Technology Training

Faculty Technology Skills
At my school I feel we have a variety of levels of comfort with technology.  We have some teachers that are doing all they can it seems to check their email and those that are comfortable finding something new and innovative to use in their classroom and just going for it.  Many teachers feel fine tackling a technology challenges and there are others that go directly to our technology specialist.  

Technology Staff Development
Staff development methods for learning about technology have taken on may forms in my school.  We typically learn about new technologies during our staff meetings.  One negative to learning new skills at a faculty meeting is the staff can feel burned out and not focused.  We have also had the opportunities to sign up for different programs we would like to learn about and would meet with our technology specialist after school.  One thing that I would maybe change about the afternoon sessions would be to have a follow-up meeting to check-in to see how using the technology is going.  That way if someone walked away from the session and didn't end up using it support could be given to them.  This would also give them an opportunity for them to hear from other colleagues about what has and has not work.

Media Specialist and Technology Specialist
Having both a media specialist and technology specialist at our school has been beneficial.  They work together to teach students digital citizenship and research skills.  Both of them collaborate with teachers and grade levels to create lessons and units that incorporate up to date technology and activities.  They are both on the Technology Committee and research and look in to ways that are school can keep up with the times.

How would I provide Staff Development? 
If I was to create a plan for staff development at my school my first goal would be to create a team of teachers (preferably one from each grade level) to form a Educational Technology Committee.  In the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) White Paper the idea of peer coaching (2011) was a method that I could see being very successful.  After forming this group we would meet to discuss ways to show teachers the "must use" technology during pre-planning.  Then during the year the committee members would use different technologies and showcase them to their grade levels.  Time is a major player in how well a staff development is viewed by members of your faculty.  With having more people be a part of the mastery of a piece of technology, the teaching and support can be addressed by many.  Also, I would provided teachers with time after or before school to sign up to learn about the technologies that they are interested in.


Reference
International Society for Technology in Education. (2011). Technology, Coaching, and Community [White paper]. Retrieved 
            from its.org 

Instructional Technology and the Media Specialist

I started this year as the media specialist for Hampton Middle School. Going in - I was a little nervous, not only the first day of a new job nerves but I was walking into a microsoft system being a google girl. Lucky for me, Microsoft OneDrive is very similar to Google Drive in functionality and tools. Also, this is the first year that the school system has opened Microsoft 365 and all its tools to teachers or students. This lack of knowledge has made it possible for me to be able to offer what we call “Focus Fridays” for teachers. Every Friday in the Learning Commons - teachers can come and learn a new tech tool. We have blocked off Fridays from being booked by teachers and use Fridays for things like reluctant readers strategies, teacher PD, and other activities.

Digital Age Learning environments

In the HMS learning commons we have a variety of equipment that we use for both teachers and learners. iPad carts, laptops, computer labs, multimedia project rooms, and maker space areas are just a few of the resources that we manage on any given day. We have created ‘you can book me” sites to sign up for the use of equipment. When a teacher or student signs up for a resources they have to provide us with the standard, hopeful outcome, and any needs/requests that they might have for their use. We have created tutorials and handy helpful tip sheets to go with all of the resources too.

Professional development and program evaluation

I sent a survey out at the beginning of the year polling a few teachers from each grade level asking them what they would like in the way of PD, what they felt was a need, and what were their expectations when leaving PD.

Most of the teachers felt that they had a good working knowledge of various web 2.0 tools, smartboards, and student response systems. They wanted more help with personalized learning initiatives,  Learning management systems (blackboard), content management systems (OneDrive and Google Drive) and creating resources for specific units in their content areas. They also stated that they wanted to leave PD with “a working model”.

Teaching, Learning and Assessments

The teachers don’t want “sit and get” PD. I don’t blame them at all. I totally get it - we are creating new and inventive ways to reach students - why aren’t we doing that for teachers? I have some teachers that would love an email step-by-step how to that they can do things on their own time. Some teachers are very much hands on and want to be able to create their ______ (fill in the blank with any kind of tech tool) so that they can start using it right away and not forget that what you showed them while other teachers want to hear what you have to say, think about it for awhile and then have you walk them through it step-by-step. I am making sure that when I provide PD it is in all three of those ways. Focus Fridays and our weekly tech newsletter (created in SMORE) allow me to be able to do all three of those strategic PD deliveries.

Content Knowledge and Professional growth

What a media specialist can offer and the things and ways in which they can approach something greatly depends on if they have any help from a para, full or part-time. I am lucky enough to have a full time para! He is a great resource and allows me to be able to present in our building when teachers have an immediate issue with a resource - I can go help them. If they want me to co-teach or team-teach a lesson with them in their rooms - I can! It has also helped allow me to meet with them during content planning so that I can help them find resources for their units. Finding awesome websites, cool games, along with video, books, and primary sources is just a great way to help them make their lessons more interactive and enriched.

