Yes, I do realize that the word chronicle starts with the letter "c" rather than "k," but I want some alliteration in the title. This blog is for my Spring 2013 CE5160 class at Plymouth State University.
and how my school works to
achieve seamless integration of technology. It has been a bumpy ride at times....
I don't think KIS has achieved seamless technology integration yet, but I do believe it is a goal the administration and teachers strive to achieve. I think there are a few things that hinder integration. Miscommunication is one facet to consider, especially since KIS is an English medium school immersed in the South Korean countryside. Sometimes what is posted in Korean on the website does not reflect the English meaning of words or phrases.
Experience with technology is another factor that can hinder integration. Although we have professional development trainings several times during the year, it does not mean that teachers universally adopt all of the programs. Just because an event is posted to the Google calendar doesn't mean that people won't overlook it or simply not check to see if something else is planned.
Another factor is the 1 to 1 Macbook program. High School and Middle School teachers use CourseSmart for their classes, but because the Elementary School students do not have their own laptop and school email accounts, the ES teachers use technologies at their discretion in their classrooms. The Grade 4 Social Studies is supposed to use an e-textbook, but they can't access it easily at school. Secondary students are constantly creating Google documents, forms, spreadsheets, and presentations, but if I want my students to use Keynote or write emails with Gaggle accounts I set up for them, we need to go to the Mac Tech lab in the basement.
But it's getting better. All teachers use PowerSchool and AtlasRubicon for grading and lesson plans, and parents and students can log into these sites to see assignments, grades, and curriculum. The school is only two years old, and as problems arise with technology integration, there is an effort made to fix things rather than bury heads in the sand. We have another iPad cart, a classroom set of iPads, new laptop charging stations being set up in classrooms, new initiatives like ClassDojo for positive (and negative) feedback, and new faculty specifically designated for tech support and integration in all three schools.
Really, I see a mix of things happening as we grapple with the models (see the chart above again) of an Education 1.0 school, an Education 2.0 school, and an Education 3.0 school. I see myself blending some of the practices on each of the columns.
(Some) technology isconfiscated at the classroom door (Education 1.0). I do take the Grade 3 students' cell/smart phones at the start of the day and leave them in a basket so they can't access them during the school day. Unfortunately, some students in other grades have abused the privilege of having a phone, and they maliciously took pictures of confidential information or tried to cheat on assessments, and so we have a policy in place to try to prevent some of this from happening. I also monitor the students as they use iPads and Macs. A firewall and filter doesn't always eliminate inappropriate images from appearring on screens. So technology has some restrictions, but I don't think I would be comfortable with young children just having free-reign online.
My teaching is done, I think in many ways, in an Education 2.0 style. I have a blend of teacher to student and student to student interactions, and I'm looking forward to the end of May (as an end of the year activity) as I try to facilitate a student - technology - student project with our pen pals at Hidden Oak Elementary School. I want the students from both Grade 3 classes to develop a webpage (maybe using a wikispace) comparing and contrasting Jeju, South Korea with Gainesville, Florida.
Parents view KIS as a place for them to learn, too (Education 3.0). I think that is why some parents enrolled their children at KIS in the first place. So that they might get more insight into the American style of education/learning. I can remember one mother telling me at a meeting last year that her son asks so many more questions about things after spending a few months learning in my classroom. As if being inquisitive was a foreign concept! But she learned something from her child. He's more curious about the world than she thought.
I guess my vision for technology would be that as it becomes more integrated into society as a whole, it will make us all start asking more questions and help us to seek more answers. I think KIS is making an effort to produce students who will one day be adults who can cope and adapt to all of the rapid changes in technologyand seek answers to tough questions.
In the first parts of Professor Wesch's rather "old school" presentation
(with an audience in rows not interacting with the teacher who lectures in the front of the room), I found myself reflecting on the question Professor Tufts asked us to ponder...
What message are you hearing and seeing? In addition to noticing the format of his presentation (almost the antithesis of what he is proposing teachers should be doing in their classrooms) I did think about how he spoke about the need to move students away from the "How many points? How long should this paper be? What do I need to know for the test?" type questions and start asking "Why?" In my own classroom, I think I've done a fairly good job at moving my students away from asking "Will this be on the test?" (especially common at the start of the school year) to the more interesting questions of "Why do we have assigned seats?" or "Why would anyone threaten to kill a little girl like Ruby Bridges?"
