Online Instructional Module Proposal

The light is at the end of the tunnel for an online instructional proposal. It has taken uncountable hours and days to go through the outlines, research, readings, and rewrites. But it seems to be falling into place to reach a solution in regards to the school's instructional staff nearing retirement.

I have a dear friend and colleague, Sharry, with whom many hours have been spent over the years talking about the issues of education, the state of the state, our field - blind and visually impaired - and life in general. We always seem to have the same concern ... what can be done to improve understanding and skill level of our teachers and students. Which is why we have remained actively involved in running staff development at the school for the past18 years.

The online approach to providing instructional training content has floated in and out of these conversations for the past two year. It is very exciting, to have a proposal in the works that can become part of future training approaches. Although, the proposal has been not been shared yet, the ideas evolved by projecting (or is it predicting) what she and others would conceive as workable within the schools environment. So despite the achy back, from sitting at a computer night after night, it will be well worth the effort.

At the same time, I have been in the midst of talks and contracts with the SED tech dept. and a private group for setting up a school and residential network system seperate from our SED network. One that would allow all students to have accounts, as well as upgrading current classroom and dorm computers. Seems like I have done alot of walk throughs to exam each system ... too many times .... to answer questions via email requests. Having seperate network systems will necessitate additional trianing with assitive software use and devices students use. I image more requests will be made for training in their use as well. Regardless, it is all exciting.