CommonThreads in NYC: Cynthia's Minigrant Proposal and Final Report

Technology Matters Minigrant 2006-2007

Alcorn Writing Project

Cynthia Calvert, Technology Liaison

Title: Alcorn Writing Project: Awareness Initiative for Increasing Technology Leadership Capacity

Summary: This minigrant proposes to build a strong technology leadership team at Alcorn Writing Project (AWP) whose focus will be twofold: first, to foster awareness of the open source technology available on the read/write web through AWP’s continuity meetings, through a Technology Mini-institute, and through our Summer Writing Camps; and second, to provide in-service opportunities not only for our TC’s but also for the teachers in the school districts of our service area. This grant will support our site’s efforts to become more technology literate and provide funding for our technology leadership team to develop a series of technology professional development workshops. The AWP technology liaison will network with the technology liaisons from the Denver Writing Project, Mobile Bay Writing Project, and Redwood South Central Writing Project to share ideas and strategies for integrating technology into all aspects of our writing project work.

Description of Project:

Inquiry Question: What will happen at Alcorn Writing Project if we form a technology leadership team to study the technology needs of our TC’s and, based on these needs, develop a series of technology professional workshops for them? How will our site also be able to market the professional development workshops as in-service programs for the teachers in the school districts of our service area?

Background: Along with many other writing projects across the nation, Alcorn Writing Project struggles with this question: how do we keep our TC’s involved in continuity beyond Summer Institute? As a result, the AWP director, co-directors, and other members of our leadership team constantly look for ways to provide opportunities to involve more TC’s in our site work and as a result, build leadership capacity. The one area we all feel we need to focus on is technology awareness. At the present time our site is technology poor; we have no computer, printer, or other hardware to call our own or use in our site work. We do have TC’s who are technology savvy and who are willing to share their “tech talents” with others at our site, but we have not had an avenue for this sharing. With the help of this minigrant, AWP can build a technology leadership team whose goals will be three-fold:

Develop a Technology Awareness plan to help our TC’s become aware of the open source technology available to them on the read/write web and to build a technology comfort zone by guiding them as they utilize these sources in both their site work and in their classrooms; and implement this plan through Tech Awareness Moments in continuity meetings and Tech Awareness Corner in both our newsletter and e-mail correspondence.

Develop a series of technology professional development in-service workshops to present to the school districts in our service area.

Train TC’s as presenters of these technology in-service workshops.

Activities: The activities that fall under this minigrant include the following:

Build a site technology leadership team (TLT) consisting of the technology liaison and two other tech savvy TC’s.
Support the growth and work of the TLT through regular contact and stipends.
Generate a survey to determine how our TC’s already use technology, what they want/need to learn, what they fear about using technology, etc. Use the survey results in the development of the Technology Awareness Plan.
Build the teaching technology capacity of the TLT through their individual and group work with following: wikis, blogs, social networking, podcasting, digital storytelling, etc.
Demonstrate teaching technologies through Technology Awareness Moments at each continuity meeting. Support TC’s through online discussions, blogs, wikis, etc., as they implement these technologies in their classrooms and AWP site work.
Publish a Tech Awareness Corner in both our newsletter and e-mail correspondence.
Work with AWP’s leadership team as they plan Summer Institute and Summer Writing Camps to include these technologies.
Develop a series of technology professional development in-service workshops.
Hold a technology mini-institute to train interested TC’s as in-service presenters.
Market the technology professional development workshops to school districts in our coverage area.
Network with technology liaisons from the Denver Writing Project, Mobile Bay Writing Project, and Redwood South Central Writing Project who are also working to build site technology leadership capacity.

How the Project Meets Grant Criteria:

Furthering Core Work and Priorities: The technology awareness initiative builds on our site’s core work: continuity, building leadership capacity, young writer’s camps, professional development, and technology. The minigrant will help us continue working to improve the quality and quantity of the services that we already offer, while at the same time provide new opportunities for technology integration into all our work.

Technology Liaison as Leader: This minigrant will allow the technology liaison to assume a more prominent leadership role at AWP as facilitator and key planner of the technology awareness initiative. The technology liaison will guide the technology leadership team, act as liaison between the TLT and the directors, co-directors, and other leadership team members, collaborate with the TL’s from the Denver Writing Project, Mobile Bay Writing Project, and Redwood South Central Writing Project, and co-ordinate the Tech-Mini Institute and other technology related activities of AWP.

