Launch of the PTPs

Today April and I introduced a small group of our staff to my brainchild program, the PTP (Personalized Tech Plan).  We are piloting this - hoping to start with a willing group of honest participants who will help us figure out what works, and what doesn't, and who learning something in the meantime. Our hope is that we will learn enough to teach other schools how to do this, grow our teacher leaders, and develop our own skills as tech coaches.  Just like we expect our teachers to model for students, we are modeling for our teachers by doing the whole program but from a coaches' standpoint.

I'm excited about the vision I have had in my head finally coming to life in the classroom, thanks to April's help at focusing, weeding out the extraneous and pulling my thoughts out of my stream of conscious and into words.

Today we introduced them to the program goals, our hopes for honest feedback to improve the program, and how we will begin the process.  We had them navigate Google Drive resource folders, create digital teaching portfolios from the template I built, created Google Plus profiles so they could eventually conduct Google Hangouts, create blogs for journaling, burn an RSS feed to embed in their site, and begin the self-assessment process.  I'm excited about the learning I saw just today in those tech skills!

Here's what I want to remember to improve on:
- step by step directions with screenshots on how to do the steps we walked them through today for those who couldn't attend so they can catch up independently
- separate the what and the how from the tech parts of our initial meeting.  It was too much to do at once.  But this is my fault for not having the foundational pieces already shared.
- we created the forms and folders but didn't have a great way to share them with learners.  I took down the website I had originally started because I thought it was too confusing with their own portfolios.
- I needed to have more explicit directions on the self-assessment for how to calculate their scores
- I wish we had had more time to get external input on our descriptors for the self-assessment rubric.  I worry our perspective is too narrow to truly encompass everything that's apart of the ISTE standards.
- I wish I had taken pictures and videos to put on my own portfolio site of today's meeting.

A participant asked me today was I frustrated by the wide difference in abilities - and I replied I'm used to it as a former elective teacher with 9-12 graders all together.  I think that made me a better teacher by giving me skills on how to differentiate PD and trainings.  But I do hope that no matter where everyone is I can help them grow along their continuum of tech skills.