5.2 Professional Learning
Candidates develop and implement technology-based professional learning that aligns to state and national professional learning standards, integrates technology to support face-to-face and online components, models principles of adult learning, and promotes best practices in teaching, learning, and assessment. (PSC 5.2/ISTE 4b)
ITEC 7460
Technology Workshop
In ITEC 7460 I planned a technology workshop to align our practices within the English department with the ISTE standards for teachers so that more of our teaching incorporated digital tools for learning. I created and circulated a digital version of a flyer to announce the workshop to teachers. Then, I created an agenda with interactive elements and distributed that agenda to the attendees. Finally, I held the workshop so that teachers could gain experience with how to use Pear Deck , a Google add-on, and other digital tools in our LMS that would support face-to-face and online components of their lesson plans.
Although our English department teachers are aware of good teaching principles, and they are knowledgeable about how to walk students toward critical thinking to master standards, the pre-session survey indicated that they were not comfortable or knowledgeable about how to use eCLASS, the LMS for our district, for planning interactive content that helped students to achieve mastery in a student-centered or engaged way. My aim in the session was to increase the teachers’ awareness of national technology standards, especially how they compare to our district’s and to propose digital learning methods using our LMS to support face-to-face and blended learning opportunities for our students. Before the session, teachers reported that they were frustrated at the lack of differentiation they knew how to do for their students who were at different levels of mastery. I showed them a series of pages that included opportunities for assessment and remediation for standards. Instead of using pen and paper and the time is takes to give formative feedback, teachers saw that digital tools would allow instant feedback for students as well as the palpable sense of reward they got from the badge system that rewards progress in our LMS. Further, the sequence of pages resulted in a hard number that the teachers could record in the gradebook for that formative assessment, so they were far more likely to accept the ease of use the digital tool method offered than to retreat to their known process. I asserted that best practices for timely feedback and acute treatment of lack of skills could be best achieved through the digital tools in our LMS.
Further, the teachers’ sense of comfort with technology as an aid to teaching and learning grew as the session went on. Using principles of adult learning, I asked the teachers to compare the effects of the sequence of online pages to the effects of the feedback given on papers that they had scored (teachers brought scored papers to the session.) The teachers concluded that the assessment given through the LMS was a superior method of engagement, and they were ready to adopt the tools when they saw for themselves that the numbers generated through the assessment tool could be easily entered into their gradebooks. When the session was over, I gave the teachers the technology comfort survey again, and they were far more comfortable with the idea of using the LMS in their unit planning.
Ultimately, I learned that teachers really do want to improve if the tool is easy to use and makes their lives easier. However, not teacher I spoke to in any of the sessions I provided - in this course or any others - was willing to innovate without a pre-made model that was ready to “plug-and-play.” The LMS in our district is not user friendly, requiring coding in some cases to make the pages work. I ask, “which teacher in our building is going to attempt to make this page work if it requires coding?” About one or two , me included. I cannot blame the teachers I know for not wanting to use our version of D2L. The way some of the tools are set up is completely not intuitive for the average user. So, I was able to give this feedback to our county technology department to add to its overall conversation with coders who design our version of the LMS.
The teachers who attended my sessions became a lot more comfortable with the tools in the LMS, and they began to use them in their classrooms to assess and remediate skills that were lowest on the Milestones exams. What the teachers noticed, though, is that the discussion and writing activities in the pages were actually helpful in progressing their classes’ writing skills, over and above the standardized test taking skills the modules were aimed at. Students also reported that the blended content helped to motivate them to learn the content and to notice the skills that they were deficient in. This promoted a great degree of student self-management, an aim in our district and part of an initiative at promoting student-centered learning.
Technology Workshop
In ITEC 7460 I planned a technology workshop to align our practices within the English department with the ISTE standards for teachers so that more of our teaching incorporated digital tools for learning. I created and circulated a digital version of a flyer to announce the workshop to teachers. Then, I created an agenda with interactive elements and distributed that agenda to the attendees. Finally, I held the workshop so that teachers could gain experience with how to use Pear Deck , a Google add-on, and other digital tools in our LMS that would support face-to-face and online components of their lesson plans.
Although our English department teachers are aware of good teaching principles, and they are knowledgeable about how to walk students toward critical thinking to master standards, the pre-session survey indicated that they were not comfortable or knowledgeable about how to use eCLASS, the LMS for our district, for planning interactive content that helped students to achieve mastery in a student-centered or engaged way. My aim in the session was to increase the teachers’ awareness of national technology standards, especially how they compare to our district’s and to propose digital learning methods using our LMS to support face-to-face and blended learning opportunities for our students. Before the session, teachers reported that they were frustrated at the lack of differentiation they knew how to do for their students who were at different levels of mastery. I showed them a series of pages that included opportunities for assessment and remediation for standards. Instead of using pen and paper and the time is takes to give formative feedback, teachers saw that digital tools would allow instant feedback for students as well as the palpable sense of reward they got from the badge system that rewards progress in our LMS. Further, the sequence of pages resulted in a hard number that the teachers could record in the gradebook for that formative assessment, so they were far more likely to accept the ease of use the digital tool method offered than to retreat to their known process. I asserted that best practices for timely feedback and acute treatment of lack of skills could be best achieved through the digital tools in our LMS.
Further, the teachers’ sense of comfort with technology as an aid to teaching and learning grew as the session went on. Using principles of adult learning, I asked the teachers to compare the effects of the sequence of online pages to the effects of the feedback given on papers that they had scored (teachers brought scored papers to the session.) The teachers concluded that the assessment given through the LMS was a superior method of engagement, and they were ready to adopt the tools when they saw for themselves that the numbers generated through the assessment tool could be easily entered into their gradebooks. When the session was over, I gave the teachers the technology comfort survey again, and they were far more comfortable with the idea of using the LMS in their unit planning.
Ultimately, I learned that teachers really do want to improve if the tool is easy to use and makes their lives easier. However, not teacher I spoke to in any of the sessions I provided - in this course or any others - was willing to innovate without a pre-made model that was ready to “plug-and-play.” The LMS in our district is not user friendly, requiring coding in some cases to make the pages work. I ask, “which teacher in our building is going to attempt to make this page work if it requires coding?” About one or two , me included. I cannot blame the teachers I know for not wanting to use our version of D2L. The way some of the tools are set up is completely not intuitive for the average user. So, I was able to give this feedback to our county technology department to add to its overall conversation with coders who design our version of the LMS.
The teachers who attended my sessions became a lot more comfortable with the tools in the LMS, and they began to use them in their classrooms to assess and remediate skills that were lowest on the Milestones exams. What the teachers noticed, though, is that the discussion and writing activities in the pages were actually helpful in progressing their classes’ writing skills, over and above the standardized test taking skills the modules were aimed at. Students also reported that the blended content helped to motivate them to learn the content and to notice the skills that they were deficient in. This promoted a great degree of student self-management, an aim in our district and part of an initiative at promoting student-centered learning.