Broadening the National Knowledge Base: The Common Threads Group consisting of TL’s from the Alcorn Writing Project, the Denver Writing Project, Mobile Bay Writing Project, and Redwood South Central Writing Project was formed at Tech Matters 06 is working to build site technology leadership teams. The members of Common Threads are Paige Baggett, Tracy Duckart, Jason Shiroff, and Cynthia Calvert. Through regular contact with each other by the use of various technologies such as Skype, e-mail, wikis, and blogs to work through difficulties, provide support, and celebrate successes, we anticipate a broadening of our knowledge base that will definitely impact not only the work we are doing but also intersect with the work of other members of the Technology Liaison Network. In addition, the Common Threads group plans to submit a proposal for a session to share our journey at the NWP Annual Meeting in 2007. This session will introduce strategies to other TL’s as they work to build leadership capacity in their sites. The group plans to publish an article about our experiences for the NWP. We feel this article will help us reach not only TL’s who did not attend our session, but also a wider, non-TL audience.

Timeline and Division of Responsibilities:

Activity	Anticipated Date of Completion	Person Responsible
Contact TCs and form tech team	September 1, 2006	Cynthia Calvert
Tech team meets with director, co-directors, and other leadership team members to discuss Technology Awareness Initiative	September 16, 2006	Cynthia Calvert
Tech team meeting (survey and plan development)	October 7, 2006	Cynthia Calvert
Skype Conversation with Common Threads	October 15, 2006	Cynthia Calvert and Common Threads
Online collaboration with AWP tech team to develop Tech Awareness Plan and Technology Professional Development workshops	September 2006—August 2007	Cynthia Calvert and Team
Tech Awareness Moment—Continuity Meeting; Tech Corner e-mail and newsletter	October 2006	Cynthia Calvert and Team
*Tech team meeting—continue work on Tech Awareness Plan; begin work on Tech workshop series	October 2006	Cynthia Calvert and team
Common Threads Meeting in Nashville	November 17, 2006	Cynthia Calvert and Common Threads
Tech Awareness Moment—Continuity Meeting; Tech Corner e-mail and newsletter	November 2006	Cynthia Calvert and team
Skype Conversation with Common Threads	December 2006	Cynthia Calvert and Common Threads
Tech Awareness Moment—Continuity Meeting; Tech Corner e-mail and newsletter	December 2006	Cynthia Calvert and team
Tech team meeting—draft technology professional development workshop plans	January 2007	Cynthia Calvert and team
Tech Awareness Moment—Continuity Meeting; Tech Corner e-mail and newsletter	February 2007	Cynthia Calvert and team
Begin planning Tech Mini-Institute	February 2007	Cynthia Calvert, AWP director and co-directors
Present tech professional workshop plan to AWP leadership team; revise if necessary	February 2007	Cynthia Calvert and team
Skype Conversation with Common Threads	March 2007	Cynthia Calvert and Common Threads
Tech Awareness Moment—Continuity Meeting; Tech Corner e-mail and newsletter	March 2007	Cynthia Calvert and team
Tech team meeting—Work on Tech Mini-Institute plan	March 2007	Cynthia Calvert and team
Market tech professional workshops to school districts	March 2006	Cynthia Calvert and AWP leadership team
Summer programs planning meeting—technology integration	March 2007	Cynthia Calvert and team
Continuity Meeting with prospective TC’s	April 2007	AWP leadership team
Tech Team Meeting—finalize Tech Mini-Institute plans with AWP leadership team	May 2007	Cynthia Calvert and team
Summer Institute	June 2007	SI leadership team
Tech Mini-Institute	June 2007	Cynthia Calvert and team
Skype Conversation with Common Threads	June 2007	Cynthia Calvert and Common Threads
Tech Team Meeting	August 2007	Cynthia Calvert and team
Skype Conversation with Common Threads	September 2007	Cynthia Calvert and Common Threads
Plan NWP Annual Meeting presentation and Article Planning	October 2007	Cynthia Calvert and Common Threads
Present at NWP meeting	November 2007	Cynthia Calvert and Common Threads
Publish Common Threads article	December 2007	Cynthia Calvert and Common Threads

*Some of these tech team meetings will be online meetings and collaborations.

Dissemination Plan:

On the local level, we will use our continuity meetings, e-mail correspondence, blogs, wikis, and newsletter as the vehicles for dissemination of the work and progress of the Technology Awareness Initiative. While this is not in our initiative plan, we hope to work with the webmaster at Alcorn State University this year to develop a webpage for AWP. When that comes to fruition, we will also be able to use is in our dissemination plan.

On a national lever, Common Threads has a website that tracks the communications of the TL’s from these writing project sites: Alcorn, Denver Writing, Mobile Bay, and Redwood South Central. This website can be accessed at http://groups.google.com/group/commonthreads. In addition, Common Threads is planning a joint presentation at the NWP 2007 Annual Meeting and plans to publish an NWP article about our journey and experiences as we all work to build technology leadership capacity in our sites.

