As much as it is time consuming to post things in this blog, I find it very healthy and helpful. This blog has helped me stay focused and motivated. It has directed me and forced me to reflect on what is going on and search through my own experiences and thoughts. As mentioned earlier, the edtech world can be a lonely one. There are so many things I miss about the classroom…...from the student smiles, daily positive reinforcement from the kids, student energy and kindness to the feeling of daily success that occurs when a lesson is complete. Seeing this role involves a lot of listening and coaching people through their struggles I am unable to talk through my own struggles. Through this blog, I feel I am telling/talking to others and almost shouting it out. I hope others can relate. I would love for some feedback. If you ever have any ideas or additional thoughts, please share. Good, bad, ugly? As much as I love positive feedback, it’s the negative stuff that really allows us to grow and become better and stronger.
As the week’s are continuing on, I am beginning to question my title. The title on my contract reads “Technology Integration Specialist”. For weeks I have been calling myself a “Technology Instructional Specialist” only to find out that is not even what I am titled by the district. As a result, I began to question my title and what I am doing, feel I should be doing and expected to do. There is a lot of gray. I have been hired to integrate the technology, yet in order to integrate the technology with a purpose there needs to be a deep understanding of the instruction and curriculum. As much as I try to grasp 8 different curriculums (content areas of 6th and 7th grade) it’s pretty overwhelming and a big juggle. Being effective is essential for me. Many times I question my effectiveness. It has been difficult to digest everything that is coming my way. That is where the question of my title really comes into play. It’s not about the technology, rather the transformation. Technology needs to be integrated to ENHANCE instruction, not just integrated to be integrated. Many teachers see me as a resource provider. I don’t feel effective being just a resource provider.
My personal thoughts are in order to fully serve the 21st century child, there needs to be a shift in teaching and learning. Where does the teacher stand in this shift? What is the student’s role and the teacher’s role? How do both roles play a part in the final outcome of achievement? And what is my role in all of this???? I have had the opportunity to chat with several amazing teachers about the question of exactly what are we doing? The conversations have been insightful, filled with passion and intensity. These teachers care about what is happening! Even though there is some resistance to the change, their passion for learning and achievement is clear. So the question becomes, how do we go to more of a student centered environment and maintain the same quality of learning? What does the teacher’s role look like in this environment? How can the teacher be even more impactful? Many classrooms are not differentiated. It is more of a one size fits all. How do we become more of the “guide on the side”? How do we expect problem solving? It is time for the students to lead through personal discovery and pave the way while we enrich and support on the side. They need to be able to critically think, problem solve and create new ideas. This funny video really sums it up.........I Choose C So what is the title? Edtech? Technology Integration Specialist? Instructional Coach? Teacher? Transformational Leader? Technology Coordinator? Resource Provider? I am not sure….you tell me. Within the past few weeks, Chris and I have decided that it is important to help teachers build a strong learning community. In education, collaboration is key and no one should be an island. Staying connected to other educators and globally collaborating only brings everyone closer to the 21st century learner. We are encouraging teachers to use Twitter to build their learning communities and professionally grow. Being globally connected and participating in collaborative global projects is the ultimate goal. In order to move towards this vision we are continuing to encourage teachers to practice collaboration and connect with one another through the Twitter platform.
As step one we have decided to help teachers set up Twitter accounts. Many teachers may have a misconception of Twitter. I know I did when it was first introduced to me last year during one of our technology trainings. I saw Twitter as just another way to share information on a professional level. I set up a Twitter account and started tweeting information out to the parents of Kenefick’s Krew. I encouraged parents to follow me to see what was happening in our classroom. As a teacher I thought it was cool, but really wasn’t using it as a professional resource. It was more like a virtual newsletter. And then…….I found TweetDeck! As I am sure you know, TweetDeck is a tool used to organize Twitter information. I personally feel that one can’t have Twitter without TweetDeck. Therefore, instead of just having teachers sign up for a Twitter account, we are asking them to complete a few tasks along the way. We are asking teachers to sign up for Twitter and TweetDeck, follow our school, find/follow their teammates and tweet out 2 of their proudest moments thus far. We are also creating a new hashtag for them to use. For the month of November we are going to encourage everyone to tweet things out and build a set of columns they can collectively, as content area teams, follow for ideas. We are hoping teachers see Twitter as a educational research tool rather than a tool for just sharing information. Obviously Twitter will turn into a sharing piece for many but that is not the initial goal. We would like them to view it as a tool to stay connected as a team and school. This vision is exciting seeing it will ultimately lead to strong global connections and global collaboration. Twitter has already helped me connect to sportscasters, storm chasers and meteorologists. These connections tie nicely with the 7th grade reading curriculum. Being global is exciting and allows for so many more learning opportunities that are current, “real” and engaging. Both Chris and I have joined the Global Education Conference and have invited other teachers to join us as well. You can find some of the resources that have helped us go global on Chris’ blog. Today our school team successfully participated in a mini conference. Our mini conference consisted of 14 sessions in one hour, all led by the teachers! It was collaborative, filled with ownership, showcased leadership, productive and impressive! A very proud moment!
