Greg+Page

PBL – Plan

To best gain the respect and trust of the faculty at Hickory Ridge High School Mr. O’Connor must implement a staff development that will transform the tone and mood of his school. The focus of the school district is to become fully integrated with the newest academic technology practices. Hickory Ridge must be able lead the way by acting as a model for the other schools in the district. Mr. O’Connor must get is diverse staff to buy into the plan the district has set in place. At Hickory Ridge High School it will be necessary to have a solid staff development base to stress the mission and vision. School transformation is going to be highly connected to the way that the staff can come together collaborate to drive instructional practices and embrace new technological based curriculum (Yager & Pederson, 2010). The CLASS (Connecting Learning Assures Successful Students) management system would be a great fit for Mr. O’Connor implement into his currently disjointed staff. The CLASS staff development strategies are based on the ideals that a school capable of success would have a positive school culture. Principle One of CLASS management has the principal at as a co-learner. They are present during the training sessions and are actively engaged within the learning experiences of the faculty and identifying how to engage these procedures in the classroom. As the faculty embraces Jim O’Connor as a co-learner, his leadership will bring the instructors together centralize their goals in a common direction. This practice will also add a team atmosphere to training engagement thus leveling the skill levels all staff members. Following the CLASS management guidelines Mr. O’Connor will also empower selected employees as opinion leaders (Yager & Pederson, 2010). Creating leadership growth at all levels of the system will certainly create people working together to achieve common goals thus providing Mr. O’Connor using productive and collaborative teams. The more change that is implemented by Jim O’Connor and owned by opinion the more strong leadership qualities that the staff can exploit from each other the more (Yager & Pederson, 2010). Making this style of staff intervention will promote positive staff development experiences for all instructors and learners. To serve as a constant staff development module Mr. O’Connor will need to establish a teacher leadership team or what we will refer to as the TLT. The TLT will be responsible for building constant positive morale, address data driven decision making, technology implementation modeling, and curriculum consultations. By design the TLC will have a prescheduled yearly rotation so that each member of the faculty will serve at designated times throughout the year (Yager & Pederson, 2010). Staff empowerment is a crucial issue for Mr. O’Connor to address and modify throughout every school year. Jim O’Connor will have the added responsibility of empowering his teachers technologically. It may be a late start for Mr. O’Connor to involve his staff with initial planning processes of the school districts technology initiatives, but as anyone know technology evolves within constant change and making district leaders and staff partners within ongoing planning of technology emersion would be invaluable. This is due to the potential relationship that will be fused between the Hickory Ridge High School and (Cooley, 1997). Mr. O’Connor already has a core group of individuals who are technology friendly, although this does not directly say that they are ready to empower a staff that is enthusiastic about letting technology take over the base of their curriculum delivery model. By creating educational technology teams within his school O’Connor he will build the credibility of his staff members. The team members may be anyone from parents to the principals and these individuals will serve as the communication base, make decisions, and solve conflicts for the entire staff. The Educational Technology team will be represented at every faculty meeting and be in charge of facilitating professional development throughout the year. Instead of a blanket of generic development activities each staff member will be outfitted with a specific technology plan suited for their particular needs (Cooley, 1997). If Mr. O’Connor truly wants empower his staff with curricular technologies he will need to add several technology positions to his team. The first of these positions is a media systems specialist. This person will organize technology communications, foster school announcements, and be responsible for distribution of technology supplies. Another essential position will be a technology maintenance specialist. This person will maintain the servers and provide routine maintenance for the entire building. To offer overall support of implementing complex learning opportunities for staff and students at Hickory Ridge High school Mr. O�Connor will have to use a strategic technology plan. The following step will be vital in forming the appropriate school climate at Hickory Ridge. O�Connor will have to implement curriculum and technology changes that are supported by data. If students are underperforming in specific areas decision making should be geared toward making gains in these areas. These changes need to be thoroughly researched and based on current practices that are proven to be effective. Stakeholders must also be involved with the process. They must be molded to feel like the have real input into the new technology initiative. They must see the inner workings of the technology processes within the school and be kept informed about the schools successes. Planning, tracking outcomes, data driven decision making, and constant research will by repetitive themes that Mr. O�Connor will be constantly implementing as he shapes his school to fit the districts technology vision (Lemke, 2003).

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Refrences

Increase complex learning, experimenting, creativity-

Mr. O’Connor’s mission will be continually making changes to existing procedures to make the run more efficiently. In doing so I it is his goal to specifically increase complex learning, creativity, and experimentation. To meet these needs Mr. O’Connor will implement inquiry learning strategies into his faculty and student body. Inquiry processes are designed to teach students to engage in causal reasoning, and to become more comfortable and precise in asking questions about what they are learning (Jazzar, 2004) The teaching staff at Hickory Ridge High School will be required to participate and serve sixteen hours of inquiry based instruction training. The major implemented product from inquiry will be a single semester school wide inquiry project completed by every student and staff member in the bu enrolled. Establishing such a research requirement will offer a vast array of measurable goals for both students and staff. Inquiry challenges people to rephrase the questions, points out items needing further validation, invites one to test and experiment, provides a intellectual environment by not evaluating student theories or practices, and encourages interaction among students (Jazzar, 2004).

