Amanda+Schloesser's+NLI11+Teacher+Leadership+Plan

Since I am not currently teaching in a school (I tutor reading part time) my plan includes the creation of a wiki presentation site. This site will be something that I can share with fellow tutors, and colleagues who are currently working in schools, home-school teachers, as well as peers who are still completing their degree programs. I plan to use existing network contacts to distribute the link for this wiki. I can email the link to my cohort from the reading clinical sequence at NCSU this past year, as well as to teachers that I have maintained contact with in the various schools that I have worked in. It will be open for anyone to view, however in order to post comments and questions, the users will have to register an account. Since so many sites already exist that go into great detail about many “Cool tools” for the classroom, I will simply list a few of my favorites, in addition to some of the links that we received this week from NLI presenters. The specifics that I would like to share are the use of Voki and Xtranormal for making brief web videos, how to use Prezi to make more engaging presentations when the situation warrants it and also some ideas for “Flipping” the classroom using handheld video recorders. In particular I want to tie the use of these tech tools to specific literacy instruction. For example, using Voki to discuss and explore characterization, book talks/recommendations using the video cameras, and using Prezi to display word families and relationships such as word roots. Many of our presenters this week have gone to great effort to create simple digital tutorials for web 2.0 tools that I feel everyone should benefit from so I would like to link those as well. I will have a page that discusses the merits of the PBI process along with containing links to some of my colleagues work samples. This page will feature a wikichat so that viewers can ask questions specific to the PBI process and implementation in their classroom. It is important that teachers realize that in order to effectively utilize the PBI process they do have to create an atmosphere of collaboration in their classroom. Students and teachers must both be comfortable asking questions of each other and recognize that there is not always an exact endpoint with some inquiry projects. I have always admired class projects that seek to solve a real world problem. Students are often arranged in small teams (3-5 students) and are tasked with coming up with solutions to things like economic issues, environmental issues, and social issues. In these cases there is no right or wrong, only original J. These types of projects are very time consuming but can be extremely valuable experiences for the students. Something that I think ties PBI to literacy beautifully is the use of a Multi-Genre presentation model so I would probably want to link to some info on using those(Don Murray’s book is where I learned about this…it rocks!). They are time consuming to produce but very worth it. This encourages students to think not only of the content that they are discovering, but to think of how to convey their message to diverse audiences. The final feature of this site will be a page devoted entirely to practical ideas for applying the tools and strategies in the various grade levels. This will include any ideas discussed in the institute, as well as have an open comment section for viewers to add their own ideas to the page. This page will be a good way for me to manage the information that I received this week and keep it accessible for whenever I do return to the classroom.