Final Reflection

PART I: What did you learn?

Throughout this course I picked up several new ideas that I can bring back to my classroom. In my midterm podcast, I mentioned Google Plus, Google Drive, and digital portfolios as key takeaways for the upcoming school year. I also discussed my interest in continuing the conversations with our IT Department to develop a digital citizenship course for incoming seventh and ninth graders or possibly integrating it into all grade levels. Since that time, the following topics stood out and are immediately applicable:

• Digital storytelling has appeal to students of all learning styles. I have often used video clips or short films as supplementary materials and students will be highly engaged with opportunity to create their own video to demonstrate their learning.
• Web quests present students the opportunity to use a variety of digital resources. Students will have the opportunity to research, collaborate, and create both independently or in small groups. They also act as excellent data bases, which will keep students on track and better organized. 

Several of our post midterm assignments have included connecting our assignments, lessons, and/or web quests to state and national standards. Connecting my curriculum, instruction, and assessment to state standards has been a common practice but the addition of the ISTE national standards presents an interesting component to the work. As a New Hampshire Social Studies teacher, I am expected to evaluate students based on course competencies, which are content based. It doesn't matter if a student demonstrates their knowledge verbally, written, or in a multimedia presentation. Although I am proponent of technology integration, I wonder how these standards are evaluated in competency-based models. 

PART II: Question and Answer

1. Why is it important for all teachers to integrate technology into the lessons they teach, regardless of the age of the students or genre that they teach? Or is it?

All learners are surrounded by technology -- students and adults. Whether classroom technology is as simple as a desktop computer or as advanced as a SMART board or other tools, it impacts the way students learn and the practices teachers use to instruct and assess. Web 2.0 tools improve student engagement and increase collaboration between students and teachers. Technology provides additional resources, improved connectivity, and limitless opportunities. In order for students of today to work in jobs of tomorrow, technology has to be integrated in school lessons.

2. Discuss what may be barriers to technology and how you as the teacher can overcome them.

The primary barrier to technology integration is money. The secondary barrier is teacher education. Funding speaks for itself but teacher education is a critical factor. Technology is rapidly changing and many teachers are struggling to catch up, never mind stay up to date. It must be a focus of professional learning plans and consistently shared with faculty and staff. Without regular, focused training on technology integration, teachers will continue to struggle with best practices (and tools) for student engagement and career preparation. 

Field Experience: IT Interview

The field experience assignment for my Learning Through Technology course was to interview an educator who utilizes technology or integrates technology through his/her curriculum. As a teacher, I have had the opportunity to do much of the latter. I am fortunate to have a variety of technological tools in my classroom including a SMART board, iPad, and flip camera. All of my students also have iPads, which has opened up the curriculum, instruction, and assessment to a variety of pathways. With that said, I chose to focus my field experience on the utilization of technology. I interviewed Tom, our IT Manager. Tom has worked as a technology integrator and director at a number of schools. He joined our staff in January of this past year and he is responsible for installing hardware, system management, and server configurations. Tom also manages our ticket system for trouble shooting and student/staff accounts and folders.

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1. We have number of technological tools in our classrooms. How are you gathering data on student and staff use of technology?

We have used student and staff surveys to gather data on technology use, professional learning needs, and the ticket system. This past year, Carin (our IT Integrator) did a series of classroom walk-through's to get a better feel for how students and staff were using technology. The District Technology Team created a number of uses and/or activities they were looking for and Carin would just check off whether or not it was happening. A walk-through doesn't always tell you the complete story but it gave us a better idea of how technology was being used. 

2. How have the surveys and walk-through's helped to inform the professional learning opportunities for the upcoming school year? 

Several of the surveys told us that the staff wanted more iPad specific training around applications, presentations, and iMovie. We are offering content specific application training early in the year and will focus on presentation tools after that. Hopefully the application training will spark increased iPad use among both staff and students. The walk-through's indicated a need for SMART board refreshers for staff members and Google training for both staff and students. The seventh and eighth grade students will have Google training once a week in September and we are still working on plan for high school students. 

3. I'm assuming that the walk-through's indicated that a number of students were using iPads for non-academic purposes. How can we better manage or restrict the uses of technology by our students?

The seventh and eighth graders keep their iPads on classroom carts and don't have access to the Play Store. We didn't observe much misuse at that level. The high school students are another story. They can take the iPad home and they can download games, use snap chat, etc. on the iPad. It is not a huge concern of ours because students always find a way to be off task and this is just how this generation of students does it. If we restrict the access on the iPad any further than we already have we will create a culture that says we don't trust the students, which will also limit their ability to explore on the iPad and the web. It will also invite some students to find a away around the restrictions, which is another concern to consider if we restrict its uses any further. 