But perhaps I need to do more. Professor Tufts also posed the questions: Do you think your students are bored or tired of your same lessons? And...Do you accept this or do you think it is a call for a challenge to make your lessons better by possibly enhancing them with some form of technology? I think Math might be the most tedious subject I teach, and I think, in part, because I don't like the spiraled aspect of the Everyday Math curriculum (exactly the sort of scripted series Wesch warns about), nor do I think the text is particularly challenging to students accustomed to working on memorizing their multiplication tables at hagwons.
Perhaps I have become complacent in using the series because I spend many hours planning interesting Social Studies, Language Arts, and Science lessons (since I am the only Grade 3 teacher at the school), and by the time I get around to prepping for the Math units, I am burned out. There was a time when I only taught 5 sections of Grade 6 Math with classes of 30 students, and I used to make the students create animated math videos using our school laptop cart. Or we'd go on math scavenger hunts (yes, the whole class) around the school grounds to learn about concepts like pi. <sigh> I need to recapture some of that joy and wonder in my math lessons. And so, yesterday, our Professional Development Day transformed unexpectedly into a Prep Day, and I thought about how I might incorporate one new technology into my classroom for this quarter. Since I like for my students to create simple quizzes at the end of their country Keynote presentations, I thought I would experiment with a new tool I had learned about through a webinar, but I had not yet used in my classroom, the BrainPop Mixer.
When the students return from Spring Break on April 8th, I will start a fractions unit. Since we are in the Mac Tech lab two days a week, and since every student in my class has a computer and Internet connection at home, I will tell them to check for their understanding using a personalized multiple choice quiz. You too can take this quiz. I used the students' English names (unless they haven't picked one yet), but you need an access code to log in. It's prugh001. The first of many personalized quizzes. I think I will start to use them as reviews for assessments and as a way to pose more open ended responses (also an option). I'll let you know what sort of feedback I get from this activity. While my students are not yet ready to engage in a world simulation activity like Dr. Wesch's anthropology students (with a game outcome that left me somewhat depressed), I do think I can rise to the challenge of adding some more new technologies in my classroom in order to create more "knowledge-able" students.
My first thoughts of this course relate to my utter dislike of social networks, especially because I'm using Google+ . I already had one friend express shock that I created a blog too. Because I'm not thrilled about the idea of having a Google+ page either, I've tried to make things as private as I can, but still function for this class. If I need to, though, I will be flexible enough to be more public. If I've learned anything while creating this post, it's that I don't have as much anonymity as I desire. I tend to be a very private person because I don't want anything spilling over into my professional life as a teacher. And I've avoided Facebook like the plague. I really don't like the idea that a company mines my data to glean information about me, and the thought of friending people I knew in my 20s horrifies me. Those skeletons need to stay buried. I'm a respectable member of the community now. Not that I was a porn star or God forbid, a College Republican, but there's a time and place for everything, and it's called college. My digital footprint is real. So despite my efforts at trying to achieve some anonymity by refusing to create a Facebook page because I don't want to update people about the minute details of my life, there is still a great deal of personal information about me on the Internet. When I google myself, the first hit is my LinkedIn profile which I haven't updated since I lived in Texas six years ago. I think Teach for America wanted us to set up accounts for something. I don't even remember why I created it, but I think that one of the things I will do over the course of this class is to update my profile and link to the professional people I know through work and graduate school. I don't have to create a personal page, but I think a professional profile would at least give me some control over the information about me online. My next hit is the same parent letter I have on my KIS Jeju Grade 3 class website I set up through Weebly. Then something for a Flat Classroom Project that KIS encouraged, but I had already taken the initiative and started a collaboration/ pen pals with a former colleague in Gainesville, Florida. The fourth hit is quite disturbing. A geneology site. I have no doubt my cousin's wife has something to do with this since she is a bit obsessed with her husband's side of the tree (my family). Her family only came to the USA through Ellis Island 100 years ago, whereas her children can now trace their origins to the Mayflower and the original Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam (now New York City). If she reads this post, she'll know I stillhave no problems with illegal immigration since my ancestors arrived here illegally too. It wasn't their land to take. My experiences teaching along the Texas-Mexico border for six years made me very biased in this matter. Unless you are a Native America, we are all immigrants, and if people want to move somewhere else to better themselves, then by all means, they should be able to emigrate. I did. Just like my ancestors left the Old World 400 years ago for a new beginning, so too have I moved from West to East looking for new opportunities. I've also noticed my mother's maiden name is on this geneology site, so anyone wanting to get a credit card issued in my name should have no trouble. Especially since another link lists my US mailing address. But I digress.... In my March 10th post, I mentioned some of the technology I already use in my classroom, so I won't really repeat myself here. But I was pleased with the video I created for my introduction to my peers in my doctoral cohort using iMovie.
