Reforming the building Tech Committee

 

Reform means to put or change into an improved form or condition; to amend or improve by change

Thank you Wikipedia...This year it has been decided that we should in fact reform our building level tech committee, otherwise known as "The Building Library Media and Technology Committee"

I am rather enthused about coming out of our committee hiatus. (Special thanks to @HixsonPrincipal who understands the value and merit in having this committee in the building and helping to reform it.)

The hope is that this group of people will be able to perform the district expectations, as well as be the leaders in innovative integration of technology into curriculum to enhance and engage our students and their learning process.

The untapped potential that this group offers is exciting to say the least, and I look forward to our first meeting.

One of the first agenda items is choosing the place to engage one another with meaningful conversation and collaboration in the 2.0 world. The options are plentiful: Twitter, Google+, Edmodo, Blogs, Windows Live, Website,  the list could quite literally go on and on and on.

First and foremost, before we can begin our work, a formal invitation would be in order.

Stay tuned...

GenYes and the student show

This year I am cosponsoring an after school activity with my pal @wgsdassess. We started the club last year, the focus of the club, GenYes, was to give our 7th and 8th grade students ,who had an affinity for technology, a place to come together, learn more about tech, meet their peers that have the same or similar interests, and to train them on troubleshooting methods that would benefit both them, their classmates, and their teachers.

This year our group has transformed our sessions in to producing student news, from global stories, to events taking place in our school.

We have teamed up with our gifted/fine arts teacher (whose students choose the top
News stories and write the scripts for) and the film club who then films many of the stories. Our group then takes the footage, and assembles in into a show, adding in our own flare and character, with intros, voice overs, etc.

This school year we've produced 4 shows and a trailer for the show.  Which we post on our Hixson Hive site (a single point of student content streamed into one place)

Just recently we've had 7 new members join, increasing our group to 14 student members. The students have taken on various roles for producing the show and have begun to get quite efficient at producing, such that we are going to begin releasing short stories or interest pieces straight to the Hive. These pieces will include original ideas that the students have created, thought of, or that allow them to experience new technologies/software.

Check out all the shows at the Hive and check out our current show, where we take a look back at 2011, right here!