How the mini conference came to life…………... A few weeks ago the term “tech sessions” was shared by our principal. He had said he wanted to have a few sessions take place during our upcoming Institute Day. The idea was great and so I ran with it. This initiative was not only motivating but also gave me a "focus". I observed the staff closely and started finding tools the teachers knew about or were gravitating towards. One teacher was very knowledgeable about Haiku Assessments, another was experimenting with Google Draw, one was trying out PearDeck, another was experienced in Socrative Learning, another was an expert on Kahoot, etc. After some recruiting to lead a session, several people were interested and willing. I also recruited a few teachers to try a brand new tech tool or topic. The intention was to make them “the school expert” on the tool, with my support and help. This sparked appeal in many. There were also several teachers that had never "presented" before and were energized by the challenge and opportunity. Before I knew it, we had 14 fully functioning “tech sessions”. The teachers leading the sessions were eager to prepare. Several put together presentations, while asking me to support/help by listening to their ideas and creations. Three days prior to the sessions, I had asked the principal to send out this Google Doc. Staff members signed up and the sessions were amazing! Teachers walked away with knowledge, excitement and exposure. Teachers had a sense of ownership. Not to mention, it was engaging and collaborative. The smartest person in the room was the room. Several teachers were intrigued by what was happening in other classrooms. It was great for everyone to be exposed to the greatness of their colleagues. What was really cool about the entire event was that I received 3 phone calls right after the sessions. Teachers were requesting help on learning about a few of tech tools so they can push it into their classroom right away. I looked at the calls for support as a sign of success. Student Collaboration As I was watching teachers experiment with different tech tools, the idea of needing examples of “greatness” appeared necessary. I felt we needed student examples showcasing the different forms of collaboration. As a result, teachers were asked to send me different student collaboration pieces. These pieces were then submitted to the student collaboration folder that was created in our Technology Resource Folder. The hope was to have the teachers view the examples and hopefully spark some ideas. It worked! Teachers began looking at the different student examples and were motivated to try different things in their classes. As mentioned in an earlier blog, the idea of these “focus topics” formulated while in ISTE and were now organically coming to life on their own. It was empowering! Below are few examples of the some shared student collaboration Text Evidence Vocab Scramble Teacher Collaboration Chris and I have also been encouraging the teachers to collaborate together through Haiku pages and across teams. Some teachers have really embraced the idea and are beginning to have their students collaborate with one another. A set of 7th grade teachers came up with the idea of writing a picture book with Google Slides and sharing it with some 3rd grade classrooms. They are hoping the 3rd graders will comment on their books and then also add a slide. Virtual Book Buddies! Fun! A few Social Studies teachers are connecting with other classrooms within the school while working on role playing as a member of a civilization group. They are questioning each other about the differences of the civilization through Google Hangout. These are just a few examples of really cool things happening within the first few months of the implementation. I am excited to watch this collaboration grow stronger and then fall into the Global Connection focus topic. The sky is the limit with technology! Final tidbit on collaboration - Find out what the teachers know or are willing to learn, coach them along the way and watch them shine! Today a few teachers began expressing concerns about the implementation. They felt as if they were “entertaining” the kids with technology rather than teaching the content. I am not going to lie, these conversations with the teachers were tough. I remember feeling the same way at the start of my classroom implementation experience. I remember feeling like the district was paying me to learn technology and a lot of my instruction was suffering. I empathized with the teachers and suggested they take a step back. If students don’t know how to write, then set the technology aside and model what needs to be done. I reiterated that technology should be a tool to enhance the instruction. It should not be used just to be used. After a few more conversations, the teachers realized that they did need to slow down with the all of the technology being used. Instead, they needed to focus on what they have learned thus far and really strengthen those tools instead of adding more tools. There will always be another tool out there. If you try to use everything at once, nothing will become solid. Pick a few tools, use them well and celebrate success. One teacher took out a piece of paper and wrote down everything she has accomplished and implemented up to this point in the school year. Once she did that, she felt proud and was motivated to work on strengthening the tools listed. She also realized how much she has been doing and how the technology is allowing the kids to be creative, think critically, be engaged, collaborate and have choice. I thought writing down successes was an excellent idea! So much so that I shared it with the entire staff in my weekly TechTidbits.
