Technology+Leader+and+Facilitator+Standard+III+Reflection

Williamson and Redish outline Standard III: Teaching, Learning, and the Curriculum in Chapter 3 of their 2009 book. They list the duties held by the technology leaders and facilitators in getting teachers and schools to match student access to information and socialization within school to what they achieve out of school so that the digital natives see their school experience as relative to their daily lives. It also creates a school environment where students use their regular accustomed resources to complete their class work rather than unfamiliar materials. Under this standard, technologists must use curriculum plans that maximize student learning through the use of technology. This does not mean incorporating technology for its own sake, but choosing the best form of technology to reach lesson goals. Tasks within this standard include supporting integration of technology productivity tools; supporting the inclusion of communication tools throughout the curriculum; supporting the use of research tools; advocating the integration of problem-solving/decision-making tools; supporting the use of media-based tools such as television, audio, print, media, and graphics; utilize distance learning systems appropriate to a school environment; encourage the use of Web-based authoring tools in the classroom; use adaptive and assistive technology to meet the needs of diverse learners; teach problem-solving skills using technology resources; use methods for teaching technology skills in individual, small group, classroom, and lab settings; align instruction with content and technology standards; and utilize research and trends related to the use of technology in educational curriculum.

My district put an interactive whiteboard in every classroom this year, we were given a one day training on the location of different features of the program used to create the interactive “flipcharts” for classroom instruction. We were also asked to sign up for the support site to give us access to pre-made flipcharts for classroom use. The training was very helpful, but also revealed the complexity of creating a well done flipchart. One of the difficulties of downloading the pre-made ones, is that sometimes things that you didn’t want to move would do so, the training enabled us to understand why this happened. Sometimes people forgot to lock objects in place, learning this let us know we needed to test all the charts completely and make sure the necessary objects were tied down in their place.

In utilizing a student response system to administer a test, I observed first-hand how much more involved the students got in taking the test. They were excited to take the test, and it took longer because they wanted to discuss the answers. A few difficulties arose, partially due to my inexperience, with the format. One class did not get to take the test on the clickers due to an issue getting them set up correctly, but this worked out as it gave me an opportunity to compare the results between the old format and the new on the same exam. Another difficulty is how to have students “correct” their test to improve a failing grade with no paper copy of the exam. The exam utilized the flipchart for the interactive white board and clickers which students used to give answers. The teacher can then save the results at the end of the class period, the spreadsheet documents and scores their answers based on their clicker number. This can greatly speed up grading for the teacher.

I started out the year with the intention of using National Geographic’s ePals program to do cooperative units with classes from around the world. I ran into an issue with finding classes to work with. I did arrange pen pals for my students, but only had minor success with consistent correspondence. I think this was partly due to lack of regular access to computers in the classroom, I will try to implement ePals again next year when we have one-to-one computing in the classroom.

Another use of technology in my classroom this year was having students develop a report on Canada utilizing Photo Story 3. This was much more successful in implementation than the ePals. Students enjoyed hunting for pictures to use to go with their information. They liked adding music to go with their pictures and the movement that Photo Story allowed them to create in the pictures. They also got excited about having their work posted on our class YouTube that I created this year.

Creating the flexible in house professional development opportunity was very interesting. It was determined that it needed to start off on a voluntary basis, so that more reluctant teachers could observe the benefits of the structure. The goal is to enable teachers to create things they need while giving them the necessary time to become proficient with the program. I’ve learned that all such programs will need regular revision in order to meet the needs of the people utilizing it. We have added a component of online training videos as well. This allows teachers further flexibility about when they do their professional development and lets them personalize their instruction to focus on the areas they feel they need the most help in.