December 5-9

The SMART Response clickers keep on popping up. As soon as you think you've seen the last of them, the materials person finds some more boxes stuffed in a warehouse! Once again, this week I worked on taking out all those little screws, putting in the batteries, adding labels, for all 30 clickers, for all 12 sets. Our district is notorious for finding materials months after they were sent. However, I've gotten pretty fast at doing it. Also, I helped classroom teachers set up their SMART Response systems. The lower elementary grades didn't receive clickers until a couple months after the higher grades so they didn't get training. Since I've been using mine for awhile, I've been working with different teachers and helping them get started using this system. Next week I will continue working on this.

November 28 - December 2

This week I worked on setting up our assessment programs for our school-wide mid-year assessments. Two of these assessments are done on the computer. Teacher classes have to be set up and students enrolled in the program before attempting to give the assessment. Teachers will need to have the assessments completed before Christmas break. Mike showed me how to get into these programs with the administrative password, create teacher classes, and add students. I worked on getting students into the system so testing can start. Since we have new teachers at our school, I went to their classrooms to show them what tests they would be giving, how to log into the system, gave them their passwords, showed them how to view the results, and how to print reports.  

November 21-22

This week we only had school Monday and Tuesday due to fall break. On Monday, I was sent to a meeting at another school which lasted the entire day. On Tuesday students only came a couple hours and teachers attended district wide training for the rest of the day. So, needless to say, I wasn't able to do anything this week. 

November 14-18

I've been interested in learning how to connect and set up technology devices such as printers and projectors. In the past, when I came back from summer break my computer equipment had been disconnected and I always had to call our technology person to help me figure out which cords go where. I know how to hook up the computer and printer alone, but once you start adding other things like projectors, Elmos, and SMART Boards I get confused and have never had the opportunity to learn these simple skills. Since this would be my job duty if I decided to apply for an E.T. position one day, I figured what better time to learn this than now. Last week I expressed an interest in learning about this when talking to Mike so he taught me how to connect these devices this week. After learning, I was able to apply my new knowledge by removing some unwanted projectors and Elmos from teachers' classrooms. We sent an email out asking teachers to let us know if they weren't using their Elmos or projectors.Since we all have SMART Boards and no one needs a projector anymore, after I removed them from the classrooms, I put them in storage. Also, I removed Elmos from the classrooms that teachers no longer wanted. A few teachers responsed and said they wanted the Elmos. I was able to set up one classroom with an Elmo. I am glad I got to work on this throughout the week. Now I am able to make the "service runs" to remove or connect the different equipment.

November 7-11

Well, I was wrong about the SMART Response clickers. Our E.T. came to my room and thought maybe I had 14 classroom sets of clickers in my room from where I had been putting them together. I told him I didn't have any because as soon as I was done with a set, I traded it for another. We weren't sure where the other 14 sets were. We had to back track to see if we had passed them out to classroom teachers already. When the systems were shipped, they were placed in the warehouse behind our school. Our E.T. found that 14 sets had not been brought in to the school yet. So of course, I worked on putting the other 14 sets together. I still didn't get done, but hopefully we counted right and there will not be ANY more after these! :)

October 31 - November 4

This week was a continuation of last week. I worked on getting the SMART Response Clickers ready for classroom teachers to use. Last week, I thought I was working on putting together the last shipment of classroom sets. However, that was only the first shipment. Each set has 32 clickers that needs batteries and have to be labeled. This is all I worked on all week. I'm pretty quick with a screwdriver now! I think I'm down to the last couple sets, but I'm not positive if that was the last shipment. Every classroom teacher in our school will get their own set instead of having to share with their grade level teams.

October 24-29

This week was more about SMART Board issues. A replacement SMART Board was finally delivered this week. When SMART Boards were initially installed in the all the classrooms at the beginning of the year, a company was contracted for the installation. Now, it's the school's responsibility. This board had already been mounted at the beginning of the year so it seemed to be a quick install fix. Right before the board was starting to be installed, our ET realized the board is not the same size. They sent a smaller board than the previous. When talking to the company on the phone and explaining the situation, we figured it must be pretty cheap for them to make these boards. Instead of shipping the board back and them sending the correct board, they told us to keep it. This is probably because a person has to deliver each board when it's shipped or received. We also got the SMART Response system for our lower grades. This is SMART Board clicker system that students use to take tests with. All of these clickers had to have batteries installed and labeled before distributed to classrooms.  This does take awhile since you have 20 remotes for each class and the screws has to be taken out before you can insert the batteries. I know I will be working on this next week too.