Monday, December 6, 2010

Personal technology plan

Vision Statement

Working in the educational technology field is like working in one big plate spinning factory. Sure you know what needs doing and are pretty comfortable with the actual spinning technique but it’s not always that straightforward. Keeping the plates spinning and looking out for new plates (and old wobbly ones) always keep you on your toes and you never stop looking, questioning and investigating.

Technology in education is in a constant state of flux. I’ve been involved in the area since 2003 and does everyone agree with each other on the uses of technology in education more now than back then? No, no they don’t. It seems that we all agree on one thing; we are educating the children of today for a future that we are unsure of. Back in 2008 David Warlick said that “Things are changing so fast that we don't understand the workplace that they're going into...” When I saw Mr. Warlick at a conference in Singapore in 2010 he was still stating the same facts.
I, for one, know this is the case. The people who go to educational technology conferences know this. The only people who don’t seem to know are the teacher training colleges who don’t train our new teachers to teach these digital natives. The only people who don’t seem to know this are the administrators who hire teachers who still think it’s okay (and cute) to say to me “Oh, I’m not good with technology”. But your students are!

We’re still in a rut with regards technology in education. We still need IT coordinators, integrationists and facilitators to assist in the use of technology in the classroom. I should know as I am one! When teachers were asked to model one teaching technique that they undertook in class at a recent professional development day at my school; only one teacher out of about thirty used a technology based practice. A little bit sad. But why was this case? I have been working with each grade on technology integrated activities to include in each of their units but the thinking is still that of technology being the “extra stuff” that they should be doing in I.T. class. We are trying to make technology a natural part of the day to day learning but when we still have I.T. lessons in the room that is not their classroom of course everyone (teachers and students) are going to continue to look at technology as a different subject and approach it in a different way. Even working with the I.T. teachers to integrate as much of the classroom learning into I.T. time, although a step in the right direction; is not good enough.
In my opinion technology in education needs to be seamless, ubiquitous and natural for the student and teacher to interact with. This, of course, needs training and professional development for both teachers and administration alike. It also means a solid infrastructure in the school building to support the current and future rollout of different technologies. We need to start wrapping a school around technology rather than the other way around.

Current Practice

My role of Instructional Technology Coordinator is a new one for my school and this makes my job a tough one at times. If truth be told, though, it is not as tough as I thought it would be. I set myself a goal to have taught every student from Kindergarten to Grade 5 in some aspect before Christmas this year. And I have done just that.

I started the year off with a couple of short term goals. I wanted each of our Kindergarten classes to have been introduced to our small number of iPod touches before October break. I wanted a schedule and routines in place. Squeezing in ten classes to rotate with our iPod Touches was no mean task but we got there and I’m delighted because of how we worked that we are now getting a further forty iPods so that every classroom will have a small number to keep. This was a hard fought battle but it is vital that we have the technology at hand when we want it in class. If we had kept with just scheduling the devices we would never develop the best practice of teaching and learning with the iPod. The iPods will become part of the classroom and be a natural tool for using at times when the teacher (or student) sees fit.

Grade 1 and Grade 2 are interesting years at our school. They both have their Chinese homeroom teacher teach them I.T. so I find it important to touch base and see what their skill sets are. Due to the language barrier I always have to work with the English teachers and meet with them during their common planning time to see what unit they are doing and what is up next. For Grade 1 we worked out a time when we could bring them all to the computer lab during English time to work on an activity related to a wild animals unit they were doing. We used a simple website called “SwitchZoo” to create our very own mixed up animal. The children then used their animal to write up some information on their creation. It was fun and engaging activity related to classroom work.
For Grade 2 they were working on teamwork and collaboration so we used Voicethread to work on a collaborative storytelling piece. In class they read a story called Tara & Tiree. There were 6 pages to the story with a different picture on each page. In groups they each wrote, in their own words, the part of the story linked to the picture. We uploaded these pictures to a Voicethread and recorded each student saying their story over the relevant picture.
In both cases it is hard to schedule all the classes to work with me and we ended up stretching it out over two weeks as the computer lab is on a very tight schedule. I’m not entirely happy with bringing the kids to the lab but at that age it is best to get them altogether to work on their activity and we just don’t have the technology available for them to stay in their classroom.

Grade 3 I.T. class is actually taught by one of the English homeroom teachers so it works out really well. My main activity with them was in conjunction with them reading about Icarus. We used I.T. time for them to design their own Icarus on Build Your Wild Self. My detailed explanation and examples of their work can be seen on my other blog here. As they are learning about Green Homes and conservation next we will be using Google Earth to search for green parks in Hong Kong and making an interactive tour.

Grade 4 has been busy due to one very ambitious and adventurous English teacher. We started off by using English, Art and Science class to make a stop motion animation on a stage of the Rock Cycle. Challenging and monumentous projects to do in the first 2 months of school but the end results were pretty good. One example here:

Sedimentary Rock 2 Stop Motion from Colin Gallagher on Vimeo.
I happened to mention my experimental visions of Green Screen recording to the adventurous English teacher so just recently the students have recorded in front of 6 pieces of green A1 paper a skit about their favorite season. They have turned out great and it is something I really want to do with other grades as it is so simple to achieve.
Also, in Grade 4, we have been collaborating with a school in Australia on Edmodo to discuss and carry out activities on Charlotte’s Web. This has been a great connection to make and we have Skyped with them and it has been an exciting and rewarding project.

