Journal #9
Portable Data Empowers Leaders
By: Mary L. McNabb
This article talks about a training program for administrators called LTF that encourage a leadership infrastructure for school improvement through handheld technology. School administrators face many challenges like the pressure to increase all students’ achievement scores and to create a safe environment for students that promotes learning.
How was the LTF created?
Administrators in Michigan have pulled together in a statewide effort to meet these challenges with the help of technology. Their connecting point is a collaborative leadership development program called LEADing the Future (LTF), funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In 2002, the LTF grant team set out to train at least 80% of the administrators in the state (approximately 4,000) to use a variety of technologies with specific emphasis on four goals aligned with ISTE’s National Educational Technology Standards for Administrators (NETS•A).
Why do we need the LTF?
The LTF team models sophisticated integration of technologies during its face-to-face trainings. Administrators are exposed to a wireless technology infrastructure, handheld computers syncing to laptops, external keyboards, flash drives, secure digital cards, digital cameras, projectors, an audience response system, real-time online surveying with immediate feedback, and specific administrative applications such as the GoLead research channel online, GoLead Newsstand, and an Internet-based administrator learning community. The LTF team also models data collection and analysis processes. For example, as part of the initial training, project facilitators use an online survey service and an audience response system integrated within PowerPoint to demonstrate how to gather realtime data from participants at a meeting and how to access graphed results instantly for data-driven decision making purposes.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Virtual Schooling
Journal # 8
Virtual Schooling
By: Niki Davis and Dale S. Niederhauser
Virtual schooling is where classes in K-12 are offered mostly through digital communication and is being used throughout the United States. It is becoming highly popular at the high school level.
Why do students choose virtual schooling?
Some students choose it because they have the freedom to individually personalize their schooling. Others because they can have access to advance placement options and a flexible time schedule. Virtual schooling requires substantial shifts in teachers’ roles and necessitates distributing responsibilities for providing an educational experience among host school participants and VS providers.
How is virtual schooling used in schools?
The virtual classroom includes a teacher and groups of students who are distributed among two or more distant schools. Rather than meeting in classroom students communicate using the Internet and video conferencing. I have participated in a few online courses and sites like Webct or Blackboard we used as a meeting place where all of our course information was located. WebCT learning management software provided access to a comprehensive set of curriculum materials, including professionally produced content, student-produced resources such as individual Web pages, a course calendar, and a syllabus. Communication tools included asynchronous discussion boards, e-mail, and a drop box for completed assignments.
Virtual Schooling
By: Niki Davis and Dale S. Niederhauser
Virtual schooling is where classes in K-12 are offered mostly through digital communication and is being used throughout the United States. It is becoming highly popular at the high school level.
Why do students choose virtual schooling?
Some students choose it because they have the freedom to individually personalize their schooling. Others because they can have access to advance placement options and a flexible time schedule. Virtual schooling requires substantial shifts in teachers’ roles and necessitates distributing responsibilities for providing an educational experience among host school participants and VS providers.
How is virtual schooling used in schools?
The virtual classroom includes a teacher and groups of students who are distributed among two or more distant schools. Rather than meeting in classroom students communicate using the Internet and video conferencing. I have participated in a few online courses and sites like Webct or Blackboard we used as a meeting place where all of our course information was located. WebCT learning management software provided access to a comprehensive set of curriculum materials, including professionally produced content, student-produced resources such as individual Web pages, a course calendar, and a syllabus. Communication tools included asynchronous discussion boards, e-mail, and a drop box for completed assignments.
Technology and Teacher Retention
Journal # 7
Technology and Teacher Retention
By: Robert Kadel
This article asks what effect does technology have on teacher retention? He answers his question with two questions: “Consider, first, that school districts rich in technology resources and professional development may be quite enticing to teachers, especially those who have recently graduated from technologically driven preservice programs. Teachers want to work in these districts, and once there, they want to stay. On the other hand, consider districts that have technological resources, but no support for teachers to use them. Or consider districts that have only limited or inadequate resources. Would teachers be more likely to leave such places?”
What can be done to use technology professionally in schools?
There is one program that has been successful in intergrading technology approximately into schools. It takes about 2.5 years and has multiple phases:
Planning Phase (spring of school year prior to implementation) this phase will determine site readiness. Administer a teacher technology survey to gauge technology skills, use, knowledge, and attitudes toward its use. Develop an implementation. Select initial mentees Implementation Phase (first school year) One-on-one mentoring of teachers who will then become technology integration mentors themselves. Whole staff workshops, twice per year, to address, among other things, issues raised in the teacher technology survey that needs to be addressed. Online administrative meetings, quarterly, to discuss the administrators’ role in supporting the program. Re-administering the teacher technology survey to determine how much teachers’ knowledge, skills, and so on have changed over the course of one year. Transfer Phase (second school year) Development of a year-two implementation plan, using data collected from the teacher technology survey at the end of year one. Select year-two mentees, to be mentored by those who were mentees in year one. One-on-one mentoring from year one mentees (now the mentors) to year two mentees. And a final administration of the teacher technology survey to gauge growth over the course of the program.
