Edmodo

In the fall of 2011, Shelby County administrators received training in the use of Edmodo, a social network geared towards teachers and students.  This network resembled Facebook, but is more secure and private than its predecessor.  Only students, parents, and teachers are granted access via security codes preventing outsiders from joining.

During the spring of 2012, my principal wanted to acquire feedback from our teachers regarding the administration of the Discovery Education assessment (mentioned in the previous post).  We decided to distribute a survey via Edmodo and have all teachers respond just before leaving for spring break. 

This survey consisted of three questions related to Discovery Education.  Teachers were encouraged to share their opinion regarding the best way to administer this assessment for the 2012-2013 school year.  Bar graphs were created from the teacher's responses.  This will be an easy way to determine how the majority of the teachers would like to assess our students next year.    

Edmodo has been implemented system wide for the Shelby County School district.  The Edmodo web site allows individuals to join groups based on thier position and/or interests.  Some of these different groups include: administrator groups, community groups, elementary teacher groups, middle school math teacher groups, and so on. 

In order to join these groups, you must have a group code that is sent to you by the creator of the group.  This ensures the security and privacy of this network. 

Also available through this network is a social calendar that may be useful for upcoming school events and closings. 

Edmodo has been proven to be a fast, reliable way to acquire information from our teachers in a paperless and easy-to-interpret format. 

One of our fifth grade teachers, Mr. Daryl Hyde, has been using Edmodo with his students during his reading instructional time.  Students are encouraged to respond to questions based on chapter books they are reading in whole group and small group times.  Students are also able to access Edmodo from home.  This helps strengthen the home-school connection as well as give students another opportunity to complete in class assignments while at home. 

Mr. Hyde purchased ten netbooks for his classroom to help supplement the use of Edmodo during the school day.  The use of these notebooks also helps Mr. Hyde’s students to work in small groups and to strengthen their collaboration skills.  One of Mr. Hyde’s students stated that she loved using the netbooks and Edmodo because it made her feel as if she was on Facebook during the school day. 

Future uses of Edmodo include parents having access to student grades and assignments from home.    

Edmodo is proving to be one of the many 21^st century techniques used by ChIS and Shelby County Schools! 

www.edmodo.com

Data, data, and more data

At Chelsea Intermediate School, data is what drives our school.

Data pretty much determines everything. It is the premise behind every lesson taught and every meeting held.

Student achievement provides teachers with this data. Teachers then use this data to determine their instruction. Their instruction is then observed by administration and administration may ask why a particular lesson is being taught. The answer, data!

ChIS discovered, this year, that not all data is created equal. Some programs provide data that is easily obtained and used by teachers, some programs provide data but it is not beneficial to guiding instruction, and some programs provide no data at all.

Discovery Education (DE) is a program that has been used by ChIS in the past. It was dropped at the beginning of the 2011-2012 school year. It was quickly discovered that this was a big mistake. The goal of DE is to inspire learning in students while providing teachers with a variety of tools that help to make learning exciting. DE also provides several professional development opportunities for teachers through webinars, digital media integration, related links and many more. This is connectivism at its finest!

The assessment portion of DE is highly preferred by ChIS teachers. This assessment is taken three times per school year. This assessment is directly correlated to the ARMT + testing (Alabama Reading and Mathematics Test) that is administered to our students each spring. 

For the first time, our students took the DE assessments on the computer. (These assessments may also be taken on paper, if preferred.) The benefit of taking this assessment on the computer is that teachers are able to obtain student test results immediately.  Therefore, instruction can be tailored to each student’s needs.  When taken on paper, it is approximately two weeks before the results can be available to the teachers.  This is two weeks’ worth of instructional time that could have been geared specifically towards student weaknesses. 

DE also provides teachers and administrators with graphs that show areas of strength and weakness for the whole class.  Many times each of these areas are directly related to our school improvement plan that is updated yearly. 

Data meetings are held at ChIS each month.  The DE results are discussed at each meeting.

DE results provide a tremendous amount of support for our school.  They guide instruction, are the backbone of our data meetings and even help to prepare our school improvement plan each year.

This program does come with a price, but this price is very small in comparison to how this program benefits our school on a daily basis! 

I am in no way affiliated with the Discovery Education program, however, I wanted to share this amazing 21^st century program with other administrators looking for a strong, valid, and reliable assessment tool for their school. 

Check it out for yourself.  I promise, you will not be disappointed!

http://my.discoveryeducation.com/

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

Growing up, I loved to read Dr. Seuss books.  The rhymes held my attention from the beginning to the end.  I never thought about the deeper meaning of his writings until I became an administrator. These deeper meanings have given me a renewed focus on what my teachers and I do on a daily basis.  I feel this link can give all administrators a rejuvinated approach to what they do on a daily basis.  This is definitely needed on more days than others!  

Sharing this site with co-workers and colleagues could certainly be an extra push to help get us through these next few weeks leading up to spring break. 
As a beginning or even veteran school administrator, the responsibilities required of you seem daunting, even impossible at times.  After reading the "6 Leadership Lessons from Dr. Seuss" by Brian Nichols, I felt it fitting to share this post as Dr. Seuss would have celebrated his 108th birthday just 3 days ago.  I also felt these should also be shared with you to help remind you of your self-worth and importance. 

It is easy to loose sight of these things as we become inundated in our daily routines as school leaders.  These lessons help to remind us of the importance of our role as leaders of the school and as leaders of our students.     

http://theevolutionofeducation.blogspot.com/2012/03/6-leadership-lessons-from-dr-seuss.html?spref=tw

This blog was discovered through reading tweets posted by Erin Paynter.

Attached you will find a link to my Twitter list. 
https://twitter.com/#!/stevisims/successful-administrators

This list could be beneficial to all novice as well as veteran administrators seeking new ideas in providing successful leadership and school improvement. 

Creation of this list taught me that there are several innovative ways of incorporating technology in with school leadership and moral boosters.

Criterion for my list included using tweets that provided many examples of technology in with leadership as well as tweets that mirrored my educational philosophy.

Some of my favorite resources I found throughout my Twitter search were those of Brian Nichols' website and Twitter list sharing the importance of what we do on a daily basis, tweets from Mentoring Minds related to improving school culture, and Peter DeWitt's common sense strategies shared. 

I anticipate other administrators being able to use my blog by accessing some of the common sense strategies gleaned from Twitter.  I also hope other school leaders are able to improve their personal and professional moral through some of the links shared on my list.