Site Director’s Statement of Support

Southwest Mississippi is a technologically poor sector within a technologically poor state. Although the federal E-rate program is beginning to bring Internet access to children and adults of the area and the Gates Foundation is beginning to provide the computers and related equipment necessary to allow for acquiring essential skills, there is a great paucity of technological know-how to help citizens of the region make use of these programs. This is especially true in the school systems in an area where most teachers themselves grew up and were educated without access to computers or the Internet. The grant proposed herein is aimed directly at this lack of technological skills and knowledge. The plan to build a technology leadership team to train TC’s and thereby train inservice teachers, in combination with the provision of professional development workshops in area schools, lies at the heart of the proposal and will undoubtedly go a long way in addressing the educational needs of teachers and students alike. The proposal has my fullest support.

Technology Matters Minigrant 2006—2007

Alcorn Writing Project

Cynthia Calvert, Technology Liaison

Proposed Plan of Work

To provide new opportunities, especially in the area of technology awareness, to involve more TC’s in the site work of Alcorn Writing Project, and as a result, build leadership capacity.

Goals

Develop a Technology Awareness plan to help our TC’s become aware of the open source technology available to them on the read/write web and building a technology comfort zone by guiding them as they utilize these sources in both their site work and in their classrooms. Implement this plan through Tech Awareness Moments in continuity meetings and Tech Awareness Corner in both our newsletter and e-mail correspondence.

Develop a series of technology professional development in-service workshops to market to the school districts in our service area.

Train TC’s as presenters of these technology in-service workshops.

Planned Activities to Implement Goals

Activity

On Going

To Be Done

Build a site technology leadership team (TLT) consisting of the technology liaison and two other tech savvy TC’s.

Support the growth and work of the TLT through regular contact and stipends.

Generate a survey to determine how our TC’s already use technology, what they want/need to learn, what they fear about using technology, etc. Use the survey results in the development of the Technology Awareness Plan.

Build the teaching technology capacity of the TLT through their individual and group work with following: wikis, blogs, social networking, podcasting, digital storytelling, etc.

Demonstrate teaching technologies through Technology Awareness Moments at each continuity meeting. Support TC’s through online discussions, blogs, wikis, etc., as they implement these technologies in their classrooms and AWP site work.

Publish a Tech Awareness Corner in both our newsletter and e-mail correspondence.

Work with AWP’s leadership team as they plan Summer Institute

and

Summer Writing Camps to include these technologies.

Develop a series of technology professional development in-service workshops.

Hold a technology mini-institute to train interested TC’s as in-service presenters.

Market the technology professional development workshops to school districts in our coverage area.

Network with technology liaisons from the Denver Writing Project, Mobile Bay Writing Project, and Redwood South Central Writing Project who are also working to build site technology leadership capacity.

Successes

Formed the AWP Technology Leadership Team (TLT)

· Met with the AWP Leadership in September, presented my proposal, and was given the go-ahead to begin implementing the goals of the minigrant. One member of the TLT was also present, and at that time seemed eager to begin working with the team.

· Used Google Docs, Google Groups, and Wikis as one way of communicating with the TLT. See links in Resources list.

· $400.00 stipends were paid to the TLT members; 800.00 to the facilitator (TL) of the TLT.

· One member of the TLT created a webpage design for AWP and progress is being made for its placement on ASU’s website.

· Set up Alcorn Writing Project e-mail account for continuity and communication

· Published a monthly AWP E-newsletter to update TC’s about site work, continuity meetings, opportunities, and general news, plus hyperlinks for open source technology available on Read/Write Web, how-to’s for use of technology in the classroom, and inexpensive technology hardware.

· Published Tech Awareness Corner in every AWP e-newsletter.

· Replaced inactive member of TLT with one who is eager to learn and contribute.

Set up four wiki sites for dissemination of the following: Tech ideas, AWP TC news, AWP classroom discussion, AWP rubrics, and practice and experience using wikis.

· There were 359 hits to the Wiki pages and 120 visitors; however, many of these were mine checking to see who was checking us out.

Posted Technology Survey on Survey Monkey. 14 TC’s responded to survey which was better response that expected based on previous experience.

Collaborated with Common Threads Group

· We held six SKYPE tele-conferences.

· Jason set up a Common Threads Google Group for communication purposes between our SKYPE sessions.

· We also used Google Docs to archive our conversations and our work, which has definitely been a success as we have worked on this final report. Everything was right at our fingertips.

· We offered each other support, comfort, strength, encouragement, empowerment, confidence, and friendship.

· We’ve formed a life-long professional and personal collaboration. Thank you to whoever put us together. I’m blessed to have worked with this group.

Began working on Plan for Technology Professional Development Inservice Workshops

· Field tested the Technology lessons at my school when I facilitated a 20 hour Technology Literacy Professional Development Workshop Series for Southwest Mississippi Community College Workforce program. The teachers received 2 CEU’s for participating.