This video was shared with me shortly after. It really gave me clarity after this experience. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTIBDR4Dn2g My partner and I collaborate every day. We tend to eat lunch while we have each other on speaker phone. It is kind of funny, but necessary. We really lean on each other seeing we are on a bit of an island at our own schools. Considering all our coworkers are at different campuses, it can be a lonely job at times. We take our lunch time to talk about our experiences at our schools and determine how we want to move forward. We also use this time to troubleshoot, help each other out and work on our “shared vision”. As Chris has mentioned in his blog, he came up with a “model” for us that really pulls all of our ideas together. He gave it the acronym of GPS - Global Collaboration, Professional Learning Communities and Shared Vision. This model truly is our navigator. We are sharing a vision of pushing our 2 schools towards more collaboration and building learning communities. With this mission we are confident that things will organically fall into place and the ultimate goal of fully instructing to the 21st century learner will happen. October’s Shared Vision - Student/Teacher Collaboration and Building the Technology Resource Folder November’s Shared Vision - Assisting teachers to build a PLC (Public Learning Community) through Twitter and continue to strengthen the collaboration among students and teachers. December's Shared Vision - Allow teachers to share their findings with others. Brainstorm as a group and individually ways to turn activities that are not engaging into student centered creativity. While the “rounds” to the teams continued, my partner and I began to work behind the scenes on a Technology Resource Folder. We shared this folder with the teachers about a month into the school year. This resource is full of screencasts, instructions and information about Apps, Websites, Haiku and Google. Within each folder there are several subfolders with set-up instructions and ideas. This folder also explains our role as Ed Techs along with a flow chart of what our job is and isn’t. This folder will continue to grow and we have asked the teachers to turn to it when they are looking for something new. The idea of the Technology Resource Folder stems from what I experienced last year. A similar folder was shared with teachers during my first year of implementation. I found it extremely helpful. As a teacher, it did take a few months to start searching through it but once I knew it was there, I found myself popping in and out of it daily. This was definitely a resource I knew that needed to continue at the middle school level. Moving forward we plan to add “focus” folders. The idea of focus folders/topics/goals (still trying to figure out the best wording) came to me while at ISTE. I feel it is important to give teachers tools and resources, but more so a focus of what to do with those tools and resources. Focus goals allow for the “bigger picture” of technology to happen. Giving a teacher a goal, accompanied with several tools that can help reach that goal, will only expedite the ultimate plan of technology enhancing instruction. It is not about the technology, it is about what we do with it. Good teachers don’t need technology, technology needs good teachers! The focus topics that were part of my “ISTE ahha moment” were: collaboration, exploration, global, assessment, differentiation, classroom management and study tools. As you continue to read through this blog, you will watch these focus topics grow and come to life. As the start of the school year approached and the initial teacher trainings were complete, I was excited to get started. The first few days on the job were consumed by distributing all the tablets in the K-5 buildings and preparing for the chromebook distribution. I have to admit, organizing over 5,000 tablets (5 elementary schools) was quite the undertaking. Nevertheless, it was amazing to see how our team of 8 found a system and executed! After those few days the tagline for our team was confirmed. We were definitely ”The team that gets it done!”. We had so much fun together and truly were a well oiled machine within a few days! The chromebooks were distributed to the students in an equally organized fashion. Within a few hours close to 1,400 students (2 middle schools) had chromebooks with labels, chargers and cases. The teachers and tech team were amazing in this process! It was the epitome of teamwork and success..... Following the distribution of the devices, the support aspect of the job began. The first few weeks were crazy! Accounts needed to be created, teachers were eager to try things out, kids needed help getting into their chromebooks, chargers weren’t working, kids needed to be merged into correct classes, team pages needed to be up and running, teachers needed assistance….”how do I share folders?, how do I place this link on that page?, where is that folder?, what do I do with this message?, how do my kids see my page?, the devices aren’t working!!!, why isn’t this app working?, why isn’t this website working?, I swear that page was there yesterday, that’s not my account?!” …....LOL….