Week 5 Reflection - Curriculum and Theory
Monday, February 8, 2010 at 11:12PM - As a school administrator and instructional leader, what instructional technology would you expect to see in the written, taught, and tested curriculum of a school or school district striving to meet the needs of 21st century learners?
- What instructional technology would you promote to differentiate instruction for all learners? Consider some of the Web 2.0 tools discussed in Week 3 and some of the tools/ applications suggested in the UDL discussion.
Week 2 Reflection: Curriculum Theory, Development, and Implementation (ISTE) 2009-10
Monday, January 18, 2010 at 6:53PM What are your philosophical beliefs about the purpose of school, about what subjects should be taught, and about how students learn? How does your work demonstrate your belief?
I am a firm believer in focusing on learning how to learn with technology and constructivist student centered learning. I agree with Postman by saying that we need to get rid of textbooks! We need to focus on learning skills and not content!
Educational reform should begin with rethinking technology integration. Traditionally, professional development with technology is focused on "how to" and "project-oriented" technology integration. Teachers attend workshops and conferences that do not transform their teaching over the long run. While teachers are generally excited by these activities and often include something new in their classroom as a result, we are not seeing any real educational reform. Paul George included a link in our team discussion that I think identifies what I am talking about. The author of the article talks about how literacy is transforming which I agree with to a certain extent, but then chooses to identify projects that are not transformative as examples. We have to get away from the project-oriented model of integrating technology. Here is a link to a weeklong professional development experience for teachers that I will be facilitating this summer. Systemic reform will only occur when teachers learn how to learn with technology themselves.
Once teachers have a foundation in how to learn with technology, then we can focus on student-centered constructivist learning. Teachers who are well grounded in technology have a stronger understanding of how to work with their students in an individual fashion. Differentiation is hot buzzword and really is at the heart of constructivist teaching. In my experience, teachers who utilize technology well in their classroom and personal productivity are those that can differentiate the best. Technology is finally in a place to really transform teaching because of its ability to support differentiation. Example technologies that are transforming through differentiation include; blogs, rss readers, wikis, tagging, and multi-dimensional learning spaces.
I can't imagine a better job in the world at this time. I work as a technology facilitator in a small district that let's me push and pull as I see a need. We are beginning to transform a lot of our classrooms as a result. My central belief in transforming education lies with teacher professional development that focuses on learning to learn with technology. Here is a link with the set of professional development experiences that I am and have been facilitating. When I look at all of our team's new axioms, I see my work as a reflection of what they have identified. Team B wrote, "Curriculum is a personalized learning plan that advances the skills of the 21st century learner based upon content standards, student interests, needs and experiences. Technology has made it possible to personalize learning." I completely agree and this is where I have focused most of my experiences.
Week 6 Reflection
Monday, November 16, 2009 at 10:15AM What strengths and/or improvement areas did you notice about the environment and tone of the post-observation?
The school principal allowed me to use his office to conduct our post-observation. The nice aspect of this particular office is that there is a large round table for meetings. I felt good about this because the atmosphere was much more collegial instead of supervisory. The negative aspect of this room is that it is in the heart of the front office so all kinds of commotion and interruptions occur as a result.
The key for me was preparation. I felt comfortable with the process because I knew what I wanted to emphasize and I had also prepared the teacher for comments ahead of time. The teacher responded nicely to this pre-notification and I feel as if she was very comfortable.
It is always interesting to see yourself on video. Video is an amazing evaluation tool for everyone to use on himself or herself periodically. I think it is sad to see that we generally only use these tools in a formal setting. One can learn a lot about themselves and their habits or annoyances.
My strengths lie in my ability to work collaboratively with people and give them encouragement. I have a good sense of how to make others feel confident about their work. The difficulty that I know will be something that I will need to work on is when I don't see eye to eye with someone. It is easy when the observation is good but I don't look forward to the times where you know there is a serious problem or issue.
An important aspect of the observation for areas that one needs to improve is documentation. We talked heavily about discipline approaches and techniques. If I had not documented the occurrences very closely, I would have been ill prepared and uncomfortable with sharing anecdotal evidence. Numbers can really make an impact beyond just identifying a problem. Overall, documentation is the key!
