Budget Cuts

As most have heard, Kentucky has found itself in a budgetary crisis along with the rest of the country. Unfortunately education keeps being mentioned as a place where some of the cuts may take place. Unfortunately, again, that may entail my current job position.

If you have read my blog before or know me personally, you may know that I work as a technology integration specialist for our school district. My job is to train and be a support for teachers as they use various technology initiatives in their day to day instruction. I am hoping for the best as we work to keep our job position from being cut. We have to apply for renewal of our grant that supplies part of our salary, as well as hope that the state legislature intervenes and does not cut the budgets of local school districts.

If money is cut for local school districts that could be detrimental to our students. Technology would be one of those things that may be cut and, therefore, leaving some of our students behind not. We have come so far in our district and our teachers and students are so excited it would be a shame to have to take this technology support system away from them. In addition to that, our district will be opening two new school buildings in the new school year that will be fully equipped with "Intelligent Classrooms" which means state of the art technology equipment for teaching. If we are not there to train the teachers, that equipment may sit and not get used to its fullest potential.

I am hoping for the best and trying not worry about it, but it does loom on the horizon. If you are a Kentuckian reading this, whether an educator, parent, or private citizen contact your legislators and encourage them to keep education funded by supporting the higher cigarette tax, alcohol tax, or whatever it takes.

We need to be able to educate our students to the best of our ability and that takes money in order to give them the best education possible.

Have a wonderful evening and here's to hoping the winds will stay calm!

Susan

Kid Friendly Video Sharing

As I was watching the news this morning I saw, featured, a new video sharing site. There are many sites coming out from the whole YouTube craze in order to meet the interests of various groups of people. We have TeacherTube and SchoolTube for those of us in education. There is also GodTube for religious type video sharing. The one I saw featured on this morning's news was KidsTube (www.kidstube.com).

It works along the same lines as YouTube and all the others, but it is geared for kids who are younger, but still want a way to share their talents and abilities without them or their parents having to worry about them accidentally running in to something inappropriate. Here is what I copied from their About Us Section:

Monitored Video Sharing for Kids: KidsTube.com was created with the purpose of providing a Safe and Fun environment for people of all ages to upload, share, discuss, and encourage each others creativity. With that simple goal and these guidelines, we hope you enjoy the site and help us to promote its success by becoming a part of the community today!

History: Kidstube.com began as a small group of concerned grandparents, parents, and young adults living in and around Webb City, Missouri, USA. We want to encourage like-minded grandparents, parents, and their children, to become part of our community, participate, visit often and promote our success, but most of all, start recording and submitting your own original home videos to help us make online video viewing better and worthwhile.

Check it out and share your thoughts! Enjoy!

Have a wonderful Sunday.

Susan

Active Learning with the Activ Board

I've blogged a couple of times about some of the "tools of my trade." I had a picture in a previous post of the document camera which, if you remember, was red and looked like a space ship or something. If you look in the picture above you can see the document camera image projected on the left side. My co-worker and I were doing a model/demonstration lesson for a 2nd grade teacher at one of our district elementary schools using counting money and making change as the topic. As you can see the document camera allows us to put real money underneath it and project it, in clear detail, up on the board.

Now to the image on the right where you see the student and me standing. That is what I really what to point out today. That is called an Activ Board. It is manufactured by a company called Promethean. You may have also heard of a SMART Board which does the same thing just a different manufacturing company. Whichever one you are using, Activ or SMART, these boards allow you to interact with the projected image from your computer. With the Activ board the teacher or student takes a pen in hand and is able to mouse click, write digitally on the board, and manipulate a huge resource library of graphics and interactive images. There is also a wonderful website with lesson resources for teachers that they can download lessons that are already pre-made into "flipchart" format.

Students that I have interviewed after using this say it makes learning more real and interesting for them. Teachers have indicated that after years in the profession it makes them enjoy teaching again because they can see that students are much more engaged in the lesson being presented.

For more information and pictures of the Activ Board go to the following websites: www.prometheanplanet.com or www.prometheanworld.com.

Hope you have had a great day!

Susan

Here's Susan

I've done some blogging before here and there for classes and such, but never have started an official blog here on a site like this. I know I am a Technology Specialist and I haven't started a blog yet??? Well, I'm too busy teaching others how to do it, that I don't have much time for my own. So we'll see how much I actually am able to take time to post here. Hopefully it will be somewhat regularly!

Well I guess I should start with an introduction! I am Susan Kerr Jenkins originally from the small town of Leitchfield, Kentucky in Grayson County about 30 miles from Elizabethtown on the Western Kentucky Parkway. I grew up as the "baby" of my family with my sister being 12 years older than me and having married while I was still young. She and her husband lived away for a while traveling with the Army. I graduated from high school in 1992 and went on to attend Western Kentucky University with a degree in Elementary Education and minoring in Library Media Education. College was wonderful and full of great friends!!

After graduating from Western I worked as an Instructional Assistant for 2 years in Warren County and then taught for a year in Logan County then got married and moved to Oklahoma with a husband who was in the army. While in Oklahoma I taught 3rd grade for 2 years at a Christian School in Lawton.

In 2002, my husband and I divorced and I moved back to Kentucky. I ended up here in Bullitt County to be near my sister and her husband who were long out of the Army and pastoring a church in the small community of Mt. Washington. I applied for teaching positions and with my minor in Library ended up being hired as a Library Media Specialist at Overdale Elementary in Bullitt County. This is where I found the type of work I love. I always wanted to be a teacher, but when I got into the library and the technology world, I loved it.

I spent 5 years at Overdale and was fortunate to be among a group who was able to help write a Grant to bring three Technology Integration Specialist positions to our school district. I was excited to then be hired as one of them! Some of you may know this position to be formerly known as a Technology Resource Teacher or TRT. I have now been in that position for a year and a half now and love it. I travel from school to school working with teachers to integrate technology into their day to day instructional activities. I love being able to help teachers learn new things and be excited about, in turn, teaching it to their students.

That is me in a nutshell if you are still reading! More about what a Technology Integration Specialist (TIS) is in future posts!