Final Course Reflection

When I began this course a month ago, I looked at the title and assumed I would be learning about how to make decisions about teachers’ classrooms, professional development tools and how to run a school where students would learn and grow. While I certainly learned all of this, it wasn’t in the context I expected. What I realized though, is that to meet the needs of the 21^st century learner, teachers and instructional leaders need to perform all their traditional tasks, but find new ways to accomplish them. Oftentimes, integrating technology into our schools’ instructional and procedural systems will help us reach more students and families to ensure that all stakeholders’ needs are being met.

To some extent, I achieved the outcomes I expected. I thought I would learn how to be a strong instructional leader. I anticipated finding out how to create a professional learning community where teachers share ideas and collaborate freely. By completing this course, I thought that I would be on my way to becoming the kind of leader that teachers trust when she provides feedback on their instruction. I didn’t achieve these outcomes in traditional ways. I learned how to create a wiki so that my professional learning community could communicate. I realized that as a digital native, I can go into a teacher’s classroom and provide feedback on his or her use of technology. I’m still unsure of exactly how to build the community and how to create the level of trust I know my school will need, but I do know how to use technology to foster the kind of collaboration I’m looking for.

The objectives of this course clearly relate to my work at school. When I realized what my course would be about, I spoke with one of my students who has traditionally struggled. Isaias was the only student who failed my course last year and is repeating the ninth grade. I talked to him at length about my coursework and asked him a lot of questions along the way. From conversations with him, I ascertained that our teachers do not spend enough time using technology in the classroom. As a grade level chair, I feel responsible for this deficit in my teachers’ practice. I need to lead my team in the use of technology. I should be the one experimenting with new practices and modeling for my team at meetings. This coursework has been meaningful because it means that Isaias and all of my students will have the access to technology that they deserve.

Because I was so motivated by my students’ needs, I have felt very successful in this course. I feel that I have achieved all of the course objectives. Similarly, I found that if I completed the reading and participated in discussions, I was able to easily complete the assignments. Although I found the number of articles and number of discussion posts to be a little overwhelming, I worked hard to ensure that I was posting the quantity needed while retaining quality. More often than not, I believe that I succeeded in posting quality ideas to the discussion board. I felt especially successful in working with STaR charts and other data to ascertain my campus’ technology needs. From here, as I look at the scope of my own professional development, I plan to work on using technology to assess students. I can think of lots of ways to make this happen, I just need to learn a few basic skills to make online assessment possible for my students.

However, I realized that I know more about technology than I thought I did. After reading other people’s stories and comments about the articles, I realized that I’m actually a digital native. I remember when we get our very first computer with internet. I was in the third grade and it was 1991. There were only two people I could e-mail with (two of my dad’s friends from college), but I had e-mail! We had a CD-ROM drive before we ever had a CD player, so I listened to all my music on the computer. I can’t envision a world without e-mail. I don’t know how I would have learned without games like "Mavis-Beacon" and "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?". When my students express a desire to learn “off a screen,” I can sympathize. When Isaias asked me if he could do his homework on soft copy, I told him it was no problem. That’s how I’d prefer to work, too. Being a digital native puts me in a unique position to offer ideas and suggestions to my digital immigrant co-workers. I realized that I need to consider more fully how I’ll broach this subject with my colleagues. Many are very protective of their instructional strategies and are somewhat skeptical of a young teacher coming into their room to offer them feedback on instruction. I’d like to role play some of these conversations with another leader to ensure that I won’t alienate my senior colleagues.

One thing that I’d like to model for my colleagues is the use of blogs in the classroom. I tried to start a classroom blog last year and wasn’t able to maintain it. This year, I want my students to create blogs. Most already know how to create and maintain a blog from their digital publications class. I wouldn’t have to do a lot of teaching up-front, just regular encouragement for students to post. I think that putting the blogs in the hands of my students, making kids producers rather than consumers of the information, will allow my next blogging project to be more effective.

While blogs are excellent for sharing information in a timely manner and encouraging kids to write in short, focused bursts, there are several concerns. First, access is a concern. If I ask my students to blog, I need to ensure that all my students who don’t have internet access at home are able to get to a computer. Equal access is one of the largest challenges. It is also important to protect my students’ identities. People should not be able to find my students’ names or discover personal information about them. Protecting that blog could be a challenge, but there are several options. There are special blogging programs just for schools, there’s intranet, and password protection.

