Will My Professional Development Plans Help Students?

As a district level educational technologist (ET), I primarily work with educators. My first professional development GAME plan (Goals, Actions, Monitor, Evaluation / Extend) involves filming collaborations between school level ET’s and educators as a means for me to learn and then be able to share, effective examples of technology integration that improve student learning. In my second plan, I am learning new instructional strategies and technologies through the process of creating a district technology intranet website. This resource will ultimately contain technology integration ideas in conjunction with effective instructional methods in order to promote effective learning throughout the district.

While my professional development plans are primarily directed towards educators, the ultimate goals is to improve student learning as educators incorporate purposeful technology integration and utilize teaching strategies that promote 21st century skills. These 21st century skills correlate directly with the National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) for Students and as educators increase their own skills in and application of the NETS Teacher Standards, the result will be increased achievement for all students. I believe eventually both of my plans will directly support all of the NETS standards for both teachers and students.

I shared my technology intranet website with my district leadership this week and they were very enthusiastic about it. I am now scheduled to present it at the next administrator conference in January. This will be an excellent opportunity for me to get administrator support throughout my district for effective technology integration and the use of teaching strategies such as problem based learning.

The websites and other resources that have been shared with me through this blog have been extremely helpful. This week I decided to change the ‘Video Production’ portion of my intranet site to read ‘digital storytelling’ because I think sometimes educators see the word “video” and they immediately think that it is too far from their comfort zone to attempt. The term ‘digital storytelling’ will be much less threatening. I am still gathering websites that educators have found particularly supportive in the areas of webquests, concept mapping, electronic portfolios, Internet literacy, educational networking, digital storytelling, online tutorials, problem based learning, and assessment with technology. I am sure there will be additional sections but right now these are keeping me plenty busy and, as ever, I am open to any suggestions.

Heidelberg's Integrating Technology Site

This has been an extremely hectic week so I have not made as much progress on my GAME plan as I had planned (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009). My superintendent suffered a heart attack but luckily we managed to get him to the hospital before he went into total cardiac arrest. It was certainly a reminder about the dangers of stress. Anyway, due to the domino effect at the Superintendent’s office, I had several additional tasks added to my plate.

I did meet with my small Intranet development team on Monday morning for about an hour but the entire time was spent configuring Dreamweaver and the Intranet sites. Here are my latest thoughts on my plan for increasing my proficiency with eductional technology:

Are you finding the information and resources you need?

I was unable to film any other ET/educator collaboration this week although I did meet with a video instructor at one of my schools. This educator suggested that I create a video teacher resource page on my Intranet so that tips and suggestions can be easily shared among that group of educators.

The more I think about it, the more I want to make sure that the resources and links that I make available on the Heidelberg Integrating Technology Site (HITS) are useful. So many educational sites I visit have numerous links but many of the resources are not helpful or go to sites that require paid subscriptions.

The main intranet sections I am currently working on are:

Webquests

Concept Mapping

Electronic Portfolios

Internet Literacy

Blog and Wikis

Video Production

Online Tutorials

Project/Problem Based Learning

Assessment with Technology

If you know of any web resources that you regularly use or find particularly useful in any of these areas, please share them with me.

Do you need to modify your action plan?

I am receiving positive feedback about my plan for a technology integration intranet site from educational technologists and educators so I think it is going to be larger than I had first envisioned.

What have you learned so far?

While researching for some of the additional resources for this week, I discovered an article about the Moodle resource. The Consortium for School Networking article (2008) described the features of this free learning management software and I see numerous applications for this tool in my district.

What new questions have arisen?

I am still struggling with how best to organize the information on the intranet website so that it is useful for educators. I have looked at numerous educational resource websites and often there are so many hyperlinks that it becomes overwhelming and difficult to find the resources that are truly beneficial. I think for this Intranet site I will only include links to resources that educators have utilized with their students. In fact, eventually it would be nice to include a short video of the technology being utilized by the teacher and students along with the resource link.

References:

Cennamo, K., Ross, J. & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology integration for meaningful classroom use: A standards-based approach (Laureate Education custom edition). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

Consortium for School Networking, W. (2008). CoSN K12 Open Technologies Implementation Study #3. Moodle: An Open Learning Content Management System for Schools. Consortium for School Networking, Retrieved from ERIC database.