Here are the results!
We had 2 requests from our 61 preschool letters for a total of 3%. Kindergarten had 14 requests from 41 letters for a total of 34%. In 1st grade, 21 of 63 letters requested technology for a total of 33% of 1st grade letters. Second grade made 34 requests out of 69 letters for a total of 49% of letters. Finally, 3rd grade requested technology 18 times out of 41 letters for a total of 43%. In total, out of 220 letters published in the paper, 89 letters requested technology. This means that 40% of letters written and published requested technology in some form. There was also an increase as the students got older in frequency of technology requests. In terms of type of technology requested, 29% of requests asked for a tablet of some kind, either a Kindle, iPad, Leapfrog, or some other device. 23% requested a game system - a DS, PSP, PS3 or 4, or an XBox 360. 22% wanted a video game of some kind, with Skylanders Trap Team being the clear front runner. 7% of requests asked for a cell phone - either an iPhone or a smartphone. Considering that these are students 8 years old or younger, that percentage surprised me. 5% requested a computer or laptop. 9% wanted an MP3 player, with iPod Touch being the most requested. Finally, 3% requested accessories of some kind - a controller, an iTunes gift card, Netflix for their tablet, etc. I also took a look at the most requested brands. Apple was the clear winner with 20% of the requests. This was followed by Nintendo and XBox with 11% and 8% respectively. I thoroughly enjoyed this exercise in data collection and analysis. I'm encouraged by number of kids wanting technology that we're on the right track with our technology initiative. I'd be interested to know how many of our kids grades 4-12 made Christmas technology requests. All in all, our youngest kids are hilariously adorable with their requests and curiosity about Santa. I already can't wait to read next year's letter! I've gotten the opportunity this semester to work with some great teachers and see the awesome ways they're adding technology resources to their classrooms. This week, I went to visit Mrs. Kalinowski's 5th grade Science class to see a great formative assessment tool - Kahoot. Kahoot is different from other formative assessment sites or apps in that it uses a game-based approach. The teacher or students creates questions, then starts a Kahoot It session. Kids join the session, and then it's game on! Participants have 5 seconds to read each question, then they pick the correct answer. They have 30 seconds to answer each question. Once the question is answered, Kahoot shows how many teams picked each answer. At the same time, participants see their points and how many points it will take to pass the team ahead of them. Kahoot then shows everyone the top 5 teams, and then it's time for the next question. It's engaging and intense! Watch the video to see Kahoot in action: After the game is over, kids get the chance to rate the program and the questions. Was it fun? Did they learn? Would they play again? For me, Kahoot is a definite A+ of a resource. The energy level in the room was focused, fun, and positive. Kids were having fun and learning. But don't just take my word for it! Here's what Mrs. K's teams had to say: Thank you to Mrs. Kalinowski for inviting me to her classroom to learn about Kahoot, and thank you to Mrs. K's kids who let me play along! I had a great time!
Welcome to November, people! I feel like I sneezed and October went by. Let's talk technology.
When we last spoke, we were about two weeks in to the first pilot experience classroom. We had some mixed reviews about the devices, especially when the kids were able to play with Chromebooks. They found them easy to use, and they liked both the integrated keyboard and the ability to stay logged into Google all the time. Compared to the iPads, Chromebooks were a more familiar device to what the kids were used to in terms of computing. That said, they were a comfortable device for the kids, which if we're to do what's in the best interests of all our students, they may not be the best choice. A Chromebook won't push our kids out of their comfort zone into their learning zone. They have the ability to word process and surf the internet, but they're very limited in terms of content creation. And in the words of our MOREnet consultant, "Without the Internet, the Chromebooks are essentially worthless." That's a big deal, considering that we have potentially 10% of our families with no access to Internet outside of school. I've been trying to keep an open mind about the Chromebooks because I enjoyed using it as much as the kids. It's limited in what it can do, but for surfing the web and using Google apps, it's great. After attending a curriculum workshop at Apple Executive in Chicago, I was completely awed by the care and precision that Apple puts into their products, not just in the product itself but in how it's used in education. An iPad can do everything a Chromebook can do and beyond, and it's only about $100 more. For example, I can take an online article on an iPad, transform it to speech through iTunes, and give my students who struggle with reading an audio copy through