The web 2.0 tools that are available to teachers today are providing teachers with numerous tools to help them extend the learning of students outside of the traditional classroom. Distributed learning by definition is any educational or training experience that uses a variety of means, including technology, to enable learning. For these tools to effectively support distributed learning they should support learning outcomes, support or create a classroom community and climate, encourage interaction among learners, and encourages students to seek knowledge. Teachers wishing to enhance their curriculum and expand their classroom beyond the traditional four walls of the classroom are using these new Web 2.0 tools to support distributed learning.
Thankfully, there are several resources available to teachers to help implement these tools in their classrooms. Some of the best sites I found are listed below with a brief description:
How Twitter in the Classroom is Boosting Student Engagement
http://mashable.com/2010/03/01/twitter-classroom/
This website gives some great insight about using Twitter in larger classrooms to enhance classroom discussion. It is worth noting that students do not have to use a cell phone to access Twitter – they can also use laptops. This is a great way to ask keep the discussion and lines of communication open even after class.
30+ Ways to Use FourSquare in Education
http://www.accreditedonlinecolleges.com/blog/2010/30-ways-to-use-foursquare-in-education/
This website has some great ideas for using FourSquare in (and out of) the classroom. I don’t think I would link my facebook or personal check-in’s unless I were doing so from a “school account” set up for educational purposes – but, the other ideas, especially those for field trips, are definitely worth looking at!
Web 2.0 in the Classroom
http://web20intheclassroom.blogspot.com/
This blogger provides good overviews & introductions to specific Web 2.0 tools and has MANY useful links. If you are unfamiliar with Web 2.0 in Education this is a good place to start. :)
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Challenges & Technology Issues in K-12 Schools
What is your perspective of the systemic change model described in chapter 21? Will such model work in the school district you work or you know?
Both the Guidance System for Transforming Education (page 211) or the Step-Up-To-Excellence model (page 213) do seem like a plans that could work effectively to redesign a school or school system. Both plans offer opportunities for stakeholder involvement, support for innovative ideas, identification of needs, and defined roles for involved parties, all within a defined, but workable framework.
This system could in fact be beneficial in some of the school districts and schools that have been identified as needing improvement. Either plan could be applied to a school or a district. I have served on several SACS Quality Assurance Review Teams and find the SACS (or similar self-study) programs help to serve the school in a similar fashion. The schools have to identify strengths and weaknesses and then create actionable items to combat the weaknesses. These 2 plans provide a similar (yet more complex) framework for this type of evaluation and redesign process.
In your opinion what should be the role of educational technology in k-12 systemic reform?
Often educational technology seems to come as an afterthought when planning curriculum and schools in general. This seems to be the case more often than not in schools. In my other classes we have looked at school technology plans and find that many of them are poorly written and do not really support educational technology in classrooms/whole schools. Why even have a separate plan? Educational technology should be part of the school-wide improvement plan! Students are demanding more and more technology and schools need to have a usable, efficient plan in place to meet those needs!
Both the Guidance System for Transforming Education (page 211) or the Step-Up-To-Excellence model (page 213) do seem like a plans that could work effectively to redesign a school or school system. Both plans offer opportunities for stakeholder involvement, support for innovative ideas, identification of needs, and defined roles for involved parties, all within a defined, but workable framework.
This system could in fact be beneficial in some of the school districts and schools that have been identified as needing improvement. Either plan could be applied to a school or a district. I have served on several SACS Quality Assurance Review Teams and find the SACS (or similar self-study) programs help to serve the school in a similar fashion. The schools have to identify strengths and weaknesses and then create actionable items to combat the weaknesses. These 2 plans provide a similar (yet more complex) framework for this type of evaluation and redesign process.
In your opinion what should be the role of educational technology in k-12 systemic reform?
Often educational technology seems to come as an afterthought when planning curriculum and schools in general. This seems to be the case more often than not in schools. In my other classes we have looked at school technology plans and find that many of them are poorly written and do not really support educational technology in classrooms/whole schools. Why even have a separate plan? Educational technology should be part of the school-wide improvement plan! Students are demanding more and more technology and schools need to have a usable, efficient plan in place to meet those needs!
Thursday, April 7, 2011
KMS & Informal Learning
Knowledge Management Systems
After our conversation in class last week my husband and I started discussing Knowledge Management Systems – Why in the world would he want to talk to me about my class work?? Well, he is part of a “business intelligence” team that essentially creates systems that are very similar to KMS. They build databases and the dashboard (user interface) to operate them. I have tried to summarize the general conclusions we came to!