· On a personal note, SMCC asked me to teach Computer Literacy classes for their Workforce program in our community where I do give credit to both National Writing Project, and Alcorn Writing Project for preparing me to teach these classes.

Held Summer Tech Institute

· A mini-tech institute was held during the month of June as part of our Summer Institute in the computer lab at ASU’s Business School, Natchez campus. We were allotted 16 hours of SI time for the institute.

· One of the SI fellows asked to join our TLT.

· Co-directors were active participants in the TI.

Challenges

The three biggest challenges we have at Alcorn Writing Project are distance, communication, and maintaining continuity. This affects all the work we do. In addition to these three challenges others specific to the Tech Matters Minigrant are the following:

Lack of timely response to any correspondence—e-mail, Google Groups--from the other members of the TLT and the inability to schedule face-to-face meetings with the entire team. This led to many of the problems we encountered—failure to post the technology survey in a timely manner, failure to complete the Technology Professional Development Workshop Plan, failure to train the TLT to present at the Tech Institute.

The Three Techies Google Groups was supposed to be a venue for a three-way conversation/dialogue when we were unable to meet. I was hoping the other members would use it to initiate conversations about technology rather than just respond to my messages.

While I am disappointed in the way the TLT worked and while it would be easy to blame someone else, as TL and leader of the TLT, I take full responsibility for any of the shortcomings we encountered.

Inability to recruit for the Tech Institute because of miscommunication with the university co-director which led to the TI becoming part of Summer Institute, not an independent entity.

I began asking in January for help in locating a computer lab and determining a time to hold the Tech Institute before I could begin to recruit; I didn’t feel I could recruit without a definite place and time so those interested could make time in a busy summer to attend. She thought I just didn’t recruit, and so the directors decided to make the Tech Institute part of SI, allotting 16 hours of SI time for 8 tech workshop sessions.
The other members of the TLT were unable to commit to the full sixteen hours—having previous commitments. They said they were unaware that we were going to spend this much time training TC’s. I thought I had been very clear from the beginning that we would culminate our minigrant activities with a weeklong Tech Institute in which all three of us would present and train. Another case of miscommunication.
We met only 9 of the 16 allotted hours; there were many unexpected conflicts.

Lack of response to E-newsletter, Tech Awareness Corner, Continuity meeting attendance, and participation or exploration of wiki sites

We were hoping that the E-newsletter would generate interest in our continuity meetings. However, this was not the case.

What I Learned

While we did not really change our original goals, we did not accomplish all of them as fully as planned. However, I do feel that progress has been made toward making the Alcorn Writing Project TC’s more aware of what technology can do both in our site and in our classrooms. Some of our TC’s are eager to become more comfortable in working with technology. We put in place 9 of the 11 activities listed in our proposal. We held a tech institute, just not in the way we had originally perceived. We networked with three other writing project sites this past year as we all worked on building site technology leadership capacity. We have a Tech Leadership Team; it is still a small group, but we will continue to grow it.

I personally learned I have no control over adults who don’t always live up to expectations; communication or lack of communication, distance, and maintaining continuity are three of AWP’s biggest challenges. I wanted too much too fast and should have taken more baby steps.

So, while we were not as successful as I had hoped to be, we were successful. We learned from our mistakes. We are building on our strengths. We will continue to work to infuse technology in all aspects of our site work.

Venues for Sharing

Our Common Threads group has been asked to present our work at the National Writing Project Annual Conference in New York City in November. Here is a brief look at what we will be discussing:

"Common Threads: The Story of Four TLs Networking Globally to Build Locally"

In this workshop, four technology liaisons from across the United States will share their leadership-building stories, from Tech Matters '06 to mini-grant development and implementation. The TLs will share methods and results of their collaborations including Skype conversations, Google Tools, tech institute agendas, and resources. Attendees--everyone from the tech curious to the tech savvy--will be invited to participate in an analysis of the variables that led to the success of the collaboration through questions, discussion, and small-group interaction.

I also hope to continue to share what I have learned with my Mississippi TL colleagues and their teams through our Mississippi State Tech Liaison Network.

Future plans

In no particular order:

Require contracts stating requirements, responsibilities, expectations, one of which will be attending continuity meetings, that must be fulfilled before stipends are paid.
Continue to use E-newsletter as a means of disseminating information about technology.
Continue Tech Awareness Moments at continuity meetings.
Continue to grow Tech Leadership Team.
Hold tech institute separate from SI. Determine place in early spring and recruit from TC database.
Continue work on the Technology Professional Development Plan and publish it in time for leadership team to use in selling AWP’s professional development to our school districts. The plans have been field tested; teachers enjoyed the lessons; we feel they will be effective in promoting technology awareness and competency.
Take baby steps!