ITS Field Experience

Joe Strittmatter Upon graduation from Clarion University in the spring of 2013 with a Masters degree in Education and an Instructional Technologist Specialist Certificate, it is my goal to attain a position as an Instruction Technology Specialist at a school district in Pennsylvania. In the past 5 years as a k12 teacher, Ive had the opportunity to work with fellow educators in many different roles. While I relish the opportunity to help fellow educators on a day-to-day basis, two of the most enjoyable experiences Ive had in my years as a teacher have been presenting to fellow teachers at school In-Services. These presentations are an opportunity to spread my love for technology to a larger audience. Job Shadow Number of hours = 8 hours At the beginning of my job shadowing experience, I couldnt have imagined the experience this opportunity would have afforded me. Throughout the process of job shadowing, Ive had the opportunity to attend administrative meetings to view the decision-making process as well as an opportunity to take the lead on helping our high school staff incorporate teacher websites and link them to our school website. During the job shadowing experience, Rob Long, who is in charge of overseeing technology at Central Cambria High School went over the budgeting process with me. This was a very eye opening experience for me. Rob keeps a spreadsheet detailing all of the technology expenses and mentioned that many of them, such as software licenses, do not change from year to year. One of the most interesting things about this budgeting experience was that Mr. Long pointed out that his technology budget had been cut in half within the past several years and that as a technology coordinator, it is his responsibility to find new savings. An example of finding savings was a new agreement with Microsoft that saved approximately $20,000/year. After looking at the budget and noticing that most of the money is spent before even thinking about purchasing new equipment, due to software license agreements and life-cycle replacements, I think it is an exciting challenge to be able to remain on the cutting edge of technology in the face of tough budget decisions. Another exciting aspect of my job shadowing experience was the opportunity to help In-Shore Technology work with the faculty to implement faculty websites. While most of the high school faculty had already began creating websites last year, at this years In-Service day on October 8th, the faculty was given more time to work on the websites with the expectation that they go live at the end of the day. Working with In-Shore, my assignment was to collect all of the web addresses for the faculty websites and pass them along to In-Shore to be linked onto the school website. In order to accomplish this task, I created a Google Form and emailed it out to the faculty. By the end of the In-Service day, I had almost the entire facultys web addresses ready to forward along. While collecting the web addresses was actually quite easy, I spent most of the In-Service day helping teachers with the websites. Most of the teachers were already familiar with the basics and so I spent the day giving short tutorials on things such as embedding videos and pictures, creating lists on Google Sites, and creating Google Forms to embed onto the websites. This was a rewarding experience and further motivates me in my goal to become a technology coordinator so that I can continue working with fellow educators to enhance their technology skills. Items created as a result of job shadowing: Google Form for collecting web addresses to teacher websites Persons Name: Rob Long Persons Signature: _____________________________

Peer Training / Team Teaching Number of hours = 6 hours While I initially was unsure of where this peer observation portion of the assignment would take me, it resulted in several awesome experiences. One of the decisions made during the building level technology meetings that I attended was that our morning announcements, which are broadcast live on a closed circuit network, should be uploaded to the district website to allow others who can not attend to view current news and important information. The fact that the school has a responsibility to get information to cyber students was an important selling point. Mr. Matt Gratas 1st period Broadcast class does a fantastic job putting together a professional grade morning news and the goal has been set for us to work together in order to get the announcements onto the school website. While this may sound simple, after an hour long meeting with our building administrators, the technology department, Mr. Tim Miller, Mr. Grata, and myself, decided that we would begin by placing the dialog of the morning news onto the website and eventually work towards getting the announcements reviewed and onto the website. Another joint effort between a fellow teacher, Dr. Joe Karwoski and myself was the examination of software in order to determine whether the high school should switch from Adobe software to Serif software suite. Dr. Karwoski asked if I could help him pilot the Serif suit. While Mr. Tim Miller compared the Serif Web Design software to Adobes, I looked into Serifs photo and video editing software. While Adobe is extremely capable and powerful, it is not necessarily intuitive for a student to use and an advantage for Serif, which also seems very capable of producing professional quality work. Teachers Name: Matt Grata Teachers Name: Tim Miller Teachers Name: Dr. Joe Karwoski Teachers Signature: ___________________________ Teachers Signature: ___________________________ Teachers Signature: __________________________

Administrative Interview Number of hours = 7 hours (10 different meetings) Central Cambria High School Principal, Mrs. Kim McDermott, was kind enough to allow me to attend the high school technology meetings every Thursday during my prep period. These meetings made me aware of several things about both the job of a principal and district technology coordinator in regards to technology. While it is my first year at Central Cambria and I am still getting to know Mrs. McDermott, it is obvious that she is fairly tech savvy and also supports technology in education. Mrs. McDermott made the call prior to the school-year to complete the Keystone Exams on the computers and she routinely checked with In-Shore Technology to make certain they would run smoothly. One of her concerns was weather or not test data would be lost if the computers lost connection in the middle of a test. As a result of her preparation, along with the hard work of In-Shore technology, the Keystone Exams were administered in the computer labs and ran without any major problems. Throughout these meetings, Mrs. McDermott answered any question I had and always allowed me to offer input. Recently, we discussed an issue with the schools technology policy, which stipulates that coaches are not allowed to text message their athletes. While text messaging provides a paper trail, which phone calls do not necessarily allow, it is the policy regardless and we looked at options that a coach has. One potential solution that we looked as was a web messenging service such as Remind101.com, which allows teachers/coaches to text message through the web service to keep their phone number, as well as students/parents, private. Administrators Name: Mrs. Kim McDermott Administrators Signature: ___________________

On the Job Training Number of Hours = 10+ Sample of Daily Use of Technology Mr. Strittmatters Class Website