Intentional Follow-Ups and Building Walk-Arounds

You might see one of the Great Prairie tech specialists or coaches walking around your school building, poking away at their iPad as they walk from room to room.  Here's what we're doing...

We have two data-collection tools that we use in schools, and we use them for different puposes.

Intentional Follow-Ups

A screenshot of our Intentional Follow-Ups form

The first is a Google Form that we use to monitor implementation, after a teacher has received a training, participated in a PD session, etc.  The form consists of these questions:

1. What are we following-up on?  (Ex.: interactive whiteboard training, Google Apps training)
2. Is the teacher implementing what they were trained on?  (rated on a scale of 0 to 5)
3. Are the components of successful tech integration present?  (adequate hardware, content [TPACK], access, PD, and tech support)
4. What challenges do the teachers face?
5. What are our next steps?

We use this data to plan for future trainings and support.

Building Walk-Arounds

A screenshot of our Walk-Around eWalk template

The second data collection tool is an eWalk template that we use to improve our services to buildings as a whole.  We call these "walk-arounds," not walk-throughs, to differentiate them from instructional rounds.  The template consists of these questions:

1. What hardware is present?  (we have an extensive checklist of possible hardware that could be in the room)
2. What hardware is being used?  (what is actually being used a the time we're looking in the room)
3. What is the instructional setting?  (teacher-led, student-led, project-based, whole group, small group, or individual/independent)
4. What are the students doing?  What digital content are they accessing, and what tools are they using?
5. Are the students producing and creating, or are they passive and receiving?  (Bloom's taxonomy)

These are pretty broad questions, but the data does give a good overview of how much technology is available for teachers, how it is being used, and at what level.  Again, we use this data to plan for future trainings and support.  And we share this data with districts so that they can plan for future purchases and trainings.