Mid-year Reflection

As our teachers, students, administrators and staff start the second semester, I am looking back on the first half of a very busy year, in which lots of good work has been accomplished by our team.

I am going in to this semester as the only remaining tech coach, as my colleague has taken a teaching position at an excellent and tech-friendly school in our district. It will be difficult to keep up with the demand, particularly because our position has become so well-utilized by teachers during the last several months, but I plan to use and build on the resources we've been creating, such as our library of tech tip podcasts and our Tech Tools wiki, to continue being able to provide on-demand technology integration and assistance to teachers in need.

During the first half of the year, we responded to 338 requests for 1:1 assistance. This involved co-planning or co-teaching lessons or projects, answering questions related to websites, applications or equipment, helping teachers set up their classes on wikis, blogs or other sites, and helping teachers align the right technology with the content they want to teach. Every case was different, making each request a fun challenge to research and help solve.

Our increased "visibility" (most likely a combined result of being around for a second school year and sending our weekly tech tip podcasts via email to the district instead of just posting them to our web page every week) was evident in the increase in requests. At this point in 2011, we had worked with 268 teachers. This year, despite a reduction from three coaches to two (and now one), we increased our instances of 1:1 technology integration by 26%.

We also offered fewer training sessions than last year, due to the reduction in flex hours required for teachers in this year's budget, but our sessions were well-attended and highly rated. Most of our sessions have averaged ratings of 4 or 5 out of 5 by participants in their post-session feedback.

348 unique individuals took a flex session that we designed and presented so far this year, and I still have ten sessions left to offer before year's end.

The combined number of unique people from our sessions and our 1:1 help during the day is 364. That's 364 individual teachers since August. Wow! My running total over the past 3 1/2 years is up to 920, which is over 90% of our district!

The biggest impact we've had is on the students. It isn't quite as easily measured with statistics, but it is more and more noticeable when we go into a new classroom to work with a teacher and his or her classes that the students are becoming more familiar with the tech we are using, and are more willing to say, "We used that last year in Mrs. So-and-so's class. I can help with this!"

This is a difficult budget for anyone in education, so there's no telling what the future will hold for our technology integration coaching position, but one thing is certain. We have made a difference, both in ways we can measure and in ways that will reveal themselves down the road, when students apply what they have learned in future classes, in college, or in the workplace.

I am proud of the strides we've made, and look forward to continuing the journey as we march forward to June. :)