School Evaluation Summary

I found this assignment provided a great opportunity for me to take a look at the big picture of technology at Pony Elementary School.  There are many aspects of technology that I tend to forget about because they do not directly impact my every day work.  This semester, while learning so many new things about the field of educational technology, it was very easy to find the areas in which the school is struggling.  Through my evaluation, I was able to remind myself that there are also a lot of things going right.

I was not surprised by the results of my evaluation of PES.  Curriculum integration stands out as the biggest issue by far, and I am continually reminded of this in conversations with staff members.  I also would have predicted ahead of time that connectivity is one of the greatest strengths of the school.  I hear other people discuss issues with networks going down, or slow connection speeds, and it is a relief to know that we have a dependable network that works well the majority of the time.  In a non-technology related comment though, I was surprised by some of the demographic information for PES.  I knew there is a high ratio of Caucasian/Native American students, but I didn't realize it is as high as reported.  I also found it interesting that the percentage of students in special education and the gifted and talented program were equal at 5%.

I enjoyed completing the Maturity Model Benchmarks Survey Sheet and compiling the data into the summary for Pony Elementary School.  There is always room for improvement, but in this particular school, there are many technology components that are going well.

Here is a link to my Maturity Model Benchmark Survey Sheet.

Here is a link to my School Evaluation Summary.

Technology Use Planning Overview

Technology Use Planning at a Glance

Technology use planning involves the process of outlining a district's goals for technology integration and utilization.  An effective plan takes a proactive approach in deciding how technology will advance within the term of the plan, but this is not its only intended purpose. An effective technology use plan also explicitly determines how funding for new technology will be acquired and allocated, and perhaps most importantly, how and where technology will be used and integrated.  It may also include how to more efficiently use technologies that are already in place in the system.  Without a well thought-out technology use plan, a district or school may run the risk of resources being used ineffectively, underutilized, or potentially overspending tight budgets on devices and materials that could have been purchased using more efficient methods.

National Education Technology Plan 2010 and Technology Use Planning

The National Education Technology Plan 2010 is a very effective resource for districts to utilize in technology use planning.  In this plan, a model of learning driven by technology is outlined using five essential components.  These components: teaching, learning, assessment, infrastructure, and productivity are a practical place to begin when building the framework for a technology use plan.  Each component of the NETP 2010 is outlined to explain why it is an important component and how technology aids in achievement of goals.  In using the NETP 2010 to assist with the creation of a technology use plan, committees in charge of drafting the document ensure that it is a fully comprehensive plan, and does not neglect to address any critical issues.

Length of Technology Use Plans

I agree with John See's argument that technology use plans should be short term, not long term.  He uses five years as a frame of reference for a long-term plan.  I have been teaching for six years, if I think back to my first year teaching, there are many tools that I am using presently that were not even available to mass market audiences at that time.  The iPad was only a rumored device, and tablets as we now know them were not even on the radar yet.  A plan written at that time would be completely ineffective today.
In my own district, I can think of an example of why long-term planning is ineffective.  Prior to my employment with Colstrip Public Schools, three mobile labs, each containing 30 Neo2 word processors, were purchased for our elementary school.  At the time, staff members were not entrusted with new technology without proper training.  The mobile labs were kept in storage until someone could visit the district to train staff members to use the devices.  It was not until the second year I worked in Colstrip that this training was made available.  We had never seen the devices before, and had six hours of instruction on how to use them.  Everyone was overwhelmed by the amount of information that was made available all at once.  Because of this, the three mobile labs sat unused for another three years.  Last year, I made it my personal mission to familiarize myself with the Neo2 devices.  I was able to use them with my students for basic word processing, as well as a couple of Renaissance Learning programs.  This year, with the introduction of tablets to third, fourth, and fifth grade classrooms, there is no longer a need for the Neo2 devices.  Our new tablets can do everything that a Neo2 can do, and more.  Unfortunately, because the plan for their implementation was spread out so long, they were a greatly underutilized resource that could have been much more effective if staff members had been allowed to use them immediately.

