All good things must come to an end (6th and final blog)

Hello friends!

This will be my final blog for this course.  In this final posting, I'm going to talk about my experience using the webiste, 'CITEd.org'.  Previously, I had never heard of this website.  The premise of this webtool is that it serves as hub for a collection of information that educators will find helpful.  The wealth of this information comes in the form of external articles/papers on other websites. CITEd indicates that the following is its purpose:

"Welcome to the Center for Implementing Technology in Education (CITEd)! CITEd identifies evidence-based practices for integrating instructional technology to support the achievement of all students."

Surprisingly, the most helpful thing that I found about this website wasn't its content, but rather it's design.  I love that it allows educators to create a "toolkit", which is essentially a collection of the resources on the website.  These toolkits can be saved for a later time and even shared with other colleagues.  While this capability is outside the scope of my MMP project for this course, it definitely has my wheels turning for growing my MMP project in the future when I actually implement it in my work professionally.

I also learned another important lesson in viewing CITEd.  Frustratingly, I found that many of the links ("tools") had dead links to them.  This is an inherent problem any time a website links to external sources (and even those that are internal sometimes!).  A great goal to aspire to in managing a website is to frequently check all links to internal and external websites to ensure that they are active and pointing to the correct place.

 Below I'm going to highlight three articles that I found particularly interesting:

A Shift from Paper to Pixels: Database Technology Helps Union City

This article presents a brief case study about Union City, New Jersey's implementation of a district-wide database that allowed them to decentralize several budget tasks and improve overall financial management.

http://www.techlearning.com/leadership/0016/a-shift-from-paper-to-pixels-database-technology-helps-union-city/41511

Asset Management Systems

Asset management systems enable districts to efficiently keep track of their computer equipment. Read this article to learn about asset management systems and how they can help districts save money.

http://www.techlearning.com/product-guide/0071/asset-management-systems/45234

Creating a Tech-Infused Culture

This article provides 22 tips on how to effectively integrate technology into schools and school culture.

http://www.techlearning.com/features/0039/creating-a-tech-infused-culture/45215


The "tools" above would be a in a tool kit that I would use when looking at managing and implementing technology with a school's infrastructure.  Think how wonderful it would be to find even more resources, compile all of these in a tool kit, and share it with all of the administrators and teachers within the school.  This would lead to a better understanding of technology from the bottom up.  This would be very powerful!

Well, while our time together has come to an end, I've greatly enjoyed this series of blogs.  For all of you that have been kind enough to read my ramblings - THANK YOU!

Warmly,

Steve T.