Action Plan

GENERAL INFORMATION
1. Ozark City Schools
2. Let the Blogs Begin! (Proposal)
3. Ozark City School District
4.  Howard Harrison
5.
    (334)432-0082
6. Project Timeline: August 2011-Januaury 2012   
7. Amount Required: NA
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
This project is designed to increase usage of web 2.0 (primary focus: blogs) tools by administrators in the Ozark City School System. A district leadership team has been established to help implement the district’s mission statement and to help provide stakeholders with a greater sense of connectedness to the leadership team and the entire district. This leadership team includes all building principals, department heads, and others in leadership positions in the school system.
The ever-growing usage of web 2.0 tools is transforming the way parents and students access information. Widespread internet usage has caused an increased reliance on tapping into such internet tools as twitter, podcasts, and blogs.
The main purpose of this project will focus on establishing/increasing the use of blogs at all levels of administration in our school system. This will in turn, will result in an increase in the use and access of blogs and other web 2.0 tools by teachers, parents and students. These tools will then result in providing stakeholders additional avenues of staying connected with the goals and objectives of the school system.


PROBLEM STATEMENT:
One major challenge of meeting the goal of this project is ensuring that all administrators have easy access to the tools needed to set up, maintain, and monitor blogs.  The Technology Department Supervisor and school-level technology facilitators will be important resources in helping make such tools available to school leaders.
Another challenge is providing administrators time during the school year to receive technical assistance with establishing blogs. District leadership must make the establishment of blogs a top priority and work to set aside time for professional development for administrators during their work day. If they are all told to ”Wing It Alone”, overall involvement the project will be diminished considerably.


As administrators establish blogs and start receiving feedback from students, parents, and other community members, they will become the “Cheerleaders” of such increased usage of blogs and other web 2.0 tools.


PROJECT OBJECTIVES:

1.      All members of the district level leadership team will establish their own blog with special consideration being given to each member’s main area of supervision.

2.      All members of the district level leadership team will use blogs to send/receive information on the internet and actively engage stakeholders in this process.

3.      District leaders will work with other school administrators and teachers in establishing blogs and promote online interactions with parents and students.

The creation, maintenance, and monitoring of blogs will increase overall use of blogs and other web 2.0 tools by various stakeholders. Users will become will become more empowered and connected to the system because of their ability to give an receive feedback. They will not be limited to one-on-one phone conversions or face-to-face conferences to in order to achieve purposeful and productive interactions with school employees.


In addition, bloggers will begin to access other web 2.0 tools such as Google and Twitter as means of gaining and maintaining access to blogs.


PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION AND MANAGEMENT PLAN
The initial phase of the project will begin with discussing the importance of blogging with school leaders. A meeting will be scheduled with all district leadership team members to review the benefits of blogs. At this time, a whole-group presentation will be shown to the leadership team. This presentation will include several examples of existing blogs. This meeting should be held shortly before or after the opening of the upcoming school year.


The technology facilitator for the school system (or designee) will lead a whole-group on-line demonstration of setting up a blog. Each leader, in turn, will set up his/her blog as part of this session.
Leaders will be asked to post and encourage students, parents, and other stakeholders to follow their blogs. It will be impressed to leaders that these groups will be the prime beneficiaries of their efforts.
A follow-up district level meeting will be scheduled within a month to allow leaders to report on the status of their blogs.


The head of the technology department will serve as the main facilitator throughout the duration of the project. However, each school will appointment a building facilitator that will work hand-in hand with the district level technology team to help keep the blogs up and running.
After the first follow-up meeting, the district leadership team will now encourage teachers (via the building level administrators) to start their own blogs.


PROJECT MONITORING AND EVALUATION:
The project will be monitored with the help of the district technology facilitator. Each member of the district level leadership team will be asked to give a report/summary of their blogging activity at each district level meeting. School leaders will also be asked to give feedback on student or parent  postings to their blogs.


DOCUMENTATION AND SHARING RESULTS :
District leaders will be asked to bring printed copies of postings that they send and receive. The district technology facilitator will work with school facilitators to keep track of blogging activity at each school.
I will use the above-mentioned data to publicize blogging activity to our local newspapers.  Building principals will also be strongly encouraged  to share blogging posts and activity at staff meetings and at PTO/PTA functions. 


PROJECT BUDGET:
At this point, there are no incurred costs with initial implementation of this project. Our school system already has purchased all of the necessary site licenses and hardware to access all required sites to begin the blogs.



1044 E. Andrews Ave.

Ozark Al 36360

Click here to download action plan

My Ever-Growing PLN

When I started this class several weeks ago, my primary tools for communicating with colleagues were the phone and email. While I will still relay on these modes of communications on a daily basis, I now will incorporate RSS feeds, Twitter, blogs, and podcasts into my "Toolbag of methods of sending and receiving information. I have a new network of colleagues (my elearning classmates) that I can continue to exchange thoughts and ideas with after this class is completed. The new tools that we have used in this class have made my task of connecting with others outside of my work environment much easier. During the past two weeks, I have connected with someone who shares my love of science fiction via my Twitter account. I have had several people comment on the blog that I posted on my facebook account.

I now have the knowledge and confidence to use these new tools. I will begin to schedule time to use these tools on a daily/weekly basis. For me, the critical time for ensuring that my PLN continues to grow is in the first few weeks after this class is completed. For me, I need to continue using these web 2.0 tools to help them become habit-forming. How many of us have attended a workshop, conference or in-service and was so excited about implementing new ideas or programs into our schools or our work habits only to fall back into our old ways of doing things once we returned to our daily work environments? We all have been excited (at least I hope we all have!) at some point in our careers about integrating new ideas or initiatives into our school systems or our daily work routines.

In order to prevent my pre-existing, established methods of sending and receiving information to again dominate how I do my job, I am going to make myself start using some of these tools to comminute with colleagues, parents, and students. I am already making plans to use my blog as a form of "Internet Newsletter for my department. I have already created a podcast that I posted to help explain to parents why we are creating new bus routes this year.

I think the best way to encourage my administrative colleagues is to model and promote my own use of these tools. I plan on sharing my use of these tools with them at district leadership meetings. I also think another way to motivate them is to sit down with them and create! One-on-one sessions with collegues are a great way to get tem started. LCD projectors and smart boards now make it possible to plan on-line demonstrations with small or large groups.

Lastly, I think creating a kind of "Professional Jealously" among colleagues can be a very strong motivator to encourage them to use web 2.0 tools. They must see how the use of such tools is making a positive difference in how I perform my administrative duties. Therefore, it will be my job to use these tools and create a new "Internet Buzz" in our school system and community at large.

howard's channel - talking about networking class, howard harrison, pod cast, state of alabama, relevancy | ipadio | Talk to your World

howard's channel - talking about networking class, howard harrison, pod cast, state of alabama, relevancy | ipadio | Talk to your World

First Blog

I am very excited about starting my blog. I have heard about blogging and other means of communicating with a wide audience on a regular basis. The world is so fast-paced that is is becoming harder and harder to establish and maintain relationships outside of our physical work or church environments.

I look forward to blogging as a way to let a wide range of people (outside of my normal circle of contacts) that I am here and that there are other people who have similar thoughts, dreams and passions.  I also look forward to connecting to those who have different views and life experiences that I can learn from.

I also look forward to increasing my PLN through blogging because it seems to be a easy and convenient way to share and express ideas with other educational leaders. I look forword to expanding my knowedgle base in a many areas of education and life in general.