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2004-2005 - My First Year
I remember having to roll in television carts with VCRs on them when I wanted to show a video. We still had to use projectors with those little plastic sheets if we wanted to project notes, but I hated those so I usually would just have some paper and would transcribe things to the blackboard in chalk when I wanted to display it up there. There were a couple of computer labs available, and we had access to a locally-stored “X: Drive” to store all of our school files on. They were simpler times. -
2011-2012 - Promethean Smart Boards
Olympia invests in the installation of Promethean Smart Boards, which are an absolute game-changer. Not do they give students the opportunity to do some neat new types of assignments, but they also make it possible to use YouTube as a resource in the classroom, projecting those clips onto the board. Furthermore, we now can show DVDs in our computer’s drives and project those as well, rather than having to rent out the television cart. -
2012-2013 - Online Sales
Yearbook customers can purchase books online with a credit or debit card. Before this, I had to do all my yearbook orders via cash or check at the high school. Jostens thankfully simplified this process for me. -
2014-2015 - Here Come the iPads!
The school district invests a lot of money in iPads without asking anybody whether or not we actually wanted or needed iPads. A higher-up went to a conference and saw some of the fun educational benefits of using the iPads, but they rarely were used for those purposes. At the time many teachers claimed that laptops for students would have been a better use of that tech money. Of course, within three years they were taking back teacher iPads and replacing them with Chromebooks. -
2015-2016 - Google Classroom Enters the Fray
Many teachers are leaning more toward Google Classroom and online assignment submissions. While the school isn’t necessarily pushing for paperless classrooms, the tools Google provides have progressed to the point of making them viable for some teachers to pilot. I have yet to adopt Classroom, but I’ve done more with Google Drive submissions over the last three years, certainly. -
2015-2016 - Cloud-Based Yearbook Software
My yearbook software goes into the cloud. This means the school doesn’t have to invest in site licenses, and my students are able to log into the portal from home to work on their projects rather than having to complete everything here at school. This was a huge change because it meant I didn’t have to stay after school for two hours every day after school so kids could have time to work. I was able to get home to family sooner, which was a huge plus considering we had a new baby at the time. -
2016-2017 - Plan Books Go Digital
The school stops offering money for teachers to order paper lesson books or gradebooks, so I shift all of my formative record-keeping to Google Drive and start keeping a Google Doc with my lesson plans on them. It has proven to be easier to just copy and paste old plans and make the requisite updates than to re-write them every single year. -
2017 - Summer Tech Courses Prove Illuminating
My TCH 401 course introduces me to the SAMR model and a vast library of new technological resources that I have been able to integrate into my instruction. -
2017-2018 - One-to-One
The school makes grades 5 through 9 one-to-one with Chromebooks, but next year, every student in the school will have their own Chromebook. This has resulted in the school eliminating all but a small handful of actual computer labs, offering instead communal carts for those teachers working with non-freshman students. It is convenient, but there are concerns already about the amount of screen time students are exposed to. -
2018-2019 - The Social Media Crusade
I currently am on a crusade to get Twitter and Facebook unblocked for students at the school to teach them best practices and some social media literacy. Students can’t even use data to operate these apps because the cell reception is so atrocious out here and the school is a giant cement box. It’s WiFi or nothing. Hopefully next year I can help students make the most of these tools responsibly. It's the next logical step for tech at OHS
