Who we are: We are team of IT Capstone students known as the Tech Ambassadors Program (TAP) from the Commonwealth Honors College at UMass Amherst and our goal is to improve the use of technology in the Holyoke public school system. In order to do this, we sent out a survey to all of the teachers at Peck School in order to assess their technological needs. Next, we held four technology-related instructional workshops during the first and second week of April at the Peck School. We chose which topics to cover in each workshop based on the results of the survey. Here is information on each workshop:
SMART Boards Workshop for Grades K-3 Teachers
Tuesday, April 5th from 3:30-5:00pm
An instructional workshop on how to use SMART Boards for teachers of grades K-3. Kelley Sullivan, a 3rd grade teacher at Deerfield Elementary School and professional development coach, led this workshop.
SMART Boards Workshop for Grades 4-8 Teachers
SMART Boards Workshop for Grades 4-8 Teachers
Wednesday, April 6th from 3:30-5:00pm
An instructional workshop on how to use SMART Boards for teachers of grades 4-8. Jessica Greene, an 8th grade Science teacher at West Springfield Middle School, led this workshop.
Microsoft Excel Workshop
Microsoft Excel Workshop
Tuesday, April 12th from 3:30-4:30pm
An instructional workshop on how to use Microsoft Excel. Excel is an extremely useful spreadsheet application that can be used to organize data, such as student grades and test scores, and then display it in charts and graphs. The Tech Ambassadors Team led this workshop.
Technology Basics Workshop
Technology Basics Workshop
Wednesday, April 13th from 3:30-4:30pm
An instructional workshop that will give a basic overview of many different technologies such as ELMO projectors, Email, and Microsoft PowerPoint. New technologies such as Google Docs and Doodle will also be introduced. The Tech Ambassadors Team led this workshop.
The main purpose of this blog is to serve as a resource center for tech education in the Holyoke public school system. Teachers and staff that went to our workshops can refer to this blog to refresh their memory about what they learned. In addition to this, staff that were not able to attend our workshops can use this blog to teach themselves about SMART Boards, Microsoft Excel, or other topics that we discussed in our workshops. Lastly, this blog will allow teachers and staff in the Holyoke public school system to comment on blog posts. They may want to ask questions or post interesting resources related to technology and education. This creates an online conversation about tech education in Holyoke which can benefit everyone in the community.
Enjoy!
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