Year+3+Coaching+Map

Layout the map and design of the year 3 distance coaching work.

Develop online distance conversations with the coaches

 * Regular with more than just an expectation to show up. (That needs to be understood and not showing up not an option)
 * Very pertinent to their job development
 * Bring ___ in one or twice to develop specific topics
 * Immediate follow-up to a meeting to push the understanding of a topic
 * Small group meetings
 * Collaborate to design trainings
 * Discipline Specific Meetings to support work with coaching teachers

Immediate tools to integrate

 * Ning- to bring them all together
 * Online Conferencing software (voip- voice over internet protocal)- The value of developing our own understanding of this functionality is immeasurable. **We are in the midst of selecting Webex as our software.** Using online conferencing software and getting audience engagement is difficult to do as a stand alone tool. We will need to be very aggressive about getting ourselves up to speed about facilitating in this environment.
 * Webex has several sets of resources available for helping us learn the facilitation skills including:
 * Professional Facilitator as a resource
 * Webex University with self-paced online courses
 * Webex University with real-time online courses
 * We will be requiring each person to fullfil some amount of online training. My recommendations are:
 * Each person attends at least two 'courses' before the middle of August
 * To support that we will go through one of those self-paced courses together for those who want the additional scaffolding
 * Wiki- tool to share information and develop understanding of topics. We have used it primarily as a filing cabinet, but we need to develop it's usage or the usage of blogging to get out coaches reflecting, sharing their thoughts, ideas, and developing their own thinking about coaching. It's year 3 for them, they have a significant amount of experience and we need to be cultivating their understanding of what they can do!
 * I am including my Math Lessons Collaboration blog & wiki in my trainings with schools now, in an attempt to build some extra discussion around literacy in mathematics. Alot of the materials that we have in the Hybrid Algebra Wiki will be included as well as individual activities and structures that include literacy skills.
 * Blogging- See above!
 * RSS- to facilitate end-user functionality, not a sexy application but one that can make keeping track of different things easier.

Topics for development during the upcoming year

 * For obvious reasons we need to develop their understanding literacy technologies and web 2.0 applications.
 * Development of good use of structures in the classroom and coaching to support those structures
 * I'm not the person to be making this list

Thoughts about what to do at the coaches training
Create the understanding of ning, and where to find the videos to access the other tools. They already know how to access the wiki, which will give them a head start. They will all have their laptops that they can take back to the hotel with them. I would think that we give them some assignment to respond to while there.

Create several discussions that are centered on the information presented in the training. We then access the discussions at the training which reinforces the value of the conversation and allows us to answer questions as they arise about how to navigate the ning.