EdTech Avenue

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Below are the updated documents for the interpretation of ISTE Standards for the Archdiocese schools who wish to use them.  If you wish to collaborate on the “Resources & Lessons” documents, please email me with your Google account email address and I will share it with you (ArchSPM only, please).  You do NOT need a Google account to view the documents.  Links to the documents will also remain on a static page on this website for future reference.

Archdiocese/ISTE Standards: Grades K-2

Archdiocese/ISTE Standards: Grades 3-5

Archdiocese/ISTE Standards: Grades 6-8

Standards (gr. K-2) — Resources & Lessons

Standards (gr. 3-5) — Resources & Lessons

Standards (gr. 6-8) — Resources & Lessons

Contact me with any questions or issues with the documents.

Our first technology standards writing session was a success!  We had 14 participants and got quite a bit accomplished.  Below are links to what we have put together so far (still in early stages).  We started with the ISTE NETS for Students 2007 version and put the ISTE student profiles in what we felt were more realistic and simple terms.  We have also started to compile resources for various activities that fit different standards.  We broke into three grade-level groups: K-2, 3-5, 6-8.  Unfortunately, we didn’t have any representatives at the high school level.  THANK YOU to all those who attended and worked so hard, and thank you to Mary Kane for your support.

Grades K-2

Grades 3-5

Grades 6-8

We are planning on meeting again in place of our regular January tech meeting.  Watch your email or contact me for more information!

It has been decided that much of our focus at our meetings with Archdiocese tech coordinators this year will be on standards.  There is no “standard” standard we are required to follow.  Though many schools are using McREL standards for much of their core curriculum, not all are.  I offered to look over the McREL technology standards to see how they relate to the ISTE NETS-S (National Educational Technology Standards for Students) so that we can possibly come up with a list for our use here in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.  I am having a very difficult time with comparing the two documents and have been working on this post for almost two weeks now!  The next meeting is tomorrow, so what I have must be posted, ready or not…

The McREL standards state that “fifteen documents were identified as useful for developing content standards for technology,” including the NETS-S by ISTE, but the 1998 version of NETS-S has since been drastically revised.  Looking at the McREL standards, I am finding myself frequently asking the question, “what does that have to do with educational technology?”  Almost half of the McREL standards seem to envelop the very broad spectrum of “technology” to include science, engineering, agriculture, medicine, etc.  While I realize these are all fields related to technology, it is not focused on the same things as NETS-S, which has a smaller focus on computer and media technologies our students would be using in school.  Beyond the first three McREL standards, I find very little relationship to NETS-S from 1998 or 2007.

McREL says very little about multimedia and collaboration and nothing about authoring tools beyond a desktop publishing program.  With Web 2.0 in the forefront of our technologies today, can we afford to overlook this omission?

In my opinion, we will need to look at three different sources when creating a list of standards for the Archdiocese.  These three sources are: NETS-S from 1998, which focuses more on learning how to use computers and related technologies; NETS-S from 2007, which focuses on collaboration and creativity as well as current digital responsibilities of students, with a central focus on activities that use computer technologies rather than lessons on how to use various technologies; and McREL standards for technology, which includes much of what is contained in the previous but has some areas that relate more to industrial technology, which most of our schools do not offer before grade 9.

There is no way to merge the documents together seamlessly because of how each is organized.  So, there are three documents available here.  One is a grid that shows how I feel the McREL standards relate to NETS, side-by-side.  Another is a list of the McREL Standards, each followed by a note that refers to a NETS item.  The final document is a list of the NETS items, along with a “profile” talking about various activities students should be able to accomplish at different benchmark years, and each of these are followed by statements from the McREL standards that I felt related.  In some cases the relationship between the two was obvious, but at other times I really stretched, for example, using the category topics to link some of the McREL loosely to NETS.  Hopefully after our next meeting it will make some tiny bit of sense, but for now, here it is:

Standards – Grid

Standards – McREL base, with NETS items

Standards – NETS base, with McREL items

mcrel-tech_standards_k-2

mcrel-tech_standards_3-5

mcrel-tech_standards_6-8

I am hopeful these will download for you. Let me know of success or failure. Should we have a new category of ’standards’?

I am feeling energized after yesterday’s meeting!

How do schools handle their AUP? At St. Wenceslaus, I thought we were having new families (all kindergarteners and any other new families in grades 1-8) sign ONCE. Then annually teachers would review our acceptable use policy and sign a record stating they (the teacher) reviewed our policies with the students. In reality, what is happening is we send home, in the fall packet, an AUP form for parents to sign – or opt out of. So this is EVERY YEAR, FOR EVERY STUDENT. I am thinking for the sake of paper alone, we could improve on this practice.

As well, who has anything included in their AUP dealing with video? Since more and more items are being posted – not just pictures and names anymore! How about we bring a copy of our AUPs to the first Tech Coordinator meeting? Or post somewhere here?