I think it is important to provide as much feedback prior to a meeting so that the meeting can be efficient. Too often, I have witnessed meetings where the person has to respond off the cusp without having put in a lot of thought. I am not sure this is the fairest approach. We are not trying to put people on the defensive and test them. We are trying to work towards improvement.
One area that I was not sure of was on using student names. We have a general practice of clearly identifying the students verbally but not necessarily in the documentation. My concern is that this documentation could become official documentation for a student's file and we don't want that to happen. The observations need to stay within administration and teachers themselves and not part of the open student information database. Is there an answer to this?
Finally, overall I did a lot of listening. I think this was a reflection of the quality of the lesson and this teacher's work. I probed in areas that she was showing interest in getting feedback. I noticed that she was actually coming up with the areas of improvement that I was ready to address but I didn't have to do that. Self-assessment was the key to this observation process. I used a lot of "what I hear you saying" clarification statements.
My only concern is that this whole process went so well that I am setting myself up for later heartache!
Week 2 - Supervision Reflection - Room Arrangements
Monday, October 5, 2009 at 8:28PM Very few things in one's teaching are as obvious about how people teach as their seating charts. Generally speaking, the most dynamic teachers in a building are those that have varied room arrangements that get changed when their lesson changes. Good teachers see the room arrangement as an important aspect of each and every lesson because it changes the dynamics and focus of the learning objectives. While understandable, too often computer labs are built more focused on electriciy and the issues surrounding infrastructure then they are upon the educational purpose of their use in a classroom.
The most interesting lesson provided through observation of seating and room arrangements within a building of kindergarten to junior high school is the change of focus from student oriented learning to presentation from a sage on the stage classroom style. Walk the halls and generally you see a pattern of cooperative development arrangements that gradually become more and more focused on traditional rows as the students age. Isn't it interesting to note that students are expected to learn less through cooperative development with their peers as they get older. Basically, to a certain extent, we expect students to learn less on their own as they age.
Supervising teachers takes on a whole new meaning to how to look at a classroom. Never before would safety have played an important role in my determination of feedback on the arrangement. These are the types of things that change when you become an administrator. Traffic patterns are an intersting example as well. Teachers need to be aware of how things flow to improve their students on time and engaged learning experiences. If students are constantly blocking each other as they are turning in papers for example because the room is not conducive to this movement, there is a problem. Supervisors need to help teachers identify these types of issues as if they are editing someone's grammar. Often times, one might not see their obvious mistake and a helpful check is always good. The comparison continues with grammar though as people in general are touchy about this type of feedback so you have to be very careful!
The lessoning of a student focused model continues when you look at how technology is implemented. One of the greatest difficulties with improving technology use in schools today relates to the argument that technology needs to have a central focus in a classroom's arrangement. Until this happens, technology will always be considered as an add-on to the classroom. Teachers who use technology on a regular basis and use it well, break this barrier down and centralize the technology in some fashion. They make technology central to their room arrangement in some fashion. These same teachers have a routine for when they open up their classrooms in the morning and turn it all on.
The exception to the rule can be found with mini-computer labs. Our elementary classes all have mini-labs in them with 2 to 3 working computers. The mini-labs are all located in the back, side or adjacent office spaces. Generally, the nice and positive aspect of this arrangment is the use of student focused "centers" of learning. Somehow, there needs to be a middle ground approach here. We need to see students using technology in their learning more than we need teachers presenting with technology. The best way to learn how to use a computer in the learning process is to use it in the learning process.
Teacher computer tablets are generally stored in the teacher desk area which is also in the back, side or adjacent office spaces. Each teacher has a connectable "projector" and screen for presenting and or screen sharing. Generally, this set up continues to emphasize presentation style of teaching. Teachers at the junior high level continue to have a comfort zone with this style as a result.
A subtle change that our new administrato made this year was having setting up all faculty meetings in a amphitheatre situation vs. shared tables. Teachers no longer had a work space. They no longer did other work while the meeting was taking place. Attention completely changed and more importantly, the meeting finished on time!
Finally, I like to utilize seating arrangement as an important factor in all professional development experiences. Too often we think adult learners are going to overcome any issue related to seating, but we need to be cognizant of the dynamics that this creates as well.