In education, just as industry, exists the need to ‘share’ knowledge across the organization. This knowledge could be as simple as ‘what time does the bell ring’ or as advanced as ‘how to handle a student’s discipline issues’ and is often best relayed through a peer in the same organization. To meet this need, Knowledge Management Systems, or KMS, have become a popular type of technology intended to allow members of a community to share and contribute their knowledge to other members of the same community. On the surface, we can probably think of several uses for knowledge based systems, which include teacher-to-teacher methods discussion, or administrator-to-teacher procedure guides. Personally, I would love to have a resource with all of our user manuals in one place for the tech tools we have on campus. In the ideal environment, these types of systems would be readily accessible to answer questions and serve as a resource for peers, by peers. This would be especially helpful if “tech support” is limited or not around.
However, since we operate in conditions that are often less than ideal, KMS, becomes a much more difficult concept to implement successfully. Creating and maintaining KMS can be a time consuming process. The “human-ware” associated with this can be very expensive. This additional cost can be a burden for many school systems. Teachers often complain of time being taxed already and adding KMS maintenance to the list of responsibilities could be met with resistance from teachers.
An additional concern to KMS, which has been expressed in private industry, is the perception that sharing and documenting knowledge or a resource that you possess may result in a loss of a competency which has become a competitive advantage for some teachers, when compared to their peers. For example, a science teacher with a highly developed, personal and successful method of teaching DNA would argue that they should not ‘have’ to share this knowledge with other teachers unless it is by choice of the teacher where variations of the lesson are allowed. As we’ve seen with emerging technologies before, the technical part of KMS is less challenging than managing the change needed in user behavior becomes the true roadblock to successful implementation.
Informal Learning
I love the Winston Churchill quote about the difference in learning and being taught! I think for many people this is so true.
Technology in education opens up so many opportunities for informal learning. In my own experience I have used Twitter to help stimulate some informal learning experiences by posting links to current articles online that I have found. This will often spark the interest of students who either discuss the topic online or in class the next day. I have even had students who found something on their own share via twitter with the class.
Even without technology, my classroom itself provides opportunities for informal learning. I have posters and artifacts everywhere that will often spark discussions. I also have numerous books for students to peruse if they need to keep themselves busy!
After our conversation in class last week my husband and I started discussing Knowledge Management Systems – Why in the world would he want to talk to me about my class work?? Well, he is part of a “business intelligence” team that essentially creates systems that are very similar to KMS. They build databases and the dashboard (user interface) to operate them. I have tried to summarize the general conclusions we came to!
In education, just as industry, exists the need to ‘share’ knowledge across the organization. This knowledge could be as simple as ‘what time does the bell ring’ or as advanced as ‘how to handle a student’s discipline issues’ and is often best relayed through a peer in the same organization. To meet this need, Knowledge Management Systems, or KMS, have become a popular type of technology intended to allow members of a community to share and contribute their knowledge to other members of the same community. On the surface, we can probably think of several uses for knowledge based systems, which include teacher-to-teacher methods discussion, or administrator-to-teacher procedure guides. Personally, I would love to have a resource with all of our user manuals in one place for the tech tools we have on campus. In the ideal environment, these types of systems would be readily accessible to answer questions and serve as a resource for peers, by peers. This would be especially helpful if “tech support” is limited or not around.
However, since we operate in conditions that are often less than ideal, KMS, becomes a much more difficult concept to implement successfully. Creating and maintaining KMS can be a time consuming process. The “human-ware” associated with this can be very expensive. This additional cost can be a burden for many school systems. Teachers often complain of time being taxed already and adding KMS maintenance to the list of responsibilities could be met with resistance from teachers.
An additional concern to KMS, which has been expressed in private industry, is the perception that sharing and documenting knowledge or a resource that you possess may result in a loss of a competency which has become a competitive advantage for some teachers, when compared to their peers. For example, a science teacher with a highly developed, personal and successful method of teaching DNA would argue that they should not ‘have’ to share this knowledge with other teachers unless it is by choice of the teacher where variations of the lesson are allowed. As we’ve seen with emerging technologies before, the technical part of KMS is less challenging than managing the change needed in user behavior becomes the true roadblock to successful implementation.
Informal Learning
I love the Winston Churchill quote about the difference in learning and being taught! I think for many people this is so true.
Technology in education opens up so many opportunities for informal learning. In my own experience I have used Twitter to help stimulate some informal learning experiences by posting links to current articles online that I have found. This will often spark the interest of students who either discuss the topic online or in class the next day. I have even had students who found something on their own share via twitter with the class.
Even without technology, my classroom itself provides opportunities for informal learning. I have posters and artifacts everywhere that will often spark discussions. I also have numerous books for students to peruse if they need to keep themselves busy!
Monday, April 4, 2011
HPT & EPSS
Description of HPT:
- What is meant by human performance? The book defines the term HPT with 3 parts: Vision, concept, and Desired End.
Vision – What goals are not being met? Why aren’t these goals being met? What are some possible barriers? Concept – How are goals going to be met? What interventions will be suggested? Desired End- Were the goals met after the intervention was implemented?
- Where is it most applied? HPT has most often been applied in a military or business setting. Lately, there have been attempts to improve education with this form of evaluation and intervention.