Also, I need my memory refreshed. One of the reasons (I thought) we needed – or it was a good idea to have – an AUP is that some federal funds are available only if we have an acceptable use policy in place? As well, isn’t there something about CIPA that requires us to have one? I know, I should know the answers to these things. I just have one in place for our school because I knew we needed it (for lots of reasons.)

We have completed most of our Learnia tests now, save a few absent students. It actually went pretty well, if I had to give an overall opinion. But I’m starting this conversation about what could be done better and what tips and tricks others used to survive the sessions.

Overview
I made sure all student lab workstations were equipped with the proper add-ins/plug-ins needed for the testing, and I went through and enabled pop-ups for the student Learnia site ahead of time. We used Internet Explorer v.7 at Blessed Trinity.

I created cards for the students with their Site Code, Student ID/Username and Password. I used index cards and just pasted a regular mailing label on which I had printed the information using mail merge and a spreadsheet. The “test tickets” printed on the Learnia site are virtually useless – you really can’t use them more than once (even if you laminate them first, I learned last year), and they’re hard to store in those little strips. Each teacher got a set of student cards for each group they teach.

I also created a resource binder for each of my teachers. These binders contained:

• A list of their students with passwords,
• A copy of the instructions for tests they will administer,
• A full printed copy of the test (without answers), so they could make their own copies if giving the test in written form,
• Sample answer sheets to use if giving the test in written form, and
• Math reference sheets (for math teachers only).

This seemed to help them to know exactly what their responsibility was as test administrators and keeps all of their information in one place. My plan is collect the binders at the end of the year so they can be updated if necessary for next year’s teachers.

Scheduling the tests wasn’t nearly the hassle I expected. I had the teachers schedule their own time and was available to help for at least their first testing period. After that, they could request my help if they wanted it. Once students were logged on (more difficult with the 3rd and 4th graders), things went very smoothly, and most teachers did not need my help. Some teachers scheduled an additional time in the lab to teach students just how to log on to the site. Being their first time, I thought this was very beneficial as far as time efficiency was concerned. In future years, perhaps only the 3rd grade would need to do this, since most other students will be familiar with the process. Some teachers broke the tests up into multiple class periods and others used time from other classes to complete the tests in one sitting.

Issues and Questions
There are still some issues with the administrator instructions. Many of the specific instructions are incorrect (such as the existence of a highlight tool?). I found that to be confusing for the teachers and students, and in some cases the teachers went “off-script” to give instructions, which is not ideal for a standardized test.

Students (especially the younger ones) could benefit from a better zoom tool to make the text bigger. At younger reading levels, the students are used to larger text. The zoom tool, while helpful on the first reading passage, does not allow you to use it for the other passages, and it manipulates the screen in a way that prevents the user from being able to scroll properly.

Join the Conversation
Are other schools or teachers having similar experiences and issues? Please add to the conversation with your comments, good and bad, about your Learnia experience! I have also asked my teachers to add their comments here.

What are other schools doing for the mid-year testing? Is anyone using more than one ClassLinks test? If you are using only one, which one?

It’s been a LONG time since my last post, and for that, I apologize. A summer I thought would be spent relaxing by the pool and tweaking my blog for the archdiocese tech coordinators was not so much that. Instead, I managed to just barely make it through NECC and spent much time on the couch suffering the effects of morning sickness!

But like many of you, I am now back to work full-force and itching to get blogging again! I have yet to fix my form-mailer to collect data from the archdiocese tech coordinators, but I am hoping that while I was “out” some new plug-ins came “in” and that will help that form to be up and running very soon.

What’s Ahead
The big scurry this fall for most of us is getting ready for Learnia, Harcourt’s answer to standardized testing online. Blessed Trinity was part of the pilot program last year, and apparently we were one of the few schools for whom the testing went well. I hope this can be a forum for some of us to share ideas about what works and what doesn’t, and how to prepare your network, teachers and students for the testing.

I’m finally starting to get caught up after installing some new (refurb) PCs that came in during workshop week!

Another issue for me this year will be researching, encouraging, and attempting to find funding for a Student Information System. Many on our staff (including I) have spent many hours dealing with data issues in the last four weeks. It seems we duplicate our work three or four times these days for all the different changes that come about, which is quite a bit of time when students are still registering on the first day of school! I hope we can reduce that workload with an integrated system soon. I will be looking to my colleagues for advice!

In the interest of keeping things simple, I’ve been looking into re-working this site so that it is a blog first and Archdiocese tech-connection second. When I first started, I didn’t realize I could post static pages on a blog site, and that I could create the forms and such that I needed from within the WordPress database using Plugins. I spent many hours matching CSS to a template I had found for a the static site to the blog for consistency because I thought I had to!
I hate changing things mid-stream, but better now than when I have hundreds of readers (ha!).  For the few of you who subscribe to my feed, it will be changing over the next couple of weeks as I get everything moved over. The full site will be http://edtechaveue.com, with links to the Archdiocese information from there.  Thanks for your patience.