4. How can we do a better job of using the technology to keep students on task?

It starts and ends with continuous professional learning. The staff need consistent training on ways that technology can support the curriculum. The new professional learning plan hits on technology each month and that should help staff members of all levels of technology integration to find ways that technology can be better utilized in the classroom, whether the training is something new or just a refresher. I think people with walk away with a number of ideas of how technology can be used for formative assessment and that should be very appealing to the students. 

5. What does our technology plan look like three to five years from now? 

We are currently adding fiber lines from the server at the high school to the elementary school and the technology building that will increase the bandwidth considerably. That will allow for us to improve our out dated phone system and better support our 1:1 environment. With the infrastructure that we have in place we are considering desktop virtualization which runs through a server system and allows users to access the operating system and applications anywhere in the school building. It is much more economical and easier to manage. 

I have had the opportunity to work with Tom for the past six weeks and his thoughts on technology have changed my mindset considerably, particularly around the importance of professional learning. In a previous blog post (and from my frame of questioning), I noted that I had been considering the idea of adding restrictions around technology in our school system but my conversations with Tom (and Carin) have made me think about the problem differently. In order to get the students to use technology for academic purposes and less for gaming and chatting, we need to spend more of our professional learning time to educate our teachers about technology use in the classroom. We have several professional learning goals but this doesn't have to be done independent of or at the risk of not achieving those goals. Our goals related to differentiated instruction, project-based learning, and school climate and culture can, and should, involve technology integration. With this mindset, I am confident that staff use of technology will increase as will student engagement and work artifacts.

Week #7: Digital Storytelling

Digital storytelling is a relatively new story form that focuses on a person, event, or general topic using computer tools. Digital stories are short, anywhere from two to ten minutes, and incorporate sounds, words, and images to evoke an emotional response from the viewer. An emerging type of digital storytelling is documentary films such as the Ken Burns PBS series and the 30 for 30 series produced by ESPN films.

The website Digital Wish offers several lesson plans for incorporating digital storytelling into your classroom. One particular lesson entitled, the Earth Day Movie Maker Documentary, requires students to study the effects of human-environment interaction on animals and to "create a short film documentary on an animal(s) of their choice, focusing on their lifestyle and their plight of survival in today's world." After researching a particular animal(s), students used a flip-camera to film the animal at a local zoo and uploaded the footage to Movie Maker and added a narrative to it. It's a creative idea to engage students in their learning and it brings a powerful story to the audience.

I have had the opportunity to work with digital stories in my experiences as a teacher. In the Pittsfield School District, we are shifting our philosophies to a student-centered environment, in which the student (rather than teacher) takes the lead role in learning. We created a documentary called, A Day in Life of a Student (scroll to the bottom of the page after you follow the link), to demonstrate what this non-traditional learning environment looked like.

We started the process by writing a general outline of the film and we jumped into capturing footage of students in various classes as they led discussions or interacted in small and large groups. Our second step was to review the footage and write scripts for the narration of the film. We had originally intended to interview students but it was challenging to collect good sound bites. Once we completed the narratives we uploaded the audio and video footage to iMovie to create the documentary. We included pictures, newspaper clippings, and short informational pieces to help tell the story. The final steps to the process were incorporating subtitles for the film segments (to help it all fit together) and adding music to add a dramatic effect.

Their are several approaches to digital storytelling. In an article written by Samantha Morra, that originally appeared on Edudemic but now is updated on her blog, she describes the 8 Steps to Great Digital Storytelling. Her planning process includes writing a proposal, doing research, gathering images, audio, and video, and ultimately sharing once everything is pulled together. A similar process is commonly used for writing an essay but a digital story appeals more to students interests. In EdTechReview, they explain that digital stories can be "used to improve student's learning through multimedia" and that "these stories are an expressive medium medium that can explain the most intricate topics in depth, integrating it with the rest of the curriculum." Students have the ability to create their own stories and teachers can use preexisting stories to introduce or support a topic.

A student may use a digital story to meet the following Common Core Standards and ISTE NETS Standards:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.9-10.4
Present information, findings, and supporting evidence clearly, concisely, and logically such that listeners can follow the line of reasoning and the organization, development, substance, and style are appropriate to purpose, audience, and task.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.9-10.5
Make strategic use of digital media (e.g., textual, graphical, audio, visual, and interactive elements) in presentations to enhance understanding of findings, reasoning, and evidence and to add interest.

ISTE NETS Standard #2: Communication and Collaboration
Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others.

• Interact, collaborate, and publish with peers, experts, or others employing a variety of digital environments and media
• Communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences using a variety of media and formats
• Develop cultural understanding and global awareness by engaging with learners of other cultures
• Contribute to project teams to produce original works or solve problems

ISTE NETS Standard #6: Technology Operations and Concepts 

Students demonstrate a sound understanding of technology concepts, systems, and operations. 

• Understand and use technology systems
• Select and use applications effectively and productively
• Troubleshoot systems and applications
• Transfer current knowledge to learning of new technologies