March+Internship+Log+and+Reflection

March log-http://docs.google.com/View?id=dggtpmb5_18fh3bqcgz


 * Week 1-**The first activity that I completed as part of my internship was participating in the technology portion of my campus' spring Open House. I responded to a wide variety of questions during the session. While the questions were varied, none of the questions were not overly difficult to respond to. The insight that I gained from the workshop was something that I had not really considered previously the importance of parental involvement in creating technologically literate students.

In order to ensure that our students have the technololgy skills necessary to be successful, we need to have the support of their parents. We need parental support for two main reasons, the first is so that parents can help their children (especially younger children) to use technology for educational purposes. The second reason is so that parents feel more comfortable with technology and will therefore be more willing to encourage their children to use technology resources for educational purposes.


 * Week 2-**I had the opportunity to help my site mentor Renee Fawcett with the distribution of the new Mimeo document cameras. While I did not know at the time, I was getting a sneak peek at one of my potential responsibilities when I become a Technology Skills Specialist in the fall. Viewing the training manuals and comparing the features of the new Mimeos to those of the Elmos which are only a few years older was very interesting. It was interesting to see how much more a teacher could do for and with their students with a tool that is only a few years newer.

I was quite shocked at the invoice information, the price of the Mimeos drove home an important lesson, as a campus technology leader one of my key responsibilities will be to protect all of the equipment and keep it working properly.


 * Week 3-**I was asked to assist Ms. Fawcett with the campus cyber bullying training which consisted of showing all students on campus a video on the subject. My main role in assisting Ms. Fawcett was helping teachers who had difficulties showing the video as well as record keeping, I had to make sure all teacher signatures were collected once the video had been shown. This is another instance where I got a sneak peek into what I can expect one of my duties to be this coming school year.


 * Week 4-**This was the first time that I had the opportunity to use technology for training purposes as part of my internship. I am a member of the Positive Behavior Support (PBS) Committee on my campus, and was asked to prepare a presentation to introduce the new behavior initiatives to the rest of the staff. I chose to use Photostorty to create the presenation so that I could make the presentation as lively, interactive, and enjoyable as possible. I found that the presentation was very well received and enjoyed by the staff members, everyone seemed enthused and willing to participate.

What I took away from this experience was more than just the positives, but the negatives. I made mistakes while setting up for the presenation, namely not making sure that the computer I was using for the presentation had Photostory installed on it. While this did not ruin the presentation or hamper it's effectiveness, it did result in some egg on the face and a slight time delay. I learned a valuable lesson about preparedness and double checking everything.