 

Focus of Effective Technology Plans

 In his article, "Developing Effective Technology Plans", See states that the focus of effective technology plans should be based on applications, not technology itself.  In other words, the focus of technology plans should be on what users should be able to do with the technology, rather than the types of technology that should be purchased.  I agree with See in this aspect.  The NETP 2010 essential component of learning outlines how technology should be used to create student-centered learning environments that are highly engaging and formatted to student abilities.  If technology plans are created only planning for the devices that will be used and implemented, it is entirely possible that the purchased equipment will not meet the needs of teachers or students in their learning environments.  As See also states, by thinking about what the desired learning outcome for students will be, it is easier to determine what devices will need to be purchased because certain devices outperform others in different operation aspects.  I also agree with his argument that technology plans should go beyond curriculum enhancement.  In a world where wikis, blogging, and social media are the norm, it seems like a waste of time to spend any amount of time teaching kids to use technology explicitly.  Special programs to teach students keyboarding skills or even word processing skills are an unnecessary use of funds.  By participating in assignments that utilize various types of multimedia as a mode of mastering educational objectives, students will also learn the technical skills that are 'taught' with such programs.

 

Personal Experience with Technology Use Planning

I do not have much experience with technology use planning.  This year, I joined my district's technology committee, hoping to gain some insight into how plans are developed and decisions are made.  We have met as a committee one time, and from what I experienced at the meeting, there is little teamwork happening at this level.  It seems that many decisions are made by a smaller group of individuals on the committee, and then their decisions are shared with everyone else during meetings.  My role on the committee was to report on how the technology that had been purchased over the summer for the elementary school was being used.  Unfortunately, I was not made aware of this before the meeting, so in some aspects I only had my own personal experience to report.  I know that there is a technology use plan of some form in existence for our district, even though I have not actually seen the document.  At the beginning of the year, our technology department reported to staff that the original plan for the district was for students to be learning in a one-to-one environment within three years time. However, because the state of Montana is piloting the Smarter Balanced assessment in the spring of 2014, the technology department expedited the process and purchased enough tablets to create a one-to-one environment for students in grades 3-8.  I am interested to learn how this modification of the district's plan will affect technology use in the future.  

References:

See, J. (1992). Developing effective technology plans. The Computing Teacher, 19(8). Retrieved from http://www.nctp.com/html/john_see.cfm

U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Technology. (2010). Executive summary. In National Education Technology Plan 2010.  Retrieved from http://www.ed.gov/sites/default/files/netp2010.pdf

Digital Divide/Digital Inequality

Here is the link to my digital divide presentation.

I enjoyed the inclusion of my colleagues in this assignment.  Throughout the semester I have discussed many of the topics we have covered in the classes I am taking with my co-workers, but this time their input was a necessity.  To gather information, I created a Google Form and asked anyone who was willing to take the time, to take the survey.  I was not surprised by the results that I collected.  It is very apparent in my school who is comfortable with technology, and who is not.  There is also a group of staff members who feel that showing a reading or math video on a SMART Board is great example of technology integration, and may not even be aware of other uses for the technology we have.  This is not the fault of the teachers themselves, though.  Without a leader to guide the process, they can't be expected to be technology integration professionals.

When I sent out a link to the Google Form I created, explaining the assignment I was working on, one of the administrators in my building asked if I would be willing to share the results at a staff meeting.  I am going to try to meet with my building principal first, so that she is aware of what I will be presenting.  I think that some of the proposals I make in this presentation have the potential to cause some anxiety for some staff members who are resistant to change.  However, I am excited to have the opportunity to discuss digital divide and its relevance to Pine Butte Elementary and hope that this can be the first step to incorporating some change in my school.

Thank you for viewing my presentation, I look forward to any feedback that can be provided.

Tech Trends

This assignment was very interesting to me, because when I first read about open content in the Horizon Report: 2013 K-12 Edition, I thought to myself that there were already ways in which I was utilizing open content resources and hadn't even realized it.  As I progressed through the assignment, I began to think of all of the different components of open content and how many things I use every day that can be considered open content that I didn't realize, our video conferencing system for example.  In some cases the conferencing sessions can be recorded and reviewed at later dates.  I think that open content is a great resource for all levels of education.

You can access my assignment here.

Thank you for taking the time to read my assignment, I look forward to any comments that you may have.

EDTECH Research

This assignment really helped me to reform a lesson idea that I had already started on, but hadn't yet had the opportunity to research and plan it out in its entirety.  Blogging in the classroom is something that I have been very excited about the past few weeks, and have been taking the steps to introduce it to my students.

