St.+Andrew,+Newtown

**1. The Problem or Question.**
What is the problem (or opportunity) you wish to address with your project? We want to teach our faculty how to maneuver and utilize WordPress. Describe what you wish to change, for example, aspects of content (e.g. test scores), process (e.g. ability to collaborate), climate (e.g. morale), or tech use (e.g. embedded use of technology in instruction). We want to change the way the teachers at our school inform parents and the community about school and classroom happenings, through the use of technology. We would like the teachers to update their “blog” daily and include pictures and video of students engaged in the learning process.

**2. Objectives and Assessment**
Develop objectives and authentic assessments for determining what you want learners (adults or students) to be able to know and do after the project and how you will determine they have indeed mastered the objectives your project laid out. We want teachers to be able to design their web-pages, to use the blog for students and parents, to add pages to their site, and to add pictures and links. Mastery will be evident through appealing and informative web-pages that stay current. We would like the teachers to encourage the students to blog/comment/question on the teacher website.

** 3. Networked Design **
We will design our project so that participants will share knowledge of WordPress features such as changing themes, inserting photos, text and links, and adding and editing pages. We will ask participants to connect as a group during a PLP led workshop; participants can practice collaborating with each other to make their blogs more visually appealing and user friendly. Teachers at our school will be given administrative status in order to implement these changes in some way.

** 4. Set the Context **
WordPress blogs were added to the Saint Andrew website for educators at the beginning of the 2010-2011 school year. Educators were given a brief tutorial on how to access and minimally utilize these blogs. The PLP team spent time researching WordPress tutorials and investigating WordPress blogs. We spent time updating and improving our educational WordPress blogs.

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: small;">** 5. Proposal **
<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: small; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">The goal of our project is to increase the facility of WordPress use among the 40 educators in our building. Requiring all educators to use WordPress blogs creates a situation in which parents and students can easily access information while allowing for individuality. In addition, investing in WordPress provides us with more readily available technical support.

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: small;">** 6. Evaluation **
<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: small; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">The PLP team will evaluate the effectiveness of this project by polling faculty immediately following the instructional seminar and then again three weeks later. The initial poll questions will focus on intended changes and how well the team presented information; the follow-up poll questions will focus on actual changes achieved and positive responses of faculty members and students.

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: small;">7. Timeline
<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">February, 2011: PLP team meets to become familiar with WordPress features. <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">April, 2011: PLP team provides workshop to faculty and collects initial poll. Video is collected. <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">MAy, 2011: Follow-up poll is distributed and collected. Data is analyzed.

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