Evaluation-
 * ~ Title: || Educational Technology : Identifying the Effects ||
 * ~ Personal Author: || Hawkes, Mark; Cambre, Marge ||
 * ~ Journal Name: || Principal Leadership  (Middle School Ed.) ||
 * ~ Source: || Principal Leadership (Middle School Ed.) v. 1 no. 9 (May/June 2001) p. 48-51 ||
 * ~ Publication Year: || 2001 ||
 * ~ Abstract: || Evaluating the effectiveness of using technology in schools requires a broad approach that considers many contextual factors. Determining the effects of technology is difficult because learning and technology interact in complex ways that are hard to measure. The general areas of impact that should be considered when evaluating an educational technology program are outlined. ||
 * ~ Subject(s): || Educational technology/Evaluation ||

To support continuous improvement among the processes within his school Mr. O’Connor will have to focus in on evaluation. Unlike most traditional evaluation procedures O’Connor school is technologically advanced and will have to evaluate activities within the school from this view point. Mr. O’Connor will obviously be surrounded by standardized test but must also look elsewhere when evaluating. At the high school level he must evaluate student behaviors. Appropriate technology integration by the teacher should promote improved attendance, increased excitement and interest, engaged problem solving, accepted responsibility of coursework, higher order learning conversations, and quality student presentations. To evaluate stakeholder well being O’Connor must track teacher in-service involvement, student activities, and extra time community technology training sessions. The final way Mr. O’Connor should evaluate his technology saturated environment is to observe and analyze the climate of learning. He should look spread data and examples of learning that promotes supportive interactions among learners, minimizes attitudes of superiority and possession, and encourages students and teachers to experiment policies, practices, and procedures (Hawkes & Cambre, 2001).

= Problem: = = The problem is tied to the environment at Hickory Ridge High School. The staff at this school does not have a collaborative relationship. The faculty at this school is veteran or new to the profession of teaching. New teachers were specifically chosen to fill positions at the school to model new technology initiatives to the veteran instructors. The relationship between the principal and the leadership teams has also become stressed with two of the faculty asking to be removed from the team. The high school is supposed to be leading the way in the realm of technology reform for the district but things are not going as planned. = = My Portion Plan: = = Essential Questions = = 1. How will Jim O'Connor gain the respect of the new faculty? = =Changing School tone and mood through staff development= Educators, principals, and teachers alike, are being challenged with higher demands and requirements in preparing our future generations for the 21st century. Professional development for teachers is a key focus in school transformation efforts. School transformation in today's educational system is dependent, in part, by how well teachers work together with their principal and colleagues (Louis, Leithwood, Wahlstrom, & Anderson, 2010). Recent research has focused on the role of the school principal and other site-based leaders in the implementation of professional development initiatives (Pedersen, Yager, & Yager, 2010). Principals play a key role in supporting and encouraging teachers' professional development needs. Successful principals establish the work conditions that enable teachers to be better teachers. The ability to share with others and collaborate for the purpose of providing instruction that is conducive to enhance student development is critical given the many demands that are being put upon the system. =Create leadership positions for new staff members=
 * staff development -Article
 * INTRODUCTION to staff development article - Academic Leadership Journal**
 * Article on Principal created teacher leaders who work directly with the staff to make specific reform changes within the school.


 * Article to help build staff collaboration - (possible technology team)

- If education leaders want teachers to collaborate more, then leaders must truly lead the way and model the collaboration that they want to see among teachers. Article below
 * [[file:collaborationart.pdf]] **
 * [[file:collaborationart.pdf]] **


 * resolving staff helplessness - powerlessness

= 5. How will tangible support and empowerment for all staff members be implemented? =

mission-
=Staff Empowerment= = = Describes the benefits of getting teachers to use technology at school in the United States. Need for preparing faculty and staff before installing technology systems; Factors that promote faculty and staff use of technology; Problems associated with limited use of technology.
 * =Continuous Inquiry projects=
 * Intensive staff development
 * Information collection (survey, feedback)

Real time research - example of a step by step process on how to move Hickory Ridge toward technology

= 4. What efforts will support complex learning, creativity, experimentation, and continuous improvement of the school? =

Possible class acts
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Research Articles that may help the group
==== Baker-Doyle, K. J., et. al., In Search of Practitioner-Based Social Capital: A Social Network Analysis Tool for Understanding and Facilitating Teacher Collaboration  in a US-Based STEM Professional Development Program. Professional Development in Education v. 37 no. 1 (February 2011) p. 75-93 ==== ==== Spicer, D. H. E. Power and Knowledge-Building in Teacher Inquiry: Negotiating Interpersonal and Ideational Difference. Language and Education v. 25 no. 1 (January 2011) p. 1-17 ==== Ming, T. S., et. al., Grappling with Technology  A Case of Supporting Malaysian "Smart School" Teachers' Professional Development. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology v. 26 no. 3 (2010) p. 400-16


 * Mierzejewski, C. S. The Impact of Professional Development on Technology  Integration in High School Classrooms .  ProQuest LLC 133 p.  ||

Hager, M. J., et. al., Faculty and IT: Conversations and Collaboration. Educause Review v. 45 no. 2 (March/April 2010) p. 58-9
 * || Price, B. Who's in Control of the Technology -Integrated School? .  Principal Leadership v. 6 no. 1 (September 2005) p. 51-53  ||   ||