As I continue to develop myself as a leader, I’m looking for opportunities to communicate with my students and their families. I currently use a wiki to communicate with the team that I coach. When we’re going to have an extra practice or an important meeting, I’ll post the information to the wiki. Other students have posted their own study sessions and other helpful information. I love having the wiki for my team and am considering how to integrate it into my classroom.

In the realm of technology, I have a long way to go before I am the kind of leader I want to become. I’m hopeful that I’ll continue to grow in this area to ensure that my school is preparing its students for the 21^st century university experience and the workplaces of the future.

Week 4 Assignment

This is my technology action plan for my week 4 assignment.

Part 1: Development of an organization chart integrating technology

Teachers
Responsible for integrating technology into their lesson plans. Track use of laptops in mobile lab; teacher who has the lab signed out must ensure that all students are using their assigned computer and that computers are returned in the same state in which they were signed out. Also responsible for troubleshooting basic technology challenges in the classroom. Must fill out work orders on SchoolDude for any technology work that they cannot self-correct.

Campus Technologist
Provides professional development for teachers on integrating technology into their classrooms. Can co-teach a lesson on technology with enough notice. Manages our campus IT staff member. Also responsible for managing licensing of software. Ensures that all staff have the proper licenses. Coordinates all-campus updates of staff computers. Contracts out for webpage writing, including our detention management system.

Campus IT
Fulfills work-order requests for teachers who are having computer problems or need something new installed. Also monitors our CPU use to ensure that all computers continue to run smoothly.

Principal
Manages cost of technology. Plans budget. Selects relevant professional development for teachers.

Instructional Coach
Monitors teacher lesson plans and completes teacher observations to ascertain the level of tech integration across campus.

Librarian
Ensures school is abiding by copyright laws. Manages our subscriptions to online resources including Brainpop, EBSCO, Discovery Learning and other databases and research tools.

District IT director
Approves campus budget requests. Advises campus technologist (ours is managed by the principal) in decision making.

Part 2: Professional Development Planning
Using the campus and district improvement plans, and any suggested technology improvements, develop professional development activities that include the following:

• Reference analysis and lessons learned about the technology needs from the Week 3 report;
• Addresses professional development designed to improve the gathering, analysis and use of data from a variety of sources;
• Includes professional development to improve decision making in the integration of technology with instructional and organizational leadership.

Based on the analysis of the STaR chart data and both low and high inference data from teachers, students and staff, IDEA’s greatest area for growth is ensuring that teachers are able to seamlessly integrate technology into their regular lesson plans. We also need to ensure that our students are leaving the K-8 technology program with a core set of basic skills so that when they reach high school, students are able to use technology to learn rather than spending their time using to learn technology.
First and foremost, the principal, grade level chairs, content chairs and instructional coaches should work together to create a list of “technology masters,” teachers who are regularly integrating technology into their lessons and have found that it positively impacts student achievement. These teachers should be identified as models for the rest of our campus. Then, principals should implement an “observation challenge” where teachers are challenged to observe as many of the “technology masters” as they can during a two or three week period. For “credit” teachers could turn in an observation form to their manager. Perhaps at the end of the “observation challenge” there could be a small, motivational prize. This way, teachers would have the motivation to observe those who are moving forward in their technology integration.
Secondly, we should have a “new things in new ways” training where teachers are taught how to create a blog or wiki, to use the Quizzdom system and/or to use the wireless graphing calculator tools. Teachers could self-select so that the professional development would be differentiated. Many teachers don’t need the graphing calculator system or already know how to create a blog, so having a variety of options would ensure quality participation.
Finally, we need to expand the impact of our library. Right now, many teachers do not use the online resources that we have available because they simply do not know how. Kids search Google instead of NetTrekker because that’s how their teachers do it. If we modeled how to use these online resources (like databases and online encyclopedias), students would be able to use them more effectively. We need to start by allowing our librarian to put on a staff training where we all practice using these resources so that teachers feel more confident in sharing them with their students. This is critical as our students struggle with research skills. If teachers had a better command of the library research databases, we could pass those skills along to our students.

