NexTech News, Edition 1 Welcome to the first edition of NexTech News. This publication will run monthly, to keep NVUSD NexTech participants up to dat
NexTech News, Edition 1
Welcome to the first edition of NexTech News. This publication will run monthly, to keep NVUSD NexTech participants up to date about the goings-on with the NVUSD New Tech expansion. Our NVUSD PBL coaches, Lisa Anderson (Elementary) and Kate Gauger (Secondary) have made their rounds and introduced themselves. You may also have met our New Tech Coaches, Stacey Lopaz (Elementary) and Zach Powers (Secondary). And I'm Sarah Williams, NexTech Project Manger. I'm thrilled to be working on this one-of-a kind collaboration between NVUSD, NapaLearns, and New Tech Network, to bring 21st Century Learning to our schools. This month's edition is full of information regarding NexTech Schools. If you want more information about the NVUSD NexTech Project, be sure to visit our website.
NexTech is the name of the project involving 10 schools (NTHS, ACHS, ACMS, River, RMS, SMS, CO, DW, NJ and YV) spanning grades Kindergarten through 12th grade, implementing the New Tech Model; PBL, Tech-Infused Instruction, Culture of Responsibility and Trust. The project's scope, 3 years, includes building a template for PBL implementation, which can one day, be used district-wide.
NexTech Parent Ed
We had a lovely gathering at American Canyon High last Wednesday evening, to inform parents of the NexTech project and to allow for some questions and answers. Thanks to Barb Nemko (NCOE Superintendent), Patrick Sweeney (NVUSD Superintendent), Maren Rocca-Hunt and Mark Morrison (NVUSD Elementary and Secondary Directors), Laura Ryan (NVUSD Administrator of Interventions) Peg Maddocks (Executive Director NapaLearns), Megan Pacheco (Senior Director of New Schools Development, New Tech Network), and Principals; Donna Drago (Napa Junction), Marilyn Abelon (Donaldson Way), Troy Knox (Canyon Oaks) who were all in attendance and helped to make the evening a learning opportunity for our stakeholders. If your school is planning a parent orientation, feel free to contact NexTech Project Manager, Sarah Williams, for some support.
Working closely with New Tech Network, a set of year-long benchmarks have been developed to help guide our implementation of the New Tech model at all NexTech schools. These benchmarks will be reviewed often by partners and participants, as a means of progress monitoring toward end-of-year goals. Clear milestones for how we're making systemic progress toward New Tech designs will keep us busy, but the pay-off will be sweet, indeed. Take a look and see how your school is doing so far.
We have already engaged in our first round of internal learning walks at both elementary and secondary levels. These learning walks provide observers with the context for implementing best-practices in Project-Based Learning (PBL), as well as an important opportunity to leverage new knowledge in site-based PLCs . A big thanks to all the teachers for the generous invitations to visit their classrooms. For a quick look at PBL best-practices, check out the New Tech Network PBL Checklist.
Last year, NVUSD and its partners, established PBL school tours; called Transformational Learning Walks, in order to provide outside entities an opportunity to observe and learn from the ongoing work of NVUSD educators implementing PBL. The purpose of these learning walks is many fold; first, they create a pre-arranged time for outsiders to witness PBL, thus minimizing the impact these observations have on NVUSD schools. They also provide an important data-gathering and feedback opportunity for our teachers and administrators, who are working so hard to implement PBL best-practices. Finally, they provide an important funding stream to the schools being observed. Each participant is charged $121 per visit, money that goes back to the schools, and supports the cost of the tours. For these reasons, each participating school is encouraged to use these pre-arranged dates for tours, rather than scheduling them independently. New this year, is the tiered scheduling for school tours, allowing participants to select either K-5, K-8 or K-12 Learning Walks. This new scheduling will give participants options to view those grades they are most interested in and allow for more tailored visits.
The following dates represent the schedule of Transformational Learning Walks for the 2013-2014 school year;
Oct. 18th, Dec. 6th, Jan. 31st, Feb. 28th, April 11th, and May 16th.
If you have any questions about NVUSD Transformational Learning Walks, or would like to participate in one, feel free to contact NexTech Project Manager, Sarah Williams or follow the link to book your spot
Our partners at NapaLearns, have developed a program for helping teachers get expert knowledge to develop powerful projects. This program, called Partners for Projects, began with an interest to develop panels for student project reviews, and has grown into a database of local professionals who are ready to contribute to project-development. For more information about Partners for Projects, be sure to see the flyer below.
Our very own, Sergio Villegas, has done a wonderful job of supporting many of our middle school teachers with Chromebooks and Google Apps implementations, as well as ECHO support, in his new role with NapaLearns. He is more than willing to come provide support to all NexTech teachers, in order to bring tech-infused instruction to life in the classroom. If it's tech support you need, just ask Coach V.
