefit teachers so much. One that I could not find though was a publisher type app that students can use to make online posters, etc. However, for US History there are apps such as US History Timeline, AP prep. Our foreign language teachers have also stated that they had a hard time finding some apps to use. I was amazed when I went on the iPad and found that there are plenty of apps out there to help with the learning of foreign languages. I now wish I had an iPad when I was in school so that I could do well in Spanish, obviously with my typing here, I cannot speak a word of a foreign language.
 * October 25 Reflection**

My next task that I completed was making a needs analysis and polling the faculty of my school. It was amazing looking at what each of them had to say about the iPad. There were eight questions contained on my needs analysis. Five questions were yes/no answers and three were writing answers, which asked biggest fears, excitements, and how a training should be conducted. From my analysis, I can tell that almost everyone who responded knows the goals of the iPad, which in our district is to teach students to be 21st century learners through technology. 100% of the teachers though do not have an idea of what they will do with the iPad, 100% need a training session, 100% do not feel ready for the iPad, and 100% would feel more comfortable with a support session on the iPad. I also asked what biggest fears and excitements were. Biggest fears would be accessing work on the iPad and keeping students on task. The biggest excitement is instant communication.

My needs analysis confirmed what I thought would be needed with my course. The only downfall is I finalized the dates for implementation with my assistant principal, and she is not allowing me to teach this until the spring. There is not any time she says in the fall. However I will be conducting a smaller version of this class for feedback here in the fall with department members and hall members, and this will help me fix any kinks before the implementation.


 * October 11 Mid-Term Report**
 * __Topic:__** For my internship, I am creating five staff development sessions on implementing iPads into instruction. This idea comes from the one on one iPad integration into Lexington One Schools.

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The honeymoon phase that began in September for this project is over, yest I still love it, but the feelings I had have kind of changed. Each day I am learning something new about the iPad, although I have had a little trouble with it recently as it will not work at home :(. However, Ms. Allamaras is coming over to my home and see if we can get it to work. Even though the project seems to be down for right now, the faculty at school are still very excited about the development that will be coming up in the Spring. To clarify some misconceptions about this project, it will not be web based, right now Ms. Allamaras and I believe that teachers need hands on wor k with the iPad and by having it online, they might not necessary understand all that they need to with the internet. A few more things that I have done are created an iTunes account for downloading apps and worked with fellow colleagues to let them give me a feel for what they need and also to see how they adapt to the staff development itself.
 * September 27 Reflection**

The iTunes account was very interesting to set up, and I can see where this might take a little bit of time to do, as it did me, but once in, it is really easy to download apps and tunes that will benefit the class, I am trying to keep a tab of some neat free apps and tunes that can help students to learn. The problem with my setup was that the iPad would not take the codes that have to be entered, but that problem has been fixed. I just hope other computers will not be this bothersome.

During this past week I have played with our Learning Managment System Page (LMS), this is very interesting to try to navigate as there are pop up blockers installed, but with a quick call to the district office, we have figured out how to get this very pricey system to work on the iPad.

Lastly, I talked with a few teachers to see what they would like to see in staff development on the iPad and a lot of their talk was what I am planning to do already. A major concern though was how the iPad will be beneficial to student learning. I explained that in the course they would learn about this and that they would find some neat resources that they could use to help them become effective teachers. Also, I experimented with my first session and one of my colleagues Ms. Courtny Butrym. Courtny found the sesion to be good and useful, but there are some kinks such as what to do and how to do it. I realized that I need a giant poster of the iPad as most people do not know certain functions.

Over the next few weeks, the course will be coming together. I am looking forward to the great things that I will be able to do and to share with Lexington One.

This is going to be a very exciting semester for me and my internship project. First time I saw the topic of this course I thought, oh no, internship, I work full time, I do not have time to do an internship somewhere else. Anyway that all changed with day one of this course and when I found out it was a project, and I got an idea and I knew exactly what to do. I am very excited to be completing my internship at my school and helping in my own small way with our 21st century learner iPad one on one computing devices for our students of Lexington School District One. Honestly, I think my colleagues are more excited about this internship opportunity and they cannot wait until the spring when this course is offered for the first time. For my internship, I am making a five session staff development course on the basics of the iPad2 and how to implement this “new to the classroom” mobile computing device. So far in the internship, I have met with my mentor and together we laid out what needs to be done to help faculty with the iPad itself. We both, along with the urging of my principal decided to make this course a gradual release course where the process is demonstrated and modeled and then the learners model for the instructor. Lexington One is implementing this technique during the school year along with the iPads to help prepare our students for life outside the classroom.
 * Sep****tember 13 Reflection**

Two more things that I have done for my internship is come up with the staff development dates, and have a tentative assessment for the end of the staff development course.

At my school, each Tuesday, the certified staff are scheduled for staff development which is 45 minutes, and takes place during each teachers planning period. This also helps us not to have meetings after school on Mondays. Honestly, some of the developments are not worthwhile, but others help you. The dates for my development were chosen in February and March of 2012 when we had five open dates on the staff development calendar. These were then granted by the principal and assistant principal for use of teaching the development on the iPad. I really like the way that the final assessment is planned to take place in the March session, which is two weeks after the final fourth training. Originally I did not like this as it was not clumped with the others, but my assessment is a portfolio based assessment which will take time to put together and as a co-worker to the certified staff that will be in this development, I know what valuable time we have and need. The final assessment will require teachers to submit an iPad lesson plan, five good apps, and something they would like to share with their colleagues that they learned or found cool on the iPad. Since the assessment is planned, it will be much easier to plan out the sessions themselves.

After starting this internship, I found this process much easier than I originally thought. While an undergraduate my strengths were organization and lesson planning, these two things are working out very well right now with the internship. I am looking forward to these next few weeks when I go into more detail in preparing for the sessions themselves. Overall, I hope that out of this internship, my colleagues will be able to take the iPad2 and do marvels with it, and not stare at it and ask the question, what am I to do with this?