Tyrone Elementary applied for the Apple TRIG grant in October of 2016, and was notified of its award in November. In December, the Tyrone Trig Team had the first meeting with Apple representatives. We turned a cold December morning into a productive one.
Gabriella Meyers, our Apple Education Executive, started the meeting with a an activity to help focus the team on what we hope to accomplish with the training grant. Each team member used post-it notes and markers to do a "brain dump" on what we would like the classrooms at Tyrone to look and feel like after the training. The post-it notes were then placed on the door, and the teams used an app called "Post-It" to capture the groups post-it notes onto their iPads.
The Teams then worked collaboratively on the devices to sort all of the ideas into groups, and name the groups. We then had a discussion on how the groups looked and what are building needs are. One key concept that stood out to everyone was the idea that we want teachers using technology to teach, not using the technology for activities after the traditional instruction.
We closed with discussions of how the training would look and feel, and started our collaboration on setting goals for the training. The training will start shortly after we come back from the holiday break.