Wk 1 - Leadership Post

To Publish or Not to Publish?...that is the question before me. Each path (publication or presentation) will certainly stretch my skills. My Lit Review is the most serious paper I have written since college...I won't tell you how long ago that was, but it was in a different century. Figuring out how to navigate, pretty much on my own, through the development of a paper worthy of publication sounds a bit too daunting for me right now and I am not sure that my research is completed. I have an actual Cycle 3 set to begin in the fall as the IT Crowd members have unanimously asked to continue our work together! While Cycle 1 and 2 showed very promising results in the way of increased teacher self-efficacy, autonomy and use of new Web 2.0 tools, I am anxious to see if there are changes that occur with the group over the summer. I want to know if the changes that occurred are long lasting.

While I present to my students everyday, I have not had practice presenting at a major conference in front of peers. That sounds a bit nerve wracking. Again, my hope would be to find out more about the long term effects of the IT Crowd sessions. Here is where there is a possibility for a really amazing presentation. Pete Episcopo and I have been collaborating for the past 8 months. Now we have the opportunity to tell the stories of our AR projects together and really bolster our results and develop a truly engaging topic. Pete's project focused more on asynchronous training at a large, co-ed, public school in Brevard County, Florida. My project incorporated face-to-face meetings with faculty at a small, all girls, private school in San Mateo County, California.

CYCLE 1 DATA COMPARISON

While these situations seem very different from one another, we both encountered similar results to our implementation of teacher tech training. Not only are teachers asking us to continue working with them, but our groups have grown. Pete's work has him now designing the Bring Your Own Tech Initiative for his entire district. My work has led to the development of a cross-curricular Computer Applications course to be taught at the high school for 6th - 12th graders. How did we do it? Well, I guess you will have to attend our conference to find out.