What's new with The Stephens Group?

The Stephens Group is organized in teams of professionals working together on different projects. Some of you have asked what the other teams are up to. Below are some of the major projects that different teams have been working on this summer.

Strategic Planning
One team of The Stephens Group works helping school districts with creating their strategic plan for information and technology. This fall we will be working with one district in Wisconsin on designing a needs assessment to be used in the planning. We are also working with four districts in the state on phase two of the planning process in which we help facilitate meetings with stakeholder groups to help determine their vision and develop their action plans. One of the districts we are working with is in phase three of the planning process in which we are developing a draft of a strategic plan from all of the feedback from the planning committee. If your district is interested in creating a strategic plan for information technology, check out our article on Practical Advice for Creating Information Technology Plans.

Professional Development for Teachers
Another team of consultants is working on providing professional development for the West Allis West Milwaukee School District this fall. This will be a combination of voluntary inservices for teachers during the summer on basic computer skills, graduate courses on how to use Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to support instruction and improve professional productivity, and mentoring new instructors from the district. Some of these courses are open to teachers from other districts. Check out our Graduate Courses page for more information.

The Stephens Group will also be providing four one day professional development inservices for library media specialists on integrating technology into the curriculum. The topics will be:

• Using Inspiration to Support Six Trait Writing
• Using Online Tools to Support Six Trait Writing
• Using Digital Media to Support Six Trait Writing
• Using the Microsoft Office Suite to Support Six Trait Writing

Professional Development for Administrative Assistants
Another group of consultants are providing professional development for administrative assistants. This summer and continuing into the fall we have been training administrative assistants on to export information from their student management systems into Access so that information can be queried and presented in reports. Marilyn Kemp has been using her expertise to help The Stephens Group in a new position as an Instructional Designer of these trainings.

Digital Media
The Stephens Group is moving ahead in the area of digital media. In August we will be providing a graduate course in digital media for twenty educators at CESA #7. We are also working on plans to host a digital media conference at the Milwaukee Public Musuem in the summer of 2007. (See our blog posting entitled Think Tank Now Forming.) We will continue to post information about our conference plans on this blog throughout the year.

Grant Evaluation
The Stephens Group is involved in two grant evaluations this year. We are in our second year of evaluating The Schools Around the World Grant, a grant that works to improve teacher assessment practices through a peer review process. We will also be evaluating an E2T2 Grant in which high school students, teachers and library media specialists will work collaboratively on Digital Media projects.