iTunesU. What's brilliant is that this audio copy doesn't sound robotic. It has 18 different breath sounds that makes it seem like a real person is reading to you. I went to the MOREnet Technology Conference in Columbia last week, and I wanted to attend several 1:1 sessions, especially of schools who chose Chromebooks. My question in every session was the same - why Chromebooks? Every time, the presenters said because of cost. That's just not a good enough reason for me. I don't want to choose a device because it's cheaper. I want to choose a device that's going to transform the way we teach and learn so that five years from now, every single student I ask will tell me, "I love school because it's engaging and relevant. We get to learn so much cool stuff." I don't know necessarily that the Chromebook will do that for us. We have several more Chromebook days in different subjects planned, so I'll keep my mind open to its possibilities. We're now in the second classroom with the iPads, which is a creative writing class led by Kortney Sebben. She's had very positive reviews of the technology and the apps she's using with the kids. She's focused on three apps - Word Mover, Inspire, and Curator. Word Mover is a magnetic poetry app that the kids use for their warm-ups. Inspire is a creative writing prompt generator, and it's awesome. The kids can choose to have a picture prompt, a quote prompt, a random prompt, or a first line prompt. They then use it to write their daily creative writing. Finally, they're using Curator to put together their digital portfolios. Curator is a grid-based app, where each block of the grid has the ability to add text, an image, or a website. They can also add notes to each block. On Thursday, students will participate in a creative writing gallery walk where they'll browse each other's Curators and give critical feedback on the contents. Kortney has said her students enjoy using the apps and are only frustrated when having to use the keyboard to type. I'm disappointed in the keyboards, considering that they're designed specifically for the iPad, and they're promoted by Apple. We'll not be purchasing those keyboards in the future, that's for sure. Instead, I talked to a couple of students about which case they'd prefer. They said that a case like mine where it takes the iPad and transforms it to a laptop would be the coolest. I hesitated to do a bluetooth keyboard because I liked the idea of not having to sync the keyboard every time, but I see the benefits now. My keyboard has never glitched out like the plug-in keyboards. I do know a company that makes a rugged case with built in keyboard that's less expensive than our case and keyboard combo now, so I'll be looking into that if we go iPad and seeing what kind of deal I can get from them. In other technology news, we had a productive meeting with the Technology Task Force last week and made some high-level decisions about what we should recommend to the board. We've pushed off the tech proposal to December's meeting because the November meeting will be jam-packed already with guests and information. I'm ready to give the presentation, so I'm glad the board recognized its importance and has moved it to a meeting where they can give their undivided attention. It also gives me some more time to work on the wow factor. My presentation will focus in two connected directions - why digital transformation is the right thing for our district and how we can make it work within our present budget. I want the board to understand that the benefits are worth the cost, especially when it comes to improving learning for all our students. One of the goals of our tech initiative is to improve communication and collaboration between our parents, staff, students, and community members. We're working on a new and improved communication platform, as well as developing a Tech Night for our community members. I'm looking forward to working with the community on these two events, and I know it's going to be an awesome way to bring our school and our community together. I'll keep you posted on the details! I love that we're still making positive steps in the right direction for our students. Even with the glitches, we're learning the best ways to move forward, and that's important. I'm confident that our tech initiative is the right way to go at the right time because our students deserve the very best! We've started our Pilot at CHS! The iPads arrived a week earlier than anticipated and 3 weeks later than originally promised. While awesome that they arrived earlier than we thought, it meant a scramble to get them registered and the cart ready to go to start in Jennifer Ludwig's Language Arts classes. It also meant some growing pains with Apple's App Deployment and Volume Purchase program. We thought that we'd be able to buy an app and push it out to an individual iPad. Instead, we have to push it out to an individual Apple id. We weren't planning on using an Apple id with any of the iPads for the carts, so we had to revise that plan. Now all the iPads on the cart have the same Apple id, which actually makes it simple to add apps. I can download an app to one iPad, and it automatically downloads to all the iPads.
