Technology Integration 101 - And We're Off!

I am very privileged to have the opportunity to participate in this course about integrating technology.  While this is the field that I feel most “at home” in, it is also the field that I know there is so much more that I can learn.  Technology is changing so quickly, that some days it feels overwhelming just trying to keep your head above water.  But the reward is so great when you know that you’ve done it right, that it’s worth all the hard work that it takes to get there.

            I have been blessed to work for two districts now as they began their implementation of a 1:1 program with MacBooks.   I was teaching business courses at Wabash City Schools as well as serving as their Technology Integration Specialist during their first year of having the devices in a pilot middle school.  This gave me the dual perspective as a teacher and also technology leader in the district to really get a good grasp on what the challenges are and how to overcome them to make the process a success.  The next year I was offered a position with MSD of Wabash County as an eLearning Coach as they began their 1:1 implementation.  I was able to help them navigate the process as well as provide much of their professional development during their first year.  So this is where I see my strength today.  I am comfortable with sharing what we have done right, as well as some of the mistakes that have been made in order to help others be successful with their implementations.

            I am hoping that throughout this course I can dig a little deeper into some curricular resources and also integrations techniques that have been proven to work with upper high school students.  While these kids are pretty comfortable on their devices, they aren’t always comfortable learning all the tools that I would like for them to use.  And because I’m not teaching in a face to face setting, this is presenting me with some challenges that I don’t always have a good solution for.

The End is Just the Beginning...

Can you tell it's graduation time?  As I peruse though my Facebook wall I see all these sappy posts about graduation.  Parents wondering where the time has went, students enjoying every last minute with their friends, siblings wondering what life will be like without their brother or sister in the house this fall.  Everything is changing.

The world of education is changing.  This years seniors in our district were the first to graduate that were given a MacBook to use throughout the year.  The education that happened in our district this year looked different that many of our teachers could have imagined just a few short years ago.  Change is here.  Change will now be constant.  Change is our new way of life.

When I volunteered to take this course just a few short months ago I had no idea how important it was going to end up being.  A few weeks after I signed up I was told that I would be facilitating our districts first online professional development course.  So the first day of my class about online teaching, was my first day teaching an online class!  So the timing wasn't ideal, but that's how those things go.  And since then, I have found out that I will have the opportunity to teach an online class next year for seniors, as well as continue my eLearning Coach position with an emphasis on helping out the other teachers that are doing online and blended courses.

So the content in this course has been very valuable to me right where I am today, as well as looking toward the future.  While I have taken many online courses over the past 10 years, I hadn't ever really put much thought into how to design a course.  So even the most basic information that was given was very enlightening and will help me be a better educator as I enter the next school year.

The other part of this learning process that I loved was the ability to use many of the tools that I tell teachers about all the time, from the student perspective.  As the "tech person," I'm constantly finding tools and showing teachers how to set them up and use them. But to actually get to use them myself to create or complete an assignment was a great opportunity.

So now summer is here, and the sappy graduation posts will subside soon enough.  However, the teachers know that even summer "vacation" is full of planning for the next year.  So here I go!  The end of this course is just the beginning of my planning time.  And I'm so grateful to have this new knowledge and set of tools to use along the way!

Tweet Tweet!

Social media is everywhere.  Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Vine, Instagram, and others are changing the way we communicate and share our lives with others.  Sometimes I can hardly remember what I did with all my free time before I jumped on the social media bandwagon!  And while there is a part of me that doesn't like that it has taken away from the more personal forms of communication, I honestly don't want to imagine my life without it.  Facebook, in particular, gives me the opportunity to stay connected to a lot of people that I would lose touch with without it.

So how do I feel about it being in the classroom?  It's clearly already there, so why not use it to our advantage!  I don't care how diligent you are about monitoring your students, they will find a way to check their newsfeed if they want to.  They will tweet during class, or post a picture to Instagram and you will never even know.  This is how they live.  It is part of who they are.  And I am a believer in making connections by meeting them where they are.  Because the more "at home" they feel in the classroom, the more learning they are going to do.

However, I will not turn a blind eye to the potential risks that are involved.  Anytime that teachers "open" their classrooms to the outside world they are letting go of a bit of control.  And also when teaches connect with students through social media there may need to be very rigid guidelines to the types of communications that take place.  There may be problems that arise along the way, but I believe if it is done correctly and with some common sense guidelines, it can be a very powerful tool.

A Whole New World of Organization

If you walk into my home, it wouldn't take you long to know that organization is not one of my strong points.  My poor husband tries to help by picking up the clutter around the house and finding a home for it (many times his "home" ends up being the trash can), but much to his dismay, his need to organize hasn't rubbed off on me much in the last 10 years.  I have a lot of stuff, and tend to accumulate more stuff all the time.  I will even admit that from time to time I will watch an episode or two of Hoarders, just to make myself feel a bit better :)

However, when it comes to my digital life, I attempt to do a better job of organizing my "stuff."  Social media is constantly feeding me a stream of information and resources that even though I might not need them today, I see that there is a potential need for them in my future.  So, how to I keep it all straight?

Up until today, I have used Pinterest as a holding pen for all of my professional development information that I find interesting and useful.  I like that I can "pin it" and know that it will be there for me in the future.   I have built a library of resources there that I can pull from quickly which I love.

