Brain+Storming

We have many technology concerns in our district. This action plan will focus on the high school, since we both teach at this level. If the program is met with success it can later be introduced to other buildings.
 * BRAIN STORMING SECTION**
 * 1 What is lacking in the current teaching at Palmerton High School?**

The majority of classrooms in our building are without computers, laptops, or smartboards. Since funding has been cut, there is little opportunity for teachers to attend workshops other technology training.

Many teachers complain that they are not aware of what is going on in other classrooms, at other grade levels or in other subject areas. There is a clear lack of communication in our building. This gap in communication could easily be bridged by technology. If each department set up websites with individual teacher pages, every teacher in the district would be able to stay up to date with eachother. Teachers could also benefit from other educators suggesting additional content or adding to their plans. This set up would also encourage veteran teachers to embrace this new technology and become more familiar with it.

A group resource for sharing lesson plans interdepartmentally and intradepartmentally. This could be in the form of a website with linked webpages. Using a wikispace also seems to make sense since each page is easily editted. Lesson plans could be uploaded as google docs, again for easy peer editing. A blog could be started for educators to ask specific questions of the entire building or voice concerns. A school-wide inservice day would be needed to train the teachers on the departmental web-page/blog/wiki. We would also have to schedule time for teachers to upload their files and lesson plans to the page as a department. A timeline for keeping the pages up to date should also be provided.
 * 2 What emerging technology is being identified?**
 * 3 What professional development workshop or program do you plan to prepare for the teachers?**

Collaboration between departments, teachers and grade levels will only serve to benefit the students. When teachers become more aware of what is being taught by others, they are able to sync their lessons. For example, an English class reading The Diary of Ann Frank while students learn about Nazi Germany in history class. ltimately these pages could also help encourage teachers who are hesitant to use technology in the classroom to integrate it into their lesson plans, since they will become more familiar with it through our training. Technology is only going to become more relevant in education, so it is important that all educators "get on board" as soon as possible. Technology enriches the educational experience and makes learning and teaching easier. It would be foolish not to take advantage of the collaborative opportunities available to us as a building.
 * 4 What do you expect to achieve in terms of student learning?**