Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Project Abstract

Coordinating Lab times and technology lesson plan for various age levels at any school has always been a challenge for many educators. It’s not easy implementing new Ideas when it comes to technology. For example, each time Microsoft comes out with a new version of software or operating systems many are hesitant to change. This applies to technology and instructional technology as well. Coordinating lessons, keeping the staff informed and maintaining a well run pc lab has always been a challenged.

One important task in implementing a well design lab is the coordination and communication between teachers, administrators and of course the lab technician. Which in this case will be yours truly, I run various labs from small three pc peer to peer, to multi configuration lab/classrooms. In most cases, application are located on the server, routed down, configured to various ip address and of course having the stability of each pc/macs on the same startup page. This does not always happen. Maintain the back end equipment is what I do best. One gap in the communication process which I have found is a universal tool which will implement time, ideas, and lessons is a new end user tool which I think lets everyone contribute is in the form of a Wikki.

I have constructed the wikki page so teachers, administrators lab technicians will be able to access information pertaining to lab times lessons plans, links and other information which might be shared between the technician (me), teachers, and of course the administrators who over see such projects. I believe in an open communication forum which is why I constructed the wikki page. What started out to be a location to post stories from students soon began to take on a new venue. I have found that wikki can add a central communication tool which can be edit by anyone who has access to the wikki page.

This particular wikki is divided into three main sections, Lab times, teacher resources, and lessons plans. As the information grows, so will the wikki. I have set up a page devoted only to lab times and to coordinate open lab sessions and constructive lessons in the lab. These constructive lessons are on various technological skills by the California Standards. Teacher resources are a page where teachers have access to links and other lesson plans valuable to technological instruction. In this page teachers can coordinate a specific lesson. The open forum page is devoted to open end questions, ideas, problems or sometimes which I have found is that teachers may have pc issues in the class. Here is where information can be address and posted. Such issues are printing problems, overhead projector issues, sound issues and other technological problems in the classroom.