Hi all:

I'm Marifran DeMaine and I'm a high school librarian in Putnam Valley, New York; we're located about an hour north of Manhattan and we're a small (approx. 600 students) suburban district. We're an IB school and in addition to being the school's librarian, I'm also an Extended Essay coordinator and the Turnitin admin for my building.

I've worked in my district for over twenty years and for most of that time, I've been the only librarian. I began my career in the middle school, was moved to the elementary level five years later and spent seven years there before being moved to the high school in 2011. We are also a 1:1 MacBook district and have been for almost two decades. 

We purchased Turnitin as a tool to use with our IB DP candidates with the idea its application would be expanded to the IB Lang/Lit and History classes. With the interruption of the school year, plans did not proceed as we had hoped. Generally, the rollout has been limited and not widely accepted. For our investment, I'd like teachers and students to regard and utilize Turnitin as more than something for the "IB kids," meaning the DP candidates. All of our Grade 11 and 12 students take at least one IB class, so Turnitin should be a tool for at least half the school! I hope with a greater understanding of its application and use, I can market it more effectively to my colleagues.

A favorite movie? Impossible to answer; it might be just a shade easier to answer than asking the title of my favorite book. My most recent favorites are Lucky Grandma and The Booksellers. 

Hi all! Great to see some fellow librarians in here :). I'm a Middle and Upper School librarian at an independent school, The Meadows School, in Las Vegas, NV. I guess I should add that I'm in charge of educational technologies, PD, and I teach filmmaking,  but from the looks of it we all wear many hats at our respective schools. As far as our school in particular, I think we're really fortunate to have a beautiful, well-manicured campus with warm weather almost year-round (not the same as Southern California but it beats the New Hampshire or Upstate NY winters). 

My hope in this course is to learn to be a better Turnitin administrator and advocate. I think my greatest challenge has been finding a way to get our Middle School teachers on board with using Turnitin. They complain about rampant cheating and plagiarism but when we discuss Turnitin, it's like I've just told them they have to watch paint dry. Our high school teachers are mandated to use Turnitin. Regardless, I need a good hook and an easy way to get them excited about Turnitin. I'm also hoping to find a way to make our Canvas integration better since I'm the Canvas administrator as well. 

Favorite movie?! I do love The Princess Bride but this is like asking me what my favorite book is. 

• What is your role in your school/district?
  • I teach DP/IB Psychology and assist with the distance learning program as I was a virtual teacher with Pasco eSchool for several years.  
• Tell us something about the school/district in which you work
  • My school is Carrollwood Day School.  It is an independent school in Tampa, FL. It is an International Baccalaureate program 1-12 grades with PYP, MYP, and DP programmes. 
• Share a broader challenge about sharing your knowledge with the rest of your district, region, or state?
  • It will be something of a challenge as we are a small independent school that is not tied to a local district or the state Department of Education.  However, we are a member of the NAIS and FCIS both of which hold annual conferences and request proposals for educator lead professional development sessions.  
• What do you hope to get from joining the Turnitin Educator Network forum?
  • I hope to learn more about the feedback portion of TurnItIn.  This is underutilized in our school and something that, in light of the recent shift to distance learning, is incredibly important.  
• Couldn't resist: What is your favorite movie?
  • It changes all the time. Whatever touches my heart or makes me think.  

Hi everyone! I am the district Technology coach for Salamanca CCSD in Western NY, We are located on a native American reservation. We have about 30% native and 70% non-native students. We have a high poverty rate and our teachers travel from over an hour away to living right in town. We are really pretty new to Turnitin. For the past 2 years, we have only had our senior English teacher using this tool, but we really want to expand this program's use. I hope to become a solid resource for our teachers.

My favorite movie is the Wizard of OZ!

Hello,

My name is Jennifer Kindig and I teach high school English (9,10, honors) at a small, rural school in northwest Indiana.  It seems as though there are more and more digital resources available lately that are competing for our attention. As time for all is limited, I want to assist fellow teachers at my school with their understanding of turnitin and how it can help them in the classroom.  This is my fourth year as department head and I have teachers who still grade on paper, ones who have google docs shared with them, and those who use turnitin. Favorite movie - Apollo 13.

Looking forward to learning with everyone!

I'm an English teacher, yearbook adviser, soccer coach and more at Oak Hill High School in Wales, ME. I'm also the school's turnitin account administrator.

My school district is highly supportive of technological solutions and has repeatedly put a surprisingly healthy budget behind the initiative to increase technology use in the classroom.

Many of my colleagues are too heavily invested in the google ecosystem to think of adapting their student's workflow...

I hope to understand how to better introduce turnitin to some of my more skeptical colleagues.  Those that I've been able to work with have adopted it pretty readily, but there is a lot of my school that hasn't yet because they think it seems cumbersome...if only they knew how much time they could save and how certain they could be that they have authentic work!

Favorite Movie--that's a tough one...I suppose I'll go with Ferris Bueller's Day Off. 

Hello folks-

My name is Cherith Johnson and I just finished my 19th year of teaching with 15 years in Denver, CO and the last four years in Georgia.  I currently teach IB Psychology and Theory of Knowledge at Decatur High School in Decatur, GA, which is just on the edge of ATL. I am also a member of our Instructional Technology Team and with our Head Librarian provide the majority of the assistance with TII  in my building. We are school-wide IB MYP (9th/10th) and have both CP and DP options (11th/12th). We serve about 1400 students. Students K-8 are 1:1, but when they come to high school we have Chromebook carts for teachers to use for their classes.  Teacher laptops are Macs and we use Google Drive and Gmail district-wide.  

Challenges we have in the building are that we use the LMS ManageBac due to IB and this is where TII is built in, however, more and more teachers are using Google Classroom as it more seamlessly syncs with Google Drive and student Chromebooks in the building.  I have used TII for more than 9 years now and know what a great platform it is, but I would like try to figure out how to improve the effectiveness between the platforms for teachers in my building. I hope the TMA work will help me to train teachers in my building to embrace the many awesome products that TII has, such as Feedback Studio and PeerMark.

Moonstruck and Ferris Bueller's Day Off are two of my favorite movies. 

Hi all! I had the honor of participating in last summer's TMA program and am returning to the cohort this year in a mentor role although I am mostly excited to continue to collaborate and learn from ya'll!

I am both an English teacher and Instructional Coach at El Camino Real Charter High School in Woodland Hills, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. We are a large public charter high school with just under 4,000 students in grades 9-12. We used to be part of LA Unified School District, but since we are a public charter, we are now somewhat our own district and have more autonomy.

I have been teaching teaching English for nine years years; I have taught grades 9-12 at almost every level. I was the department chair for the 28-person English Department for two years, and have been an instructional coach, my true passion, for the past 3.5 years. I work mostly with English teachers, but I also mentor new teachers in all departments and work closely with the coaching team and the technology team. My role, now more than ever, will focus on using technology during distance learning and creating and facilitating PD for the 140+ teachers on my campus.

As you might imagine, there have been many challenges integrating all of these new technologies, getting teachers on board with using them regularly and purposefully, and providing the training and in-class assistance that is necessary to do so well.  With the sudden change to distance learning came even more challenges that I'm sure most of us can relate to. My position as well as our turnitin subscription was up for debate in the past few months. Thankfully both are secure for now since I believe it is more important now than ever before to use the TII suite of tools to not only ensure academic integrity, but to use the instructional tools that allow teachers to give students feedback and assess writing from afar. 

I'm looking forward to working with this new, larger cohort as both an experienced TII user, admin, instructional and tech coach, and TII ally. Please reach out to me if you have any questions or want another perspective :)

All the best, 

Sammy