Part 3: Evaluation Planning for Action Plan
Evaluation of the technology action plan needs to start with teachers. First, what changes are principals and instructional coaches seeing in the planning phases? When they review teachers’ lesson plans, what are they finding? They should also monitor the sign-out of technology more closely. Who is signing out the mobile labs and quizzdom system? Who is signing up to bring their classes to the library for database training with the librarian? Administrators should monitor these areas to ensure that teachers are making an attempt to integrate technology. This will allow for a quantitative analysis of technology implementation across campus.
This low-inference, quantitative data is not sufficient. In their observations and debriefs, instructional coaches should be looking for and evaluating the quality of technology integration on the campuses. The observations will provide for more subjective data on how comfortable teachers seem with technology. In the corresponding debriefs, coaches should be asking guiding questions around the teachers’ use of technology to ascertain what is holding them back and what tools they need to continue making progress in the area of integrating technology.
The librarian would assess her component by issuing a survey (perhaps through SurveyMonkey—response rates are high when we use this tool) about the number of times teachers have used some of the different data tools. She could also provide low inference data on the number of hits each of those websites have from our IP address.

Star Chart Power Point

This is my STaR Chart Power Point.

Star Chart Power Point

View more presentations from kmprager.

The Long-Range Plan: My Opinion

Part of the Texas Long-Range Technology plan is to create infrastructure for technology. This is a sphere where I've seen a tremendous amount of growth on my own campus as well as in my school system.

Infrastructure for technology means having the appropriate hardware (computers, projectors, document cameras, etc.), as well as the software, networks, and tech support to be able to integrate them into the classroom seamlessly. The area of Infrastructure includes looking at the ratio of students to computers as well as the speed and quality of the internet connection.

In the area of infrastructure, there's been a lot of progress in the last several years. When I was in college, my campus was just beginning to integrate wireless internet, but now it seems crazy that any learning environment wouldn't have wireless. The idea that tech support is supposed to be on hand and ready to help is another relatively new phenomenon. When I started working in schools, tech support came eventually and oftentimes I had to surrender my computer to get the support I needed. We've also seen a lot of changes in what kind of hardware is expected in a 21st century classroom. When we walk into classrooms, we expect to see a projector (not an overhead) and possibly a document camera as well. In some schools, walking in to find a SmartBoard or similar piece of technology is commonplace. Nationally, there's also been growth in the area of one-to-one computing in schools. More and more districts are looking at having a one-to-one ratio so that every child can have constant access to a computer.

One of the trends I see in Infrastructure locally is that money is misallocated. Schools purchase technology so that they have the infrastructure partially in place. The challenge is that the infrastructure cannot stand alone. Use of technology requires leadership and educator development. Without these two components, investing in infrastructure is useless. Nationally, hardware is often seen as a silver bullet. "If we just have these (fill in the blank with technology here) than our students will achieve..." For example, my school purchased several Promethean boards, which are a great piece of technology. However, they were set up on rolling frames with rolling projectors so that throughout a lesson, they would constantly need to be recalibrated, rendering the board practically useless. I went into one teacher's classroom and she was showing a movie on the Promethean. I asked what the connection was between the board and the film and she replied that her pull down screen was broken. A $2,500 screen is what we bought because we didn't have the correct infrastructure to integrate the boards into classrooms.

My challenge for schools as they continue to invest in infrastructure for technology is to consider if the technology is a "best fit" for their campus. Do we have the tech support to help teachers use this technology? Do we have access to the kind of bandwidth that this video streaming repository requires? Do we have the capability to mount our SmartBoards and projectors in classrooms? If the answer to these questions is no, then perhaps the money would be better directed on simpler infrastructure (like improving the network or ensuring that all classrooms have a projector). Otherwise all that fancy technology will just be collecting dust.

Pre-K Technology TEKS

The Pre-Kindergarten guidelines for technology are not so much a set of standards but more a set of suggestions on what young children can do with technology. They go through 5 domains: social and emotional development, language and communication, emergent literacy: reading emergent literacy: writing, and mathematics.

