Berrien County Intermediate School District

Name Janine Lim Position Instructional Technology Consultant

Projects/goals for the current school year:

  1. I worked with the social studies consultant to develop a new website called Berrien County Connect that helps teachers and students learn about Berrien County’s history, economy, careers, and more. The three teachers we worked with to create the web adventure received the 1999 Regional Presidential Award for Reading and Technology from the International Reading Association. The web site has had about 2000 hits in the 5 months since it was unveiled. We are working hard to help more teachers use it in their classrooms.
  2. I have polished and refined our course offerings to include more credit courses and those that meet the needs of teachers. One of our more popular courses is called Beginning PCs for Teachers. Maureen Hogue, our Microcomputer Trainer, and I collaborated to create this course.
  3. I have also piloted our first two online classes and plan to expand this next year.
  4. With the new job description including Distance Learning, I’ve been researching and learning more about distance learning and how it applies to our situation. I read a very active listserv on distance education and have been to several meetings to learn about the services various vendors offer for K-12 distance learning.

What improvements do you plan to make on a continuing project?

  1. One of my most popular classes is Classrooms Alive where we teach multimedia in the classroom. I am working on a CD that will complement the class and give teachers access to demos and free copies of software taught in the class.
  2. I have a new group of teachers called the Technology Resource Teachers. We met twice this year and plan to meet twice a year in the future. Many of these teachers participated in last year’s Teachers Helping Teachers project and are now beginning to do their own training in their buildings. I am working on ways to support them in their training. We are bringing in Tom Snyder Productions in August to conduct at Train-the-Trainer workshop for this purpose.
  3. Maureen and I are planning another credit class similar to Classrooms Alive that will focus on Microsoft Office in the classroom and project based learning. We believe this class will be as useful and popular as our Beginning PCs for Teachers class and my Classrooms Alive! class.
  4. I also plan to refine and update our current class offerings to make them more student centered. I believe it will be more helpful to model the problem/project based learning approach in our training so teachers can apply this technique in their classrooms.

What did you do last year that made a difference to our constituents and what evidence do you have to show it was effective? (Maximum two)

  1. My Classroom Resources web site on the ISD server is intended to make it easier for teachers to find materials on the Net for their classrooms. Since July, the hits on the site have increased from 200/week to 900/week. Specific pages, such as the Reference page, are also getting around 800 hits per week, so I know that the districts are using the site in their schools.
  2. Last year I worked with the Teachers Helping Teachers participants to format the Michigan instructional technology benchmarks in an easy to use layout for the classroom. Many schools are using this to plan their technology use and the format will be included on the next Best Practices CD.

What have you done in the past year in your own professional development?

  1. In the summer, I took a four credit Independent Study on Internet in the Curriculum from Andrews University.
  2. In the summer, I did 2.4 SB-CEUs of online training in Collaboration and Intermediate Publishing the Internet from Michigan State University
  3. I attended a workshop on July 21, 1998 from the Bureau of Education & Research titled Making Best Use of the Internet to Enhance Classroom Instruction
  4. I attended a demo sponsored by Ameritech on how distance learning can be used in the classroom.
  5. I attended a distance learning teleconference January 28 hosted by Andrews University.
  6. I subscribe to two useful listservs on Staff Development and Distance Learning. I have learned much from colleagues on the list.
  7. I attended the MACUL Conference in March 1999.
  8. I attended the Connected Classroom Conference in March 1999.
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Last Updated April 11, 2002 | Email me at janine@janinelim.com