We've gotten mixed reviews about the iPads so far. Most students are excited about having the device and the opportunity to help make an important decision for the program. At the same time, we assumed that our students are technologically savvy. They are when it comes to using the iPad for entertainment. When it's using the iPad for learning, it's a whole different ballgame. Many of the negative iPad reviews are because the students are frustrated with their lack of technology proficiency in the various programs or apps we're using, not necessarily because of the iPads themselves. That said, the keyboards are a huge issue. They're not working well with the iPads, which is bothersome because they're designed for the iPad. Also, our students have limited typing skills, so it takes them longer to type than it would to write. Again, this is not the device's fault; it's the fault of our curriculum. Our kids have used the iPads for Google Classroom and journaling through Google Docs. Feedback from this experience has focused on organization and motivation. Many students have said that the iPad will help them to be more organized and motivated to complete assignments. One student honestly said that if he was able to keep the iPad all year long, he'd be more successful and have better grades because he'd actually do his work. Tomorrow, the students will be using the iPads to create short videos, so I'm excited to observe that experience and hear how it would compare to having to do the same assignment with a laptop. Part of these last two weeks has been spent working on budget scenarios for our 1:1 program and seeing if we can make it work within our existing Technology budget. The good news is yes, we can. The other news is that we may have to rearrange the way we roll-out devices to our staff and students to make it work. We'll be meeting with our Technology Task Force at the end of this month to discuss these options, as well as questions brought up by our students with regard to insurance, purchasing, etc. I had wanted to present these high-level decisions to the board this month, but I feel we'll have a much larger and more informed picture if we wait until next month. It will give me the time to finalize administration decisions and expectations, budget information, and timelines. It will also give me more time to talk to students, parents, and teachers about their concerns and ideas. Overall, our PantherTech Initiative is right on track. We're consistently moving forward even when presented with setbacks, and I'm confident we're headed in the right direction. Holy cow, I am behind on my blogging. It's been a busy week and it's only going to get busier. Like the Wizard of Oz, this is both "Great and Terrible". Great because our iPads arrive tomorrow, which means we start our pilot on Monday. I'm so excited to be able to work closely with my pilot teachers and to see the awesomeness that is going to happen in our classrooms. We're starting out with ELA 3 and 4, and our pilot goals are focused on using Google Classroom as an online space, digitizing Socratic seminars to engage all students, and trying to make "boring" novels not so boring. We have some great things planned, and I can't wait to share those with you in the coming weeks. It's also terrible because while I want to spend as much time as possible in classrooms, the administration part of my role is pulling me in a completely different direction. I'm getting inventories completed, budgets analyzed, workshops and trainings planned for my staff. This month and next, I've been working and will work with the admin team and staff to establish our criteria for evaluating our tech initiative, to detail our tech initiative objectives and expectations, to define our tech initiative at high level, to conduct a site survey, to evaluate software needed for the initiative, and to evaluate our overall technology proficiency. These are all works in progress, so I'll add to them as we continue throughout the year. Trying to balance each aspect of my role plus my personal life is also a work in progress. I hope I'm doing well with that balance, but I do know some items have been pushed to the back burner, like my social media'ing and my blogging. I'm going to try harder to improve that communication piece for you! Create a metaphor/simile/analogy that describes your Instructional Technology Specialist philosophy. For example, "an instructional technology specialist is a..."An instructional technology specialist is a worker bee. This sounds not so positive, but trust me, worker bees are the integral part of the hive. They collect pollen and transfer it from plant to plant. They also bring that pollen back to the hive to use as food and to create honey. They make sure the baby bees and the queen bee are fed and happy. They keep the temperature of the hive stable. They have a unique language of buzzing and they can see UV light and hear magnetic frequency. In other words, they're non-stop workers of awesomeness. That's what I do. I go out and find great resources and research that will sustain our staff and students. I support the staff and students and make sure they're happy and healthy. I can understand the tech language and relay that to my staff. Over 75% of our food depends on worker bees. Without worker bees, we don't have awesome foods like zucchini and bananas and strawberries and pumpkins. Without me, we don't have awesome technology that makes our teaching and learning easier.
What do you think is the most challenging issue in education today?I'm going to approach this from an education with technology standpoint. I feel the biggest challenge to education with technology is the rush to adopt technology without a systematic, though-out approach. We know that kids love using devices, so we want to immediately give them a device and say GO. The difficulty is that the way we use devices outside of school is not the way we use devices in school. We do nothing to help students and teachers understand the difference, and then get upset when kids use the device for Facebook, Twitter, and games only. Yes, Los Angeles School District, I'm talking to you. If you could have one superpower to use in the classroom, what would it be and how would it help?I would want the ability to give teachers the superpower of getting every single student in their classroom to learn. Teachers are pulled in so many different directions for so many different reasons. I feel that by being so learner-focused, we sometimes forget that teachers need the support to remain learner-focused. When we don't align our systems, when we spread our focus too thin, when we don't take the time to focus on what's important, we lose sight of what's most important, our students. So my superpower would be to empower teachers' awesomeness so that we can empower our students' awesomeness.
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