And today happened to be the first day of Service Learning week at my school. So I quickly put together a slide show using iPhoto and posted it on YouTube (unlisted, so that parents and students need the link to view it for the next few weeks).
So, I guess when it comes to what I know, I'd have to say that I know what I don't know. I'm not a Luddite, and I certainly use technology every day, but I find I want to achieve a balance between how I use technology in my professional life (heavily) and how I use technology in my personal life (sparingly). At school, I use an iPad, an iPhone, a MacBook Pro, a SmartBoard, and a myriad of websites every day. At home, I don't even have the flat screen television the school provides as part of my housing package plugged in. I will check email, use apps, and play games with friends through my smartphone, but on most evenings, I dine out with friends, swim in the indoor pool, work on EdD program assignments, or read a book before bed. What I want to know would be how to set up wikispaces to use for collaboration with my upper and lower elementary school teams for next year's Service Learning week. I suppose by the end of the course, I will learn how to use more technology for effective collaboration with my colleagues at school and abroad. So, in answer to my query at the top of this post, Do I Want to be Connected? I would have to say, yes and no. Connect me professionally, but I don't want to connect with strangers or friends of friends when I already have such a diverse group of family members and personal friends all around the world with whom I keep in touch via email and through Skype.
After reading the first two chapters of The Connected Educator: Learning and Leading in a Digital Age by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Lani Ritter Hall, I feel a bit discouraged. As if I already didn't have enough things to do during and after my workday, now I have two authors encouraging me to add to my workload. I have to say that my initial response after reading their "A Day in the Life of a Connected Educator" on pages 20 and 21 of the book was frustration with myself. In their example, they had Susan, an elementary teacher, spending her school day (amongst other things) helping her students Skype with other students in Iceland, tagging images her students uploaded to a Flickr account, and Tweeting the principal. My first thought was, how does she ever find the time in her busy, tech-filled day to teach her kids to read and write? And do her students just carry around their smartphones all day? My school uses a 1 to 1 laptop program for Grades 5 and up, and for many boys, the moment they get any free time, they are online playing games. It became such a problem in Grade 5, that students must lock their laptops in a teacher's cabinet when they are not being used in a class assignment. Perhaps they are just trying to add as many tech possibilities into their scenario that they can, but it makes me disheartened to think that perhaps I am not adequately adding technology into the lives of my students. Even though in the past school year, my students:
1. Designed movies to animate a language arts story using Xtranormal.
2. Skyped with me while I was in Italy for three days. I even designed a website using Weebly for students to use while I was away.
3. Used Gaggleemail accounts I created so that they could email penpals in Florida.
4. created presentations with Keynote and Prezi; practiced math and reading skills at BrainNook, retrieved their spelling lists from SpellingCity, and used a SmartBoard in class every day.
I know I can do more, but I still feel as though I need to teach these students basic skills so that they can be more effective using these modes of technology (especially reading and writing skills). At the start of this school year, I told a student to just "Go to www.prezi.com" without thinking, and so he typed into the address bar: wwwdotpressydotcom.My error, of course, was telling this to a new KIS student. It wasn't a problem for the students who were in Grade 2 last year; they received at least two classes of direct instruction tech time per week.
And as for collaboration versus cooperation, as based upon Beach and Hall's Venn diagram on page 13, I can assure you that at school this week, we are feeling the loss of the Grade 1 teacher. She will still be recovering in the hospital until Wednesday from her wrist surgery; even though we are using a spreadsheet I set up with a schedule in Google drive, "if a group member leaves, the work will suffer." She spent the week either in pain or on pain killers, and so she was unable to contribute to the planning as much as my colleague in Grade 2 and I would have liked. So I'm responsible for her Commonwealth Day lessons for tomorrow, and it won't be as good as if she had been involved in the process.
So, in response to the question I asked at the top of this post, "Am I a Connected Educator?" I would have to answer, yes, but there are many more things that I can do. Perhaps this class is the impetus that I need to make more connections with technology.