I am also really liking a new tool that I just tried today which is called Scoop.it.  This is another tool that can be used to curate information about any topic.  What I think is great about it is that you can just give it a few key words and it begins to feed you information that it thinks you would find helpful.  The suggested articles and pages that it brought up for me were fantastic.  Literally within a few minutes I had the beginnings of a library of resources on educational technology and professional development.  So this new tool is quickly becoming a favorite of mine and I think I'll be using it quite frequently in the future.

Points to Ponder...

This course has given me lots of things to think about.  As this year is coming to an end, I have been working through my first experience with conducting PD online.  While in some ways it went very well, other parts weren't as successful.  This course has given me tools to use as I've been reflecting on my experience to help make it better in the future.

I've also been given the task of working with other teachers next year that will be teaching blended courses for the first time.  I was very excited to see some of the resources at the beginning of the course that will be helpful to them as they start this new adventure.  While some of them may be very tech savvy, others will be overwhelmed with all that an online course requires.  So having resources available to help them create a framework for their course will be crucial to their success.

And personally, I have really enjoyed the authentic assessment module of the course.  This is something that I am very interested in and think is a very valuable asset to any classroom.  So the better I can understand it, the better I will be able to assist other teachers in using it in their classrooms.

Technology Integration Matrix

This year is my first year out of the classroom.  While I do love my new position as an eLearning Coach, reflecting on this matrix and the things that I used to do in my classroom has made me really miss it.  When I was in my classroom I was always very excited to try new things, to think outside the box, and then I would reflect on what worked and what didn't and move on.  This year my role is to help move other teachers forward in their integration of technology, and not all of them are so enthusiastic.

When I looked at the matrix and reflected on where I was last year when I was in the classroom, I think I would have to say I was somewhere between infusion and transformation.  We were in our first year of our 1:1 initiative so each student had their own MacBook.  I was teaching Careers and Finance to 7th and 8th graders and was constantly trying out new things.

A couple of the most successful project that I did were in my 7th grade Careers class.  The first project was covering the content about resume writing and interview skills.  I had students grouped together in teams, and each of them had a topic to cover.  They were given the task of creating a video for an employment agency.  The video was meant to be used for people coming into the agency seeking help with resume writing, interview, or whatever their topic was.  I gave them a rubric and that was it.  They had to do the research to learn about their topic, and then find a creative way to create the educational video.  The students were engaged and learned so much.  They were given the freedom to make choices and were allowed to prove their learning in a creative way.

The other project that I loved was the Career Mentor project.  This was an ongoing project throughout the entire semester.  During the first week of classes, students would let me know what type of career they were most interested in.  Using that information, I matched them up with a professional from our community that would become their Career Mentor.  Each week the student would email their mentor questions that they came up with about the topics we were discussing in class.  The mentors then would email them their responses and we would use those to drive our classroom discussions.  Towards the end of the semester each student went to spend a half day with their mentor and then their final was to create a multimedia presentation about their experiences.  Again, the students learned so much and made real world connections to the things that we were learning in class.  They were given ownership of their learning and enjoyed the "grown up" opportunities to communicate and interact with professionals in our community.

These are the types of learning experiences that I want classrooms to be filled with.  When the correct technology is in place, students shouldn't be hindered by the buildings that they are in.  They should be collecting information, communicating it to the outside world, and collaborating with others to become better.

While I am proud of what I did, I know there is still a long way to go.  And in my current role, my focus has to be on helping others create these types of experiences for their students.  So my goal is to start giving more concrete examples to my teachers.  We have talked about the SAMR model, but I'm not sure they really understand what it looks like in their classrooms.  We are nearing the end of our first year with the 1:1 technology, so we need to be moving forward at a steady pace.

Breaking Down the Barriers

I am so excited about the opportunities that students are going to have with the introduction of Online and Blended learning at the high school level.  For years I have taught and worked in small districts that worked hard to give students as many opportunities as possible, but in my opinion, still came up short.  Small schools have their benefits, don't get me wrong, but they also are very limiting when it comes to academic variety.  Many times there would not be enough interest in a course to have it offered.  This was a barrier to students being able to learn about things such as Marketing, Computer Programing, higher level sciences, or maybe even foreign languages for example.  However, with distance learning this barrier can be removed.  Distance education would give us the ability to offer one section of a course online and have students from multiple schools participating with the same teacher.  So if there were 3 students at one school that were interested, and 7 at another, then you would be able to offer it to the 10 students.  This will begin to give curricular options to these students of smaller schools that they haven't had access to before.

Another exciting aspect of this new learning method is it's ability to make flexible scheduling a reality.  The traditional 8am to 3pm school day doesn't work well for many of todays high school students.  Some need to be at work to help support their families.  Others want to be getting on the job experience or volunteering to help them to grow as individuals and learn about their interests.  And some may not be physically well enough to participate in the traditional school setting. All of these situations that used to be a barrier for students wanting to get a Core 40 diploma or Honors diploma, now can be handled much more easily with the addition of online classes.  Student can log into these courses when it's convenient for them and complete their assignments.  The content is available for them when they need it, and the communication takes place via email at the convenience of the student and teacher.  

I am excited.  I'm excited to be able to provide students with the best curriculum possible.  I'm excited to see students be as successful as they can possibly be no matter what their circumstances.  And I'm excited to be a part of this new endeavor that will forever change the way our children will be educated here in Wabash County.