Catherine Colagross, Oxford Middle School seventh grade geography teacher, never expected a college course she was teaching would be turned into a grant project. However, just a couple of weeks ago, she received a $1,000 TAPS stipend for the Web Ambassador program.
“I’ve never won a grant before so I’m pretty excited,” said Colagross. “This all began because of a course I was teaching to five of our teachers through Central Michigan University.”
The five Oxford Middle School teachers decided that as a part of the webpage technology course they were taking, they wanted to work on their middle school webpages.
“One of our school’s goals is to improve communication with parents, and the websites help up do that,” explained Colagross.
While working on their projects, the five teachers realized that other staff members may be having similar difficulties or problems with creating the webpages. The “student” teachers wanted to take the skills they had learned and pass them on to others.
“They were so excited about their own webpages, and they wanted to share that,” said Colagross. “They created the ideas and ran with them.”
The teachers had been studying a text by technology training expert James McKenzie. According to McKenzie, the best way to teach technology, or almost any difficult skill or concept, is through mentoring. With this in mind, the teachers decided to create a mentor-based program through which they could assist other middle school teachers with their technical webpage questions.
And hence the Web Ambassadors program was born.
“The five teachers mentored other teachers on how to get their web pages up and running,” said Colagross. “They received credit for the work through CMU. We paired about seven teachers to one. They were responsible then for mentoring those seven teachers.”
When the Web Ambassador’s course began in October, only five percent of the middle school’s teachers had their web pages up and running. After the course completed in December, 95 percent were finished. Thanks to the mentoring structure, the “ambassadors” were able to provide shorter, more focused, one-on-one instruction to the other teachers. The result was a quicker response to the training verses the typical teacher work day topic session.
“I’ve received only positive remarks about this program,” said Colagross. “The principal was happy we accomplished our goal with the webpages so quickly.”
Oxford Schools Technology Assistant Debbie Fox was the first to tell Colagross about the TAPS grants. TAPS (Technology for Authentic Problem Solving) is a joint project between the Michigan Association for Computer Users and the Michigan State University’s Department of Education to find innovative programs in technology preparation for teachers and prospective teachers. The 20 educators selected will each receive a $1,000 stipend and complimentary registration to the 2004 MACUL.
The only requirement for the educators is to allow MSU to video tape their programs in action.
“I applied for the grant so that the five teachers here at the middle school could go to an elementary and be “ambassadors” there,” explained Colagross. “The money will go towards paying the individuals for their time and any equipment we may need in the process.”
Colagross added that she plans to begin searching for possible elementary schools this month, and may even consider holding the program at more than one since “the program branches out very well.” Also, she hopes to start scheduling and pairing the mentors at the school by April.