New Adventures

Wow, this has been a busy summer for me! I finished my principal licensure classes, got married in Mexico (hence the name change to Anna Otto), took the PLACE exam for principals, honeymooned in Poland & Italy, AND got a new job!



The Poudre School District in Fort Collins passed a major bond and a mill levy, allowing them to hire 8 technology TOSA's (Teachers On Special Assignment) and a technology manager. I applied for and was hired as secondary level technology TOSA. What this means it that I will now be working with teachers to help them integrate technology into their curriculum at the middle and high school level.

Although I am very sad to be leaving my current teaching position and all the wonderful teachers and students I have worked with, I am extremely excited about this position and can't wait to begin! I think that this will be an amazing opportunity for me, and with all that extra money coming into the district, the technology in the Poudre District will be unbelievable!

I start August 1st (10 days before the classroom teachers report back for duty). I anticipate that this position will teach me much, and I am looking forward to sharing all I learn with you!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Evaluating Websites

Image
Each Friday, I spend time at the media center of a local high school making myself available to teachers who may need tech help. About a month ago, I was speaking with the school’s librarian and learned that their media center only has one set of encyclopedias available to students. She explained that over the last few years, more and more students have been turning to the Internet for their research needs; very few use the library as a resource for this purpose.  As a “techie,” this was no surprise to me, however, I can’t help but wonder how many teachers take the time to help their students learn how to identify a credible Internet source vs. a biased or hoax site.  Coincidentally, several weeks after my conversation with the librarian, my teammate and I were visiting a middle school in the district and were recruited to teach a lesson on website evaluation. We learned that many teachers are not comfortable with this topic and often don’t consciously know what tactics t
Read more

Happy Digital Learning Day!

Image
In honor of Digital Learning Day, our department ( Instructional Technology and Library Services  in Adams 12 Five Star Schools ) launched new online technology courses for teachers in our district and created a poster explaining digital literacy to display in our schools. Click here to access the PDF version of this poster. Feel free to print it for use in your district/school, but please do not change the poster in any way and leave our Adams 12 logo on it. How are you celebrating Digital Learning Day?
Read more

COPPA - Children's Online Privacy Protection Act

Image
As the school year ramps up, our department has been busy creating a training module on COPPA and protecting students online. This is a module that all teachers in our District will be taking this year (and likely every year going forward), thus denoting a significant shift in our District's messaging about tech integration and student safety. As part of this module, we created a short video using Adobe Voice that explains COPPA. (You can read more about Adobe Voice in my previous post.) Our goal was to help teachers understand COPPA without boring them with a lengthy written explanation. Hopefully, our little video is less dry than the alternatives.... Similar to other districts, ours has struggled in years past with finding a balance between protecting student privacy and empowering teachers to use professional judgement when selecting sites for instructional use and creating student accounts.  This year, the Responsible Use Agreement that is part of our Superintendent&#
Read more