One of the most important skills developed in Pre-Kindergarten is the idea of having a self-concept. If they can express themselves in some way, they're well on their way to being able to express themselves in digital media. I also thought the idea of learning about responsibility was important because as the students grow, they're expected to understand and explain ideas of copyright and source citation. If they've developed a basic moral concept as a young child, the concept of information as property will come much more quickly.

Spiraling or Scaffolding Curriculum

A spiraling curriculum is a curriculum where students have multiple opportunities to demonstrate mastery of knowledge and skills. Good curriculum products are spiraled and scaffolded, both vertically (across grade levels) and within a single course. For example, in my school's social studies curriculum, students have multiple opportunities to demonstrate mastery of map reading. "Map reading" looks different in sixth grade than it does in high school, so the curriculum needs to take that into account, even though the learning goal sounds very similar. Sixth graders are expected to read a map, find the compass rose, use a basic key and answer simple fact questions. My ninth graders use a similar skill set to look at much more complicated maps. Rather than just answering basic questions about maps (which is what our sixth graders do), 9th graders are expected to compare multiple maps of an area to draw conclusions about a place. Obviously, this skill is much more complicated and requires the skills that they learned in sixth grade.

The Technology TEKS are also scaffolded to show mastery of a set of skills over a long period of time. A great example of this is in the TEKS for keyboarding, which are in the Fundamentals strand of the Technology TEKS. The TEKS for kindergarten through fifth grade are the same. The standard explains that students should be using touch-typing and that they should be able to type numbers, letters, symbols and punctuation. The TEKS add a caveat--that the keys being used are "grade-level appropriate." Since most first graders aren't using percents in their math classes, it doesn't make sense that they'd use them in technology. However, they would probably learn how to use the dollar sign as money is common in word problems. This TEK changes a little when you look at the middle school standards (grades 6-8). The middle school students should be doing everything the elementary kids can do, but they should be starting to format their work correctly. The TEKS cite that there should be one space between punctuation and the beginning of the next sentence, they should know how to use smart quotes, and should use the correct dashes and slashes. Without the skills they had learned in elementary school, this simply doesn't make sense. However, in doing this secondary skill, they're continuing to practice the skill they learned in the younger grades.

Long Range Plan Analysis

For my Week 1 Instructional Leadership assignment, I wrote summaries for the different sections of the Texas Long-Range Technology Plan. In looking at my own potential future as a principal, I see the Long-Range Plan as a great guidepost to show what we're supposed to be doing at our campuses technologically. I like the way the work and tasks are delegated to a variety of stakeholders; technology is not just the school's responsibility. It's up to parents, service centers and TEA to respond to campus' technology needs.

One thing that I'll be sure to do is inform parents of their role in our technology plans. I bet if I asked my students' parents, few or none of them would have heard of the Long-Range Plan. Of those few that may have heard it existed, I doubt that anyone would know that they are supposed to play a role in its execution. I would make sure to include parents in conversations about technology so that they can play a role in their students' technology education.

As a school that receives most of its funding through grants, I wondered how my school would fund all of this. I can promise that we don't have enough money to go 1:1 on computers (although teachers are 1:1, so I guess that's a start). To make this plan work, it's going to take more than principals. TEA would have to shift the way that it allocates funds if we're ever going to get the kind access to technology that the Long-Term Plan suggests.

EDLD 5352 Assignment

I just finished taking a (small) battery of assessments on how effectively I use technology in the classroom for my graduate school class on Instructional Leadership. It was really interesting to think about my own technology use in the classroom and try to assess what prevents me from using technology as often as I should.

In thinking about my strengths as a leader in technology, I think the first thing that comes to mind is that I'm willing to take a lot of risks with instruction. If it's research based, I'll give it a whirl. Even if I think a strategy or a piece of technology might not fit in with my style, I'll try it once, or sometimes even twice to make sure it wasn't a fluke. Our school librarian has used me as an example of a teacher who's using digital resources regularly. This risk-taking attitude is one that I could pass along to the staff at my school. Sometimes, we are so focused on what we're trying to do to meet the rigorous demands of our assessments that we forget that we need to meet our students where they are; where they are is the 21st century.

