There are many timesavers within technological resources.  At my school,  I save time by using email as my primary form of communication with colleagues, administrators and parents.  I do not have a personal phone number or a voicemail box at school because I want to consolidate my communication to emailing.  At Norwich Free Academy, Groupwise is the program used for emailing, scheduling meetings, keeping a calendar, and scheduling certain areas like the computer labs.  Apart from Groupwise, we use Gradequick, which is the best tool for teachers in regards to keeping grades organize (Appendix C).  The software is simple to follow and makes calculating grades very easy by plugging in the information and then the program does the calculating and weighting.

            In regard to collaboration, the curricular unit that I had to create with a group of fellow graduate students in EDU553 during summer 2007 required working together on creating a website in an online classroom (Appendix Q).  Based on our age groups and our concentrations, we divided up topics, so I had to create a powerpoint that focused on the History and Culture of India .  Our completed work was titled Sights and Sounds of India .  Now that I am going to teach World History, I will be able to use some of the information from our created website for my classroom. While it is designed for 6^th graders, it would be a great modification tool for some special education students.   

Otherwise, I work with my colleagues throughout the year at Norwich Free Academy, as Interdisciplinary projects are a requirement of the ninth grade house.  The research projects are an easy way to collaborate, so I have matched up with the English teacher for my research papers so that they can focus on the syntax and grammar, while I can focus on the research and inquiry.  During the summer, I have met with two different curriculum groups.  One of the groups is focusing on creating modifications for the new World History curriculum for ninth grade special education students.  My part is to personalize resources from the textbook’s online resource, McDougal-Littell Classzone, that has multiple graphic organizers, quizzes, additional readings that you can personalize to your own class.  The other curriculum group is redesigning the new 10^th grade reading.

        This year, as part of my Research and Readings course, I designed a portion of our Social Studies department's website to include lesson plans and ideas to encourage teachers to bring their students to our on-campus museum (Appendix T).  Throughout the process, I brought my students to the museum for various projects and assignments and the students expressed real interest in those particular assignment and developed a new appreciation for the museum.  I created this part of the website to make the process of bringing students to the museum much easier for teachers.  At a department meeting, I presented my project to my colleagues to let them know about this new resource.