These are NETS (standards) for Teachers.  Refer to the ISTE website for more information. These standards are broken into 4 stages in the rubric scale: Beginning > Developing > Proficient > Transformative.

Standard 1: Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity; Performance Indicator A: promote, support and model creative and innovative thinking and inventiveness.  In this example, a teacher is at this beginning level of this standard and show us a tool that will move them to the developing level.

Showing Blabberize – where you can take a photo of the person or animal (or anything), set where the mouth is, and make it “talk” with your voice!

Standard 2: Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments; Performance Indicator C: customize and personalize learning activities to address students’ diverse learning styles, working strategies, and abilities using digital tools and resources. Teacher at the developing stage can move to the Proficient stage (facilitate learning, use specific strategies).

Showing their blog at edublogs.org, tour of WordPress blog.

Standard 4: Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility; Performance Indicator B: address the diverse needs of all learners by using learner-centered strategies providing equitable access to appropriate digital tools and resources.

Showing the free tool “voki” (available from their website above).  Chose a character (or import a picture) and background, give it a voice by text-to-voice, record using a microphone, call in, or upload an mp3. Kids can communicate what they know very quickly and easily.

Standard 3: Model Digital-Age Work and Learning; Performance Indicator A: demonstrate fluency in technology systems and the transfer of current knowledge to new technologies and situations. Teacher moving from beginning to developing stage (plan, manage and facilitate).

Showing Wikispaces for Educators.

The are going WAY too fast.

Standard 5: Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership; Performance Indicator D: contribute to the effectiveness, vitality, and self-renewal of the teaching profession and of their school and community. Teacher can move from developing stage to proficient (actively contribute, sharing promising practices).

Showing Elluminate. One online virtual classroom, discussion board, whiteboard, document sharing, audio/video, and more. Free for up to three people at a time. We can extend our community and our learning.

Back to Standard 3: Model Digital-Age Work and Learning; Performance Indicator B: collaborate with students, peers, parents, and community members using digital tools and resources to support student success and innovation.

Move from beginning stage… Edublogs are good for beginning stage. Add Blabberize to that, making it interactive, and you are moving to the developing stage. Add to that the voki element, allowing for even more customization and creativity moves to the proficient stage. Blabberize is not as interactive – voki allows for comments on the element while Blabberize has to be embedded in a comment-friendly place. Move to transformative by putting that all into an Elluminate classroom with kids collaborating together across time and space, even just showing one classroom’s work to another.

They are talking now about the “Awareness Scale.”  I’m not sure from this if it’s something that is available through ISTE on the rubric scale or if it’s something they’ve come up with.  It is being described as where to start with teachers who are not yet in the “active” phase of the standards put forth by ISTE.  These are discussions that should be happening with teachers who are not yet even to the beginning stages of integrating technology in a meaningful way.  There is a good slide in their preso that shows this scale as it compares to the NETS scale.  The presenter is willing to answer questions via email, available on the link above.

Board of Teaching – Tech License revisions (download)

• 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!

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 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?

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?

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 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.