RTT/Fall 2010 Roadmap

Advisor meetings

• Discuss project with disciplinary advisor, Wellesley education professor Ken Hawes, at least every other week. There should be a minimum of 3 in-person meetings with additional feedback provided over the phone and via email.

Progress

• Found WikiEducator as a final home for the project documentation
• Interviewed 5 people from 4 organizations and posted notes to the wiki
• Identified a number of books, articles, and training materials to use as sources
• Read some of these resources and posted summary/reflections to the wiki
• Created a list of attributes of good RTT programs
• Recruited a group of Olin students to participate in my RTT course
• Developed most of the Olin course
• Generated a guide to accompany the list of attributes/core components of effective programs
• Began reorganizing sources into two categories: useful background for designing an RTT program, and helpful resources to use within an RTT program
• Reorganized homepage to better communicate the purpose of the project and create a clear path to outside involvement
• Scheduled all five sessions of the Olin RTT class, taught most of the sessions thus far

Phases of work

Phase one (4 weeks, 9/1-9/28): proposal refinement, materials acquisition, preliminary interviews, community building

• Email 1-2 people from each of 5-8 organizations that have gone through rapid teacher training.
• Create the proposal deliverable.
• Find an appropriate wiki to post my proposal and progress.
• Do initial round of interviews and post a summary of each interview on the wiki.
• Obtain samples of training materials for different rapid teacher training programs. Review them and post a short (half page) response to each set on the wiki.
• Purchase or borrow five of the top books recommended in the training programs.
• Target initial interviewees and their networks, as well as other users on the shared wiki host, to act as a community of contributors, editors, and reviewers for the project.

Phase two (2 weeks, 9/29-10/12): completing research

• Continue conducting interviews to reach up to five different programs. Obtain at least a sampling of training materials from programs/individuals willing to share. Post interview summaries and reflections on materials to the wiki.
• Read a few chapters of each of the top three to five books used in training programs. Write a short (half page) response to the excerpts of each book and post on the wiki.
• Create a list of the key evaluation criteria to compare the RTTs under study. If possible, use research or interview anecdotes to support these criteria.

Phase three (3 weeks, 10/13-10/29): identifying program strengths, constructing a course

• Use the criteria generated to rank the core components of each program against each other for a given teaching context. Select a core set of modules to use in the teacher prep course for Olin students.
• Expand the selected modules to fill the 6 week course outline and develop a syllabus. This should be detailed enough to concisely explain the course to another person, but does not need to include lesson plans or detailed class plans yet.
• Recruit a sampling of Olin students and interested parties online to take my teacher prep course.
• Be prepared to teach a class online starting Oct 29th – specifically the first week curriculum and materials developed must be ready to use. The first week lesson plans need to be completed.

Phase four (5 weeks, 10/30-12/7): teaching and revising my teacher prep course

• Develop the detailed lesson plan and course materials needed for the Olin course at least one week in advance of when it will be taught.
• Recruit guest experts (primarily interviewees) to join me as a co-teacher during the week their strongest content area is being discussed.
• Revise each lesson plan after teaching it based on feedback from the class and the guest teachers.
• Continue to encourage community participation through small task delegation in areas of people’s interests, especially with the Olin students.

Phase five (2 weeks, 12/8-12/22): finish class, presentation, and sharing

• Announce the final output of the course on the wiki to everyone I worked with – encourage this to be an ongoing design process as people continue to use and adapt the materials.
• Create a presentation to be used in class and at EXPO, give the presentations, record the presentation online (including the pitch “you can contribute to its ongoing development!”).

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