- What are the key strengths and limitations? Some of the key strengths are that HPT can provide a very individualized analysis of a problem. When a problem is identified, HPT can provide support through the intervention. Overall, HPT has been shown to improve the effectiveness of workers and therefore improve the effectiveness of an organization as a whole. Some of the limitations are that they can be very labor intensive to create because the analysis is so individualized.
Applications of HPT & EPSS in Education:
- Describe and discuss examples in education setting: The article Systemic Efforts in Georgia to Improve Education Leadership, written by Deb Page, provides a good example of HPT and its potential for use in education. This school system used a systematic approach to identify the needs of school systems, define what was needed from the leadership, find solutions to meet the needs, and finally to evaluate the impact of these solutions after implementation. This article shows that HPT can have value when evaluating schools and school systems.
- Can HPT & EPSS be applied widely nationally to improve school effectiveness? Possibly – I think HPT and EPSS may be more beneficial to school systems, but may not be the best intervention for specific students or teachers. HPT can help a school or school district identify possible problems and underlying factors. EPSS systems are very labor intensive to create and therefore can incur a large cost to the institution.
- What are some possible opportunities & challenges? EPSS could be beneficial to teachers to help provide technical support in schools that may not have on site support. EPSS systems that can help walk teachers through creating an online gradebook or logging into a school network email account would save the time of an on-site tech support person as well as enable the teacher to work through a problem without waiting for a tech support person to show up to help.
Challenges could be the sheer amount of time and money to keep up with EPSS systems that will need to change as needs evolve. If programs/software are not renewed each year the EPSS system will need to be updated to reflect those changes. Again, this costs time and money!
- If you are a technology leader at a school or school district, how would you apply it to improve your organization’s effectiveness? Again, I think EPSS systems could definitely help teachers and students “help themselves” so to speak. HPT may be best if left to help evaluate the overall effectiveness of the district or school. This systematic process can help a school self-diagnose issues, provide possible strategies/solutions, support the implementation of those solutions, and then finally assess the amount of change as a result of the implementation of those suggested strategies.
note: I am an idiot who apparently doesn't know the difference between "publish Post and "save now"....I apologize for just finding my error now, but here is my post! (this week is coming soon!)
- What is meant by human performance? The book defines the term HPT with 3 parts: Vision, concept, and Desired End.
Vision – What goals are not being met? Why aren’t these goals being met? What are some possible barriers? Concept – How are goals going to be met? What interventions will be suggested? Desired End- Were the goals met after the intervention was implemented?
- Where is it most applied? HPT has most often been applied in a military or business setting. Lately, there have been attempts to improve education with this form of evaluation and intervention.
- What are the key strengths and limitations? Some of the key strengths are that HPT can provide a very individualized analysis of a problem. When a problem is identified, HPT can provide support through the intervention. Overall, HPT has been shown to improve the effectiveness of workers and therefore improve the effectiveness of an organization as a whole. Some of the limitations are that they can be very labor intensive to create because the analysis is so individualized.
Applications of HPT & EPSS in Education:
- Describe and discuss examples in education setting: The article Systemic Efforts in Georgia to Improve Education Leadership, written by Deb Page, provides a good example of HPT and its potential for use in education. This school system used a systematic approach to identify the needs of school systems, define what was needed from the leadership, find solutions to meet the needs, and finally to evaluate the impact of these solutions after implementation. This article shows that HPT can have value when evaluating schools and school systems.
- Can HPT & EPSS be applied widely nationally to improve school effectiveness? Possibly – I think HPT and EPSS may be more beneficial to school systems, but may not be the best intervention for specific students or teachers. HPT can help a school or school district identify possible problems and underlying factors. EPSS systems are very labor intensive to create and therefore can incur a large cost to the institution.
- What are some possible opportunities & challenges? EPSS could be beneficial to teachers to help provide technical support in schools that may not have on site support. EPSS systems that can help walk teachers through creating an online gradebook or logging into a school network email account would save the time of an on-site tech support person as well as enable the teacher to work through a problem without waiting for a tech support person to show up to help.
Challenges could be the sheer amount of time and money to keep up with EPSS systems that will need to change as needs evolve. If programs/software are not renewed each year the EPSS system will need to be updated to reflect those changes. Again, this costs time and money!
- If you are a technology leader at a school or school district, how would you apply it to improve your organization’s effectiveness? Again, I think EPSS systems could definitely help teachers and students “help themselves” so to speak. HPT may be best if left to help evaluate the overall effectiveness of the district or school. This systematic process can help a school self-diagnose issues, provide possible strategies/solutions, support the implementation of those solutions, and then finally assess the amount of change as a result of the implementation of those suggested strategies.
note: I am an idiot who apparently doesn't know the difference between "publish Post and "save now"....I apologize for just finding my error now, but here is my post! (this week is coming soon!)
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