geek.teacher

I’m kind of almost starting to get into the groove with this new job thing.

I’m now in week two as the Technology Specialist for a K-5 school after leaving my job of eight years as a Special Education teacher in Pennsylvania for the colder climes of Massachusetts. Major change? Understatement. Almost no aspect of my job here remotely resembles my previous one.

Me before: teaching the same group of 10 students for 5 hours a day. Responsible for all of their IEPs. Placating parents. Ignored by administrators.

Me now: Supporting teachers and their 400 students. Coordinating tasks with them. Frequent e-mails and meetings with administrators. Adjusting to the idea that I’m essential to the workings of the place.

Needless to say, I knew going in to the Summer that I would have to bring a serious upgrade to my organization skills. Here’s a rundown of the software I’m using to keep myself in check so I don’t collapse into a black hole of missed deadlines and forgotten information:

1. Spanning Sync*: Here’s everywhere I need to have my calendar as up to date as possible:

Spanning Sync ties all of my iCals into my Google Calendars, making sure everything stays current. It’s pretty awesome, because otherwise, there’s no way I could make sure that this stays all in one piece (never mind the calendars I’ve hidden from view for this screenshot):

If you don’t believe me, ask Harold Shaw. I told him about this a couple weeks ago, and now he’s a believer.

2) Evernote: Everything I need to keep in mind for my job goes into my Evernote account now. I’ve got a system worked out where it all goes into a central inbox, and then I periodically review the inbox to determine which tags and folders the item belongs to. This way I see things twice, which helps me remember them, and I can be sure to find things faster later. I scan anything important, and this is where I keep all of my notes from meetings from now on.

3) Dropbox**: When I need to make sure a file exists on all my computers, iPhone, and iPad, Dropbox is my solution. Once it’s installed, it’s pretty much as simple as save file to dropbox folder, magical tubes bring it to other computers.

4) E-mail: Inbox zero. It’s not quite a reality, but a livable aspiration. If I don’t need to look at something any more, it gets archived. I’ve been doing this for a while now at home, now I do it at work too.

Have any awesome organization strategies? Trying anything new? I’d love to hear about them.

*disclaimer: If you use that link, you save $5, which is awesome. i will also receive $5, which is, to me, even more awesome.
**double disclaimer: if you use that link, we each get an extra 250MB in our accounts.

• GOOGLE-APPLE SYNCHING – SOLUTION FOUND | ONE FOOT IN REALITY

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Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

When I was leaving my last job, the school psychologist told me that the school would be a poorer place for my departure. One of the reasons, according to him, was because of what he referred to as the loss of “institutional memory.” After eight years in my district, and seven in my school, I had amassed a fairly decent knowledge of not just what was happening in my district and school, particularly in regard to special education services, but even more importantly, I knew the history of how the current decisions came about.

In the field of Upper Darby, I knew where all the mines were laid. I had helped to lay some of them myself.

Today was my first faculty meeting at my new school. I stepped onto a new minefield, but this time around I had no knowledge of mine placement.

Needless to say, I stepped on a mine.

Without going into detail, I said something with which some people rather forcefully disagreed. Based on my previous discussions with my Principal and Superintendent, I knew that I was accurately describing my job and the use of my new computer lab accurately. Some teachers were passionate about how they did not want things to be the way that I envisioned.

I’ll admit, it was a searing first experience in my new school. But it was an important one for two reasons:

If I bomb out on my first day like this, I can only look better to everybody over time.
It forced me to seek out other teachers in the building who were able to provide me with that institutional memory.

While I may not have the full map now, I at least have a rough outline of the minefield. I know which areas represent some of the fears teachers have based on their prior experiences. I was able to tweak my plan a bit to hopefully allay some of those fears.

Hopefully I’ll avoid causing an international incident.

Hello Pine Glen Teachers!
I just wanted to write this quick letter of introduction to you so you’d have an idea of who I am and what kinds of services I can offer you this year as your new technology specialist. My name is Dan Callahan, and I spent the previous eight years as a Special Education teacher in a Middle School just outside of Philadelphia. I spent my time in the classroom learning and doing a lot of the things you’ve been working on implementing in the past year. My school started on the RTI model of tiered instruction two years ago, and I have many years of experience with several different reading programs. I’ve also been trained in Responsive Classroom, so I’d love to get into some morning meetings with all of your classes.

Taking a cue from Dr. Conti’s district goals, I can see three broad areas where I can help support you:

• Instruction: Maybe you have in mind a very specific idea of a way that you can use technology in your classroom or in a lesson in the lab. Maybe you don’t, but you feel there’s a place where something can fit. I can help you at any step in the process from brainstorming up to execution by co-teaching a lesson with you. I don’t know every single tool out there, but I’m willing to learn with you as the situation deems appropriate.
• Technology: Beyond instruction, I can help you try and find ways that technology can make your life easier, or to help your traditional lessons have a broader scope.  You might be looking for a way to collect data or assignments more easily, or maybe you want to have your students share their work with a wider audience than just yourself. I can help you with those.
• Communication: Using the latest Internet tools, there are a lot of ways to make it easier than ever for you to share your resources with each other and to share what’s going on in your classroom with your students’ parents and the larger community. Besides me just helping you find stuff, I can help you develop your own networks for finding useful information relevant to your interests and the needs of your classrooms.

I’ll expand on all of this in time, but this e-mail is getting far too long as is. I know you’ve got a million things to do right now, but if you have a chance, stop by the lab to meet me and discuss any ideas you might have for this year.
Good luck with the start of the school year!
Dan