EdTech Avenue

I am sending the following in an email to our teachers this week. I want to encourage them to not take off their thinking caps for the entire summer, just as they send out a summer reading list for students with the same intent. My hope is that they return in the fall with some fresh ideas for integrating technology as a means for creative assessment and that they use the time they have in the summer to really delve in and explore some of today’s great technologies and idea-sharing media.

• Find one educational blogger whose posts you consider valid and relevant to your teaching. Read on average at least 1 post a week, and be prepared to share what you have found during workshop week in the fall.
• Go to TeacherTube.com and find one video you could either use in one of your classes or replicate as a student project.
• Come up with one multimedia project you could use to enhance your curriculum in some way. This project could involve digital photos, music, movie clips, slides, clay animation, drawings, podcasts…
• Come up with one project in your class where you could use a blog with students. You post something and have them respond, give comments, reactions, reflections…
• Look into the following educational technology trends and buzz-words and prepare to talk about them and how they might impact not only your teaching but the learning of our students:
  • Wiki
  • Blog
  • Podcast, Webcast
  • Ning
  • Web 2.0, School 2.0
  • RSS, Aggregator, Feed
  • Streaming
  • Skype
  • Twitter, Meebo
  • Chat, Instant Message
  • Del.icio.us
• Complete the following regarding technology:
  • The one thing I wish I had in my classroom is __________.
  • One activity I wish I could do with my students is __________.
  • Technology would be easier to use in my classes if __________.

I may be setting myself up for disappointment here, but I don’t think so. I believe that the incredible staff with whom I work will come through. If just one or two teachers come back with a great idea, that energy will spark a flame that I can feed throughout the year!

A program is being offered for elementary schools to examine the “Perils and Potential of Media and Technology in Catholic Education” by NCEA, Boston College and the U.S. Conference of Bishops. It sounds like an interesting program but overlaps with NECC so I can’t get there (I would LOVE to - loved Boston last time I was there).

If you are planning to go, would you be willing to share your experiences here on EdTech Avenue? The conference is from June 21-23, 2007, in Boston, MA.

I was prompted by my reading today of Wesley Fryer’s Needed leadership qualities post. I am still catching up on some archives, and while many articles have been bookmarked for viewing and reflecting later, this one spoke to me immediately, especially after having read Scott Mcleod’s What makes administrators effective technology leaders? post from last week. I am always looking for ideas about how to become a better leader in my field, and these articles were definitely food for thought.

I think the biggest question is where the leadership is coming from.  It’s fairly evident that it must come from more than one person to really implement systemic change.  While I am the main driving force behind integration implementations and strategies at my school, I would not be nearly as effective without the support I get from my principal and veteran teachers.  Meeting resistance from them would make my job miserable.  I think there are probably many different leadership models that work, depending on the personalities of the people in those situations.  We in smaller K-8 schools have a wide range of responsibilities, job descriptions and authority, so what works for me might not work for someone in the next school.

My process is working so far, and as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I was taken off-line slightly last year and we lost some momentum.  Before that I was making great progress with a combination of group training and individual help (that was after I realized I couldn’t start everyone at the same level; a similar situation was described here by Scott Elias).  I tried to find where teachers could first replace an existing task with one that uses technology, and they responded well and took off on their own adding enhancements to the lessons.  I also implemented electronic grading software, making them “have to” use technology for their own organization.  Amazingly, the teachers who were most resistant are the ones who can’t live without it today!  This year we’ve started to make up some ground, and I have a handful of teachers who are eager to plan projects for next year.  Many teachers still use technology because they have to, but slowly and steadily the number is growing of teachers who WANT to use it and see the value in creative assessment and student ownership of a technology-produced project.  Having this new network of ideas and shared situations in the edublogosphere has really helped to re-energize me in regards to being an integration guide for our teachers.

Please share your strategies, what works and what doesn’t, and maybe we can all gain a new perspective as we look to planning for the 2007-08 school year!  Are you a part of the hiring process and/or evaluation process for teachers?  Are you the main decision-maker for technology purchases?  Do your teachers respond to group classes and/or individual training?  How do you handle resistant teachers and/or administrators in your school?

At Blessed Trinity, I’ve given teachers and staff numerous methods for reporting issues, including the recent implementation of Windows Messenger and the Windows XP Remote Assistance application.  It was a huge surprise to me that teachers did not quickly embrace these instant-help options.  Teachers currently use email, phone or in-person methods to report problems with their computers or the labs.  I suppose they are not using their computers as often as I, but the thought that I could immediately see that someone is there and can answer my question without having to send email or make a phone call (or worse yet climb three flights of stairs) would be preferable to me personally.

And with all of these avenues available to them, some problems still don’t get reported to me.  For example:  We are at two campus locations.  I spend most of my time at the campus where the servers and majority of the computers are.  I have asked the teachers at the other campus many times that when something comes up in the computer lab there to record the error in the log I have provided AND email me about it so I know it’s there.  I don’t check that log regularly - it is not a reporting method, simply a log for my reference.  And yet I will hear later, sometimes weeks after the initial problem arose, that something needs to be fixed.  I try to explain that if they don’t email me (whether or not they’ve recorded anything in the log), I won’t know about it.  Unfortunately things have not changed in the four years I’ve been using the logs, so do I need to change something in my methods?  I want to find the best way to service my users.  They become frustrated when I don’t address issues quickly enough but will not follow the methods I’ve given them to get the best response.

What is the best reporting method for your school?  Why does it work for you?

I recently made a suggestion that we publish our teachers’ school photos, which are conveniently provided to us on CD from LifeTouch, with the staff directory page of our website.  I had mixed reviews from our staff after designing the page with photos.  Most teachers liked the page but made no mention of the general idea.  Others, those who are a bit more techno-savvy, objected to the idea.  Their reasoning was that if pictures are made readily available on the internet, we subject ourselves to possible mis-use of the photos on such sites as MySpace and other personal web spaces.  While I am not naive enough to think that our students would not think to do such a thing, it saddens me that the majority of people visiting our site will lose out on the personal touch the photos present.  I also would have liked the idea that for marketing and recruiting purposes, prospective families would be able to put a face with all the paperwork and other information they receive about our school.

For now, we do not publish photos on our web site, for the protection of our students and teachers.  What do you do on your school website?

I have recently considered creating a personal blog space.  I would love to have a place where I can post photos and daily news of goings-on with my husband and myself.  I do have a Flickr space with photos, but even while creating that last month I had to think twice about putting anything personal out there for the world to see.  I would like to share with family and friends things that are going on in my life… but I don’t necessarily want to share these things with my students.  This is a unique career we find ourselves in - my husband and his friends don’t have to worry about who might see their blog or want to “use it against them”.  But teachers do not have this same luxury.  I can only imagine the damage a scorned student could do to a teacher’s career - we’ve seen it on some news stories already.  But how much of this is paranoia and how much is warranted caution?

I know I could create a MySpace account (it’s not just for kids, you know) and protect it so that readers would have to register, but I don’t want my mom to have to get an account in order to read about me.  Is that unreasonable?  And I’m not sure I’d want to lock it so much that only family and friends can read it - I might want input from other adults, and students could create false accounts…

Is there any way to get general information out there in blog-type format while keeping it safe from my students?  I’m fairly new to this blogging thing, so any input is welcome.  I did find some possible solutions on WordPress using plug-ins, so I’ll have to give that a try.