As the school year begins to wind down grant completion activities begin to rapidly pick up pace. The spring evaluation has been submitted to the Arizona Department of Education and a follow up visit, with the external evaluator, has been scheduled for May 6th. We hope that all consortium district representatives will be able to join us for this grant wrap-up meeting.

The time has come to give the Technology Literacy Post-Assessment to all 5th and 8th grade students. All assessments need to be completed by May 16th. If any district is in need of support to administer the TLA, please do not hesitate to get in touch with either of the project facilitators, Tricia or Heather.

All current technology peer coaches will attend their final coaching session, eight, in early May. This session will focus on the successes of coaching this year and will be a time to celebrate the coaches for all of their efforts. At this session coaches will reflect on technology peer coaching and be given a chance to consider their role in coaching during the 2008-2009 school year.

It is also time to select technology coaches for the 2008-2009 school year. As the coaches will need to be provided with access to the peer coaching website and will need to be informed of the summer training dates we will need coach names and contact e-mail addresses no later than May 2nd.

Thank you for making this busy time of year a little bit easier and best of luck in wrapping up your school year!

October was a very busy month for the Northern Arizona Technology Integration Coaching Consortium.  On October 3rd, coaches that are part of cohort two attended session six of the Technology Peer Coach training, where we focused on coaching in practice and overcoming coaching roadblocks.  The same session six training was repeated for cohort one coaches on October 4th and Tuba City coaches on October 26th.  These session six trainings were very successful and helped coaches to gain a renewed energy about the technology peer coaching and learning communities that they are establishing in the schools.  Session seven training is scheduled for either February 12th or 25th, depending on the coach cohort group.  Principals have been invited to join their coaches at this session in order to plan and discuss ways to use the professional development standards in their school, in support of student academic achievement.

             

We would like to remind all involved parties that coaches are expected to be meeting with each of their 1-3 collaborating teachers for an average of 30 minutes each week.  The work accomplished during these meeting times should be documented using the collaboration log provided to coaches, or some type of activity tracking log created by the coach.

The end of September also brought about the fall (pre) Technology Literacy Assessment for 5th, 8th, and some 9th grade students in all consortium districts.  We assisted in preparing district proctors to set up and administer the assessment and in many cases helped schools and districts by setting up and proctoring the assessment ourselves.  The spring (post) Technology Literacy Assessment is scheduled for April 21st-May 16th.  This will be a very short time window and will require all consortium districts to be prepared.

We are currently working on collecting data relevant to the success of the grant as part of the fall grant monitoring process.  This monitoring process is what the Arizona Department of Education and the Federal Government review when determining if grants are meeting their established goals and whether to continue to fund grants in future years.