Last week, I introduced my class to blogging, but I had a difficult time explaining it in terms they understand.  When we received our tablets a few weeks ago, the kids seemed to be under the impression that they could use them to chat back and forth.  Their hope that this would be something they would be allowed to do, combined with my difficulty finding the right explanation, caused them to just interpret blogging as a way of talking back and forth.  I managed to redirect most of them from this mentality, but there are still a few students who just can't wrap their heads around what a blog is.  After researching blog integration for this assignment, I plan on backing things up a few steps and trying the "paper blogs" that Lacina and Griffith mentioned in their article, Blogging as a Means of Crafting Writing.  I think this concrete way of showing the kids what blogging is all about will solidify the purpose of a blog for all of them.  I also am now more comfortable with the idea of letting the kids choose some of their own topics to blog about so that their writing has more meaning to them.  I wasn't sure about how comfortable I was with this notion at first, but the articles I read convinced me otherwise.

In regard to the citations themselves, there were two articles that I could not locate DOIs for.  I used crossref.org, and tried looking up the journals themselves and could not locate any information beyond just URLs.  I did include the DOIs that I could track down, and the URLs for the other articles.  If anyone has advice for how I may track them down, I would really love to know about it!  My hope (and what I had to finally resign myself to) is that they just may not have DOIs assigned to them.

Thank you for reading my post, you can access my research by clicking here.

RSS in Education

I had a huge learning curve to attend to with this particular assignment.  Before we started using RSS a couple of weeks ago, I had heard of the topic, but had never used it.  So, my first challenge was to learn about RSS and what exactly the purpose of it is.  Screen casting is also something that I had never used.  I explored a variety of the free screen casting tools provided to us, and a few of them just wouldn't work on my computer.  One of them worked initially, but then stopped working when I tried to use it a second time.  My frustration level was very high at this point.  Once I settled on Webinaria, I was able to successfully complete my screen casts.

When I first began looking into RSS, I had a hard time grasping its use in my classroom.  I have a group of third graders who are very enthusiastic about technology, but haven't had to use it much for educational purposes.  However, once I began to understand more about RSS feeds, I came up with the idea to use an RSS feed for my class to use in conjunction with their blogs.  One of the challenges we are facing with the Smarter Balanced test coming up in the spring, is the lack of typing skills that the students have at such a young age.  By using the RSS/Blog assignment combination, not only are the students practicing and reinforcing their reading and writing skills, but they will also have more practice with typing out their thoughts.  I am now very enthusiastic about beginning this assignment with my students.

I am glad to have had the opportunity to explore RSS.  It is a convenient and useful tool that I intend to use much more, both personally and professionally, in the future.

Elements of Educational Technology

Please click here to view my Elements of Educational Technology response.

Reading the AECT definition of educational technology and how each element impacts the field as a whole was very interesting to me.  I had to read the entire document a few times and give the content some time to sink in before I was able to think through the information that was actually being presented.

One month ago, prior to beginning this semester's courses, I am realizing that I had only a vague idea of what educational technology is because I was only thinking about it in reference to how it pertains to myself as an educator.  The AECT definition opened my mind to all of the different components of the field of educational techology, and how symbiotic each element really is.  I had never stopped to think how all of the resources I was using in the classroom actually came to be.

Welcome!

Welcome to my EDTECH Learning Log!  This site will serve as a space for me to share experiences and artifacts that I have created as I complete the required courses to obtain my Masters of Educational Technology degree from Boise State University.

I am just beginning my sixth year teaching at Pine Butte Elementary School in Colstrip, Montana.  I taught first grade for four years, and am now starting my second year of third grade.  I have been a technology-integration coach for teachers in my school district for the past three years.  I work with teachers in both formal and informal settings to assist them in using and understanding the technology we are expected to use in our classrooms.  This year, my duties were expanded to training our substitute teachers to use this technology as well.  I will also be conducting training for our district staff on how to effectively utilize interactive whiteboards in their classrooms.  I have taught similar courses at a community college the past two summers, and I am excited to be able to present this information to my co-workers, as many of them have wanted to take the courses I have offered before, and haven't yet been able to do so.

We are in the midst of a huge "technological revolution" of sorts in my district.  This comes in large part, because of changes in state-mandated standardized testing, but also as a reflection of how education is transforming in the 21st century.  In the coming weeks, all students grades 3-12 will have the opportunity to begin learning in a 1-to-1 environment.  I am anxious to see how increased access to technology (in my classroom specifically) will benefit the students.  I think I have decided to pursue a M.E.T. degree at just the right time!

I am enthusiastic about all that I will be learning, creating, and sharing throughout the next two years as a student in the EDTECH program at BSU.  Please check back to follow my progress and offer any comments or constructive criticism you may have.