In the assessments, I realized that I'm not particularly good at solving problems using technology. There's a lot of software that I don't know very much about. I was especially humbled by the amount of audio and visual technology that I don't know how to use. I'd love to have my students make movies or videos, but I don't know how to help them troubleshoot if something goes wrong with the technology.

I also realized that some of the challenges I have in using technology are systemic and outside of my control unless I move into a leadership position at my school. There's a massive disparity between the campuses in my district. My school has so many more resources than our sister school in Brownsville and than the new campuses that were launched last fall. Compared to them, we're way ahead of the game.

Still, I think I'd be a more technological teacher if I could count on the technology we have, or at least be able to count on tech support if something went terribly wrong. In the meantime, I realized the importance of creating systems and procedures for technology use in my classroom. I think having procedures would really strengthen my use of the resources that I do have access to.

Assessment

I'm getting a lot of mixed messages about my assessment from the school staff. I'm so confused and frustrated about what they're supposed to be assessed on and how often and how much. Here's a list of the messages I've received:

1. You need to have your kids write at least 4 research papers during the year. They'll be assessed on a district-crafted rubric.

2. Your kids have to take a multiple choice final exam for which you are held accountable.

3. Your kids have to take a multiple choice exam from the state, but it's new so there's no
blueprint and we have no idea what will be on it.

4. Your kids all have to pass the class.

5. Your kids need to be writing document based question short answer essays on each of 4
quarterly exams, the bulk of which are multiple choice.

6. Your kids need to be assessed every day on the material you teach.

7. Each of your units needs to have a non-multiple choice unit assessment--usually some sort of project.

8. By December, you need to have used 4 IB rubrics to assess your students on something.

Some of these can be combined. For example, I can use the IB rubrics to grade some of these mysterious unit assessments. But still....8 (or 7) different SUMMATIVE assessments? You've got to be kidding me. There's NO WAY I can adequately prepare my kids for all of those. Something is going to have to go by the wayside.

And honestly, I understand why teachers put off research and writing so much. No one comes to you from the district and asks you how your kids did on their research papers. No--they ask about the multiple choice assessments.

Yesterday, my principal came in and told me I was doing a good job. He outlined some positives he's seen in my classroom this year and gave me a couple of suggestions for moving my lowest students forward. I obviously don't suck at my job. But looking at this list of assessments and realizing there's no way I can do it all makes me think that I do.

bibliography lesson

Lesson bombed with a capitol B.

I think if I could boil it down to one key thing, it was planning. The timing didn't make sense. There was too much work for a 70 minute period. And if that weren't enough, I felt like the activities weren't properly scaffolded. When the kids got to the bibliography puzzle section, they didn't use clues, they just tried to fit the puzzle together.

Fortunately, I teach this lesson again next Friday. Here's what I'm going to do:

1. Instead of having them FIND the bibliography pieces, I'm going to have them copy them off of a power point slide. We can come back to "finding" on another day.

2. Get to the puzzle earlier and prep it better. Go whole class with directions so that everyone knows what I want them to do.

3. A clear guided practice where the kids call out what comes next in an entry.

4. Re make the puzzle. Make the cuts cleaner and more obvious. Only 3 entries instead of 4. Also, remake the puzzle with books they're familiar with like Twilight. That way, the kids will already know what's a book and what's an article.

The Point

This blog isn't really designed for other people...although you're welcome to continue reading. I created this blog to help me reflect on my teaching practice, or as Teach for America would say, to "continuously increase effectiveness." I chose the blog format because I do almost everything online anyway, what with my e-mail and Facebook. My hope is that in having this blog, I'll actually reflect on my teaching practice.

I want to start with some vision setting work. I'm working on setting my big goals for the year, crafting an investment plan and working on creating a clear rewards system. I'll post these as I create them. Maybe they'll be helpful to someone out there.

I also want to use this space to reflect on individual lessons. Obviously, I won't be talking about individual students much (for privacy purposes), but I want to reflect on each lesson I teach and think about how it went in terms of execution. Did I leave enough time for the assessment? Did my students practice enough?

100% of what happens in my classroom depends on me--on the culture I set, how I respond to my students, how I treat my students and the quality of the lessons I plan. I hope that this blog helps me plan and execute in a way that leads my students to success.