Finally in Grade 5 my major plan was to get all our students blogging. We have achieved that but it is still early days. Our school is not ready to allow open blogging so our students, sadly, blog behind passwords (which defeats the purpose somewhat) We are also doing a Skype debate on December 13th with the same school in Australia as Grade 4 are working with. As a lot of work we have undertaken with Grade 5 is about online publishing and online communication we had Robyn Treyvaud come in and talk about Digital Citizenship and we also worked on Digital Safety units in their I.T. class.
As well as getting the teachers and students more comfortable and accustomed to using technology in relation to what they are doing in class I have given a PD session on Prezi to the staff and I’m delighted to see a number of teachers using it to great effect. I designed a website of links that would make accessing websites easy for every student from Kindergarten to Grade 5 http://primarylinks.isf.edu.hk. I will be trialing an iPad for future integration into our classrooms (I’m thinking I will work with Grade 5 on that) and I plan on presenting at a number of conferences. I will continue to make connections and have a presence on Twitter.

Personal Technology Plan

My plan in general is to stay on top of current technology integration practices. I do this by reading my Google Reader daily, subscribing to ISTE’s publications and from my connections on Twitter.
Back in 2009 The Horizon Report laid out its vision for the trends that would appear in education technology over the next 5 years. I am basing a lot of my personal technology goal in allegiance with The Horizon Report as the people involved in the report are people I very much admire. In 1-2 years it said collaborative environments and online communication tools would come to prominence. I am glad to say that I have introduced both concepts to my school already this year with both Edmodo and students’ blogs being used already; albeit in its infancy. My main goal is to fight for open blogging for our students. It is only with an authentic and global audience that our students will experience real online communication and the power of opinion and point of view. No more passwords.

By 2012-2013 the use of mobiles and cloud computing are predicted to be on the rise in education. I am seeing this in fruition and in discussions already. With our introduction of iPod Touches we are setting off on the right path. My plan for whatever school I may be in by 2013 is to make full use of, or establish, a Google Apps for Edu account. This is cloud computing at its best. I think with the use of cloud computing with students we can make some serious improvements in online assessing and communications between students and teachers. I already use Google Docs for planning and meeting notes but my goal is to use it for classroom learning in the next year or so.

By 2014-2015 the Horizon Report pinpoints Smart Objects and The Personal Web as the key emerging educational technology tools. We are seeing QR Codes appear already (well ahead of the predicted time-frame). In lieu of the amount of ideas and resources that are out there already I want to introduce QR codes by the end of this school year. With the purchase of 40 more iPods with cameras I want to use the idea of a scavenger hunt around our school (especially if a Grade is doing a Community unit) and for use in the library. I think QR codes may be of more use in our secondary school where more students have access to photo taking tools but that will not stop us working with the younger grades and QR codes. I plan to stay on top of Smart Objects and will keep a keen eye on the evolution of the technologies out there.
The Personal Web is an intriguing concept and one that I am very interested in following. This may not be something that can be undertaken straight away and is not totally ready to take off (unlike QR codes). With the implementation of Google Apps, the use of the iGoogle start page can be seen as a form of Personal Web but still something the user must set up. I would be very interested in looking at technologies that schools can invest in that “knows” what grade a student is in when they access the internet from within school and their home page is already tailor made for them with appropriate links, resources, news and teacher posted information. I see this as a very useful addition in the younger years where information overload and irrelevant links can overwhelm and confuse a young learner.

Aside from keeping in line with The Horizon Report I also plan on undertaking a number of other steps in my educational technology plan. I will finish the next two courses from MSU by Summer 2011 and plan to start the Masters modules in Fall 2011. This will be a great outlet for learning and for putting down my thinking and ideas on “paper”.
One adventure I will try to undertake in 2011 and maybe will come to fruition in 2012 is to learn how to develop and program Ipod apps. From my experience in my own school where I have wasted so much time trying to find a Traditional Chinese character App for our kindergarten students, schools will need to start developing their own apps to suit their own learning goals and objectives. I am going to try and learn this to stay ahead of that curve and just recently a whole series of “How To” instructional videos have appeared on Itunes U to help me on my way.

In conclusion if you work in the educational technology field you can get distracted by just keeping plates spinning but it’s when you look ahead and see how many more you have to do and plan on how you are going to do it, that you will truly begin to understand and prepare yourself, your students and your peers for the future.

References:
Hernandez, Pat: Preparing Kids for an Unknown Future http://app1.kuhf.org/houston_public_radio-news-display.php?articles_id=30088
website last accessed Dec 6th 2010
The Horizon Project 2009 http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2009-Horizon-Report-K12.pdf

1 comment:

  1. What a fascinating Blog! You are a writer or one who like to write!! I sincerely enjoyed reading about everything you are doing at your school. I do get frustrated also when teachers tell me they don't have time for technology or that the students will pick it up themselves. They may catch on to ipods and remotes quicker, but they still don't know how to balance their checkbook using a spreadsheet. They don't know how create charts and graphs. They don't know how to use Spell and Grammar check. (or are too lazy!)

    The Horizon Report is great. I had passed this info on to the author of that session in this class. The REMC (Regional Educational Media Center) association has been working with them and getting Horizon to come in and speak to us (REMC Directors) each year. They seem to be right on target. It is very fascinating reading. It is overwhelming for the techno-phobe!

    ReplyDelete