Visionary Leadership/Digital citizenship

The last thing that I have created is a student tech team, we call them our SWAT (Students With Access to Technology) team. We meet daily for the first hour of the school day and the SWAT students do things like the announcements, creating examples and how to guides for teachers on various technology, and finding great tools for teachers to use that are “student approved”. Along with the all those things they also know just a little bit about quick troubleshooting tips with the various technology that we offer as a school.

These are also the students who are currently working on our digital citizenship and digital literacy initiatives and curriculum. They are creating infographics, videos, quick tips and a host of other tools to meet those ends.

I love that the teachers and students are driving the needs, creation and overall direction of the HMS learning commons.

Becky Custar - Media Specialist as Instructional Coach

I have the good fortune to work in a technology-rich high school with an administration that puts technology at the top of the list of priorities. (For example, when two of our computer labs were dismantled and ‘re-purposed’ this year, our principal used administrative funds to buy 60 notebook computers (on two carts) so that our student/computer ratio didn’t go down.) As for the state of my faculty’s technology skills, I can only really speak for myself and what I’ve observed…but I get the general sense that there’s a lot of teacher buy-in. I personally have the feeling that unless I work hard to keep up, the technology train is going to leave me behind. And so I take advantage of the staff development opportunities as they arise and as I have time to attend.

All teachers are expected to use D2L – what we call eClass. The trouble is that current innovations and advancements are making parts of that platform obsolete before many of us have learned to use them. That’s technically a good thing. This past week I attended a mandatory training on Google Apps for Educators. It looks to me like the county is mirroring what’s happening in the university system…through Google, all students and faculty will have a school email address and cloud drive as well as a You Tube account and access to Google docs and forms. The Google cloud drive is MUCH easier to use than the D2L Locker – which I have tried teaching my students to use – but which is not nearly as user friendly as Google Drive.

Faculty members are consistently encouraged to find ways to integrate technology into lessons, and I have done this through projects such as Radio Plays of Poe short stories, book trailers using Photo Story, and having kids respond to each other’s work through the eClass discussion board. Science teachers are using a student response/clicker system and math teachers are using Smart Boards. The new literary magazine sponsor is implementing our first online lit mag this year. I would bet there is a lot more going on, but I am so ensconced in my classroom most of the day that I know I’m not aware of many things.

It is hard not to get excited by technology and its instructional possibilities at my school. We have a curriculum AP who conducts an Instructional Leader Academy every year - the cohort meets twice during the school year for all day ‘staff development’ in instructional technologies and strategies. Technology use is actively encouraged by the principal in many different ways – including using “BYOD” apps during faculty meetings where she models things we can use in our classrooms. Gwinnett County is going full steam ahead with integrating technology into instruction – it hosts a Digital Learning Conference each summer which fills up quickly after registration opens. Additionally, technology staff development is explicitly and regularly offered through “Lunch and Learn” opportunities (for which participants can earn an SDU if they attend all of the offered sessions). A Language Arts department colleague conducted one on using Pinterest (for instructional planning) and last week our media specialist conducted a session on using Screen Cast-O-Matic.

The main barrier to technology staff development at my school – from my own perspective – is the time crunch. It doesn’t get much more convenient than the Lunch and Learn format, but I have to be very motivated by the topic to turn away from my other obligations.

As for how I would provide technology training/staff development to teachers as the media specialist (in addition to the Lunch and Learn format)…I already plan to model myself on my current media specialist who is fulfilling her role as technology coach according to ISTE standards. As a ‘technology integration leader,’ she advocates for the use of technology to make lessons more engaging and student-centered by first encouraging teachers she knows to try something new (and helping them be successful at it), taking pictures of and getting ‘testimonials’ from those teachers to use to attract other teachers to try it themselves. For example, she spoke to a math teacher about using a graphing app on the new notebook computers. He used it in a lesson with his students and took pictures of them working. Then she attended a math department meeting where she showed the pictures and he raved about how excellent the app is. Other math teachers have signed up to try it. 

She also showed me how to use Newsela to differentiate content for language arts students as they work on document-based essays. Finally, on the day I had You Tube links on my eClass page for my students to use in the media center AND they didn’t work (I had forgotten that student access is blocked at the county level), she sat and showed me how to rip the videos to post directly on my eClass page. She saved my lesson that day. As a former (and well-respected) language arts teacher, my media specialist has a strong grounding in pedagogy as well as in technology use, and she has applied both things to the staff development sessions she’s conducted. She models proper use of digital information by, for example, asking people’s permission to use photos they take in their classrooms that were on notebook computers or tablets, and she helps the counseling department create PowerPoint lesson to send out for use by teachers in their advisement classrooms about ‘digital citizenship’ such as “Minding Your Digital Footprint.”