Will this long program do what it needs to to address many of the issues discussed above?
I think that teachers would be turned off by the sound of all of that work, especially ones who had a strong technology background. Some of it seems tedious and I’m not sure how excited teachers would be about having to have a mentor, attend online support meetings and workshops.
Technology and Teacher Retention
By: Robert Kadel
This article asks what effect does technology have on teacher retention? He answers his question with two questions: “Consider, first, that school districts rich in technology resources and professional development may be quite enticing to teachers, especially those who have recently graduated from technologically driven preservice programs. Teachers want to work in these districts, and once there, they want to stay. On the other hand, consider districts that have technological resources, but no support for teachers to use them. Or consider districts that have only limited or inadequate resources. Would teachers be more likely to leave such places?”
What can be done to use technology professionally in schools?
There is one program that has been successful in intergrading technology approximately into schools. It takes about 2.5 years and has multiple phases:
Planning Phase (spring of school year prior to implementation) this phase will determine site readiness. Administer a teacher technology survey to gauge technology skills, use, knowledge, and attitudes toward its use. Develop an implementation. Select initial mentees Implementation Phase (first school year) One-on-one mentoring of teachers who will then become technology integration mentors themselves. Whole staff workshops, twice per year, to address, among other things, issues raised in the teacher technology survey that needs to be addressed. Online administrative meetings, quarterly, to discuss the administrators’ role in supporting the program. Re-administering the teacher technology survey to determine how much teachers’ knowledge, skills, and so on have changed over the course of one year. Transfer Phase (second school year) Development of a year-two implementation plan, using data collected from the teacher technology survey at the end of year one. Select year-two mentees, to be mentored by those who were mentees in year one. One-on-one mentoring from year one mentees (now the mentors) to year two mentees. And a final administration of the teacher technology survey to gauge growth over the course of the program.
Will this long program do what it needs to to address many of the issues discussed above?
I think that teachers would be turned off by the sound of all of that work, especially ones who had a strong technology background. Some of it seems tedious and I’m not sure how excited teachers would be about having to have a mentor, attend online support meetings and workshops.
Social Justice: Choice or Necessity?
Journal #6
Social Justice: Choice or Necessity?
By Colleen Swain and David Edyburn.
This article investigates what social implications are associated with teachers’ decisions to use, or not use, technology to enhance teaching and learning. Little attention is focused on the critical issue associated with the use of instructional technology as a social justice tool.
How is social justice related to technology? David Miller states “Very crudely, I think, we are discussing how the good and bad things in life should be distributed among the members of a human society.” Students today must be technologically fluent and able to use technology to solve problems with various sources of information. Students who are lacking the skills to do these things are at a disadvantage for the rest of their lives. Future education and employment opportunities will be difficult because we live in a technological and information-based society. “In 1992, the U.S. Department of Labor’s SCANS report noted that at least 80% of all jobs in the next two decades would require workers to be technologically fluent. This means if workers are not well prepared in using technology to succeed in the workplace, they will be forced to take low-paying jobs with limited potential for advancement.
What can schools do with limited technology to prepare their students?
There is a resource called the Digital Toolkit Equity Portal and toolkit that has more than 150 strategies and resources for addressing key aspects of the digital divide. Problems like access to hardware, software, digital content and even internet access can be addressed and even solved with this resource. There are computer refurbishment Web sites where schools can obtain computers and also ways to get deeply discounted computers.
There is also a growing collection of free or open source software available.
Educators must search for ways to make instructional technologies accessible in the class and a normal part of the learning process.
Social Justice: Choice or Necessity?
By Colleen Swain and David Edyburn.
This article investigates what social implications are associated with teachers’ decisions to use, or not use, technology to enhance teaching and learning. Little attention is focused on the critical issue associated with the use of instructional technology as a social justice tool.
How is social justice related to technology? David Miller states “Very crudely, I think, we are discussing how the good and bad things in life should be distributed among the members of a human society.” Students today must be technologically fluent and able to use technology to solve problems with various sources of information. Students who are lacking the skills to do these things are at a disadvantage for the rest of their lives. Future education and employment opportunities will be difficult because we live in a technological and information-based society. “In 1992, the U.S. Department of Labor’s SCANS report noted that at least 80% of all jobs in the next two decades would require workers to be technologically fluent. This means if workers are not well prepared in using technology to succeed in the workplace, they will be forced to take low-paying jobs with limited potential for advancement.
What can schools do with limited technology to prepare their students?
There is a resource called the Digital Toolkit Equity Portal and toolkit that has more than 150 strategies and resources for addressing key aspects of the digital divide. Problems like access to hardware, software, digital content and even internet access can be addressed and even solved with this resource. There are computer refurbishment Web sites where schools can obtain computers and also ways to get deeply discounted computers.
There is also a growing collection of free or open source software available.
Educators must search for ways to make instructional technologies accessible in the class and a normal part of the learning process.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)