… you get the picture. Needless to say lunch was not part of my schedule for the first 2 weeks of school. At that point I honestly questioned if accepting the EdTech position was the best decision. I think I can speak on behalf of the other 6 EdTechs within our district when I say we couldn’t catch our breath for the first 2 weeks of school. IT.WAS.CRAZY! At any rate, things did slow down and the level of support changed. As the energy of the building shifted, I found myself asking…..now what? As I was determining the direction of my role, one thing continued to ring in my ear. My boss had said during one of our meetings to be visible, be visible, be visible. And so I listened. What I found was that being visible kept me VERY busy. :) I would hang out in pod areas and just wait for someone to pull me in: ”hey Michelle could you,” “wait I have a question,” “oh do you have a quick second,” “I am trying to,” “I can’t find this app,” “since you’re here,” “I swear..you always show up at the perfect time!”….I loved it! I loved helping the teachers and learning. The staff I am a part of was/is so eager to learn and share. It has been great to be a part of the excitement and journey. Feeding off of their energy, I would “make my rounds” encouraging teachers to try new things. We would learn from, and with, each other. We would also learn so much from the kids! #kidsareyourbestresource I felt the need to celebrate and reinforce everything that was happening. As a result I began weekly “shout outs” to recognize all of the “goodness” taking place. The shout outs started with me shouting out to the staff via email. It then turned into teachers shouting things out. I just couldn’t keep up with all of the amazing things happening. Here is an example of one of our Padlet shout outs. Padlet Teacher Shout Out https://padlet.com/auth/login show an example The shout outs not only positively reinforced efforts but also exposed others to new ideas. It was fun to celebrate what was evolving. The opportunities that opened up the moment I accepted the EdTech role were immediate and almost overwhelming. I was told that our team would be traveling to Atlanta to take part in the ISTE conference, I should be on the lookout for invites to various curriculum meetings moving forward, I needed to begin thinking about what to include in a 2 day training that would take place in August, I was given an abundance of information about the new school I would soon call home and I would be knee-deep in chromebooks for the first few weeks. The thought of the opportunities/change were exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. ISTE ISTE was an amazing experience. After spending 3 days at the conference I walked away with so many ideas, knowledge, excitement and exhaustion! To be a part of a group of 18,000 people, from around the world, that joined together to discuss and collaborate about technology was empowering. A few of my favorite takeaways were the student leaders that shared their ideas, all Google sessions, especially the playgrounds and the poster sessions that were available each day. Chris and I are hoping to present at ISTE 2015. I am looking forward to playing a bigger role in something so amazing! I could share so many things about ISTE, but I would rather give you a few tips….
As part of the new role, I found myself sitting on several curriculum meetings even BEFORE officially becoming an EdTech. Instruction is my heart and passion. Playing an active role in the curriculum from the start was exciting. With that said, learning all of the curriculum is tricky. I began taking notes on all curriculum meetings. These meetings are at the district level and content area team levels. I can confidently say that at this point, I have a pretty good grasp of what is happening in the curricular areas. I am looking forward to continuously learning more about each curriculum while working with the teachers and enhancing the curriculum with the help of technology. Training Sessions The final opportunity that occurred while going from teacher to EdTech would have to be the training sessions. Chris and I worked all summer on the 2 day training that occurred at the beginning of the school year. To be honest, it was a lot of work! We spent hours upon hours pulling stuff together. We needed to have a shared vision and really figure out how to make the 12 hours of training engaging, informative and not too overwhelming for the teachers. I was extremely nervous about the trainings. As a result I prepared and prepared and prepared. Ultimately, it was a success! Showing the teachers different tools and making the trainings interactive was what made things run smoothly. I introduced myself with a Kahoot (great icebreaker!) and teachers walked away with forms, sheets and the start of a Haiku page. I think several of them were overwhelmed, but they had a foundation and knew that we were there for support. Upon reflection, the things to keep in mind when putting together trainings are: make it fun (Kid President is always great!), keep it light yet informative and pay attention to your crowd. We will be adding copies of our training presentations in the toolbox. Knee-deep Need I say more? |
AuthorHi! My name is Michelle Kenefick and this is my first year as a Technology Integration Specialist for a K-12 district in the Chicago suburbs. Prior to becoming an EdTech, I taught 5th grade students for 15 years. I had the opportunity to be a part of a 1:1 implementation my final year as a classroom teacher. The collaboration, critical thought, creativity and love for learning that occurred in those few months was empowering. Archives
February 2015
Categories |