This course took me outside of my comfort zone. I have envisioned myself as a supportive coach, but not as a “leader”. This course helped me understand that leadership comes with a variety of skills and delivery methods. When I asked for the school improvement plan from individuals in the past, I was given then run around, but this year when I asked for the school improvement plan, I was provided with immediate access and I was even told that other work I presented to administrators could be used to help with the school improvement plan development process. While attending a community engagement meeting with school board members and administrative representatives for my children’s school system, I realized that some of the presenters where using some of the best practices from ISTE's Essential Conditions to develop their policies for equity and excellence. However, there were glaring threats as I assessed the presentation and interactions. The essential condition of Empowered Leaders was lacking. Many of the community stakeholders, including teacher, business owners, and parents felt as though their voices had not been heard in the past and continue to not be included in the policy planning process. This course helped me have the confidence to speak up during the meeting and address some concerns in the policy development. At the end of the meeting, I also shared with a board member and administrator how they could better use technology to share the presentations with the community and receive feedback more efficiently. The RSS feed also supplied me with a new resource to access of up-to-date trends in the educational and educational technology community. Hack Education News Weekly could be referenced as the Colbert Report of RSS feeds for Education and Educational technology. It provides dry-humor summaries of trends that are often both eye-opening and disconcerting. In this course, I learned how everything that leadership enacts should be aligned with the shared vision for the school. The School Improvement Plan and Technology Plan should be integrated to help the school achieve its goals. I also learned the steps involved in a SWOT analysis and how to create an action plan based on the results of the SWOT analysis. These skills are transferable across domains and I hope that continue to be a value-add to my school and my children’s school district as I make use of what I have learned.
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Digital Citizenship and Internet SafetyTo keep students safe on the internet, teachers should review the school’s computer/internet use policy and review it with students. A copy of the computer/internet use policy should also be sent to parent and both students and parents should sign the rules to affirm their acknowledgement and understanding of the school’s computer/internet use policy. As Muthler suggests, in Online Safety: A Teachers Guide to Dealing with Cyber Bullying, Sexting and Student Privacy, teachers should also engage in a robust dialog with students regarding the internet including topics of netiquette, cyberbullying, sexting, and accessing inappropriate content. Ensuring that students know what the rules are but how to respond if these rules are broken is another skill that teachers can help students develop. When my students use inappropriate language when communicating with each other, I correct students and I also use it as a teachable moment for the student to understand why what s/he typed was not appropriate based on our school rules. Students also need to know that they have someone, a teacher, parent, or school staff, to turn to if they fall victim to someone violating the school policy on computer/internet. A website that teachers can use to learn more about strategies to keep students safe of the internet is or ISTE Digital Citizenship. It contains information on how digital citizenship parallels with characteristics of a good citizen. It also has information on helping students manage their smartphones and more, digital citizenship week and more. Another web-based resource teachers can use is Close Reading and the Internet. Students are going to use the internet and inevitably they are going to come across search results that include information they are unsure about. This resource is a Webinar for Close Reading on the internet. Teachers will learn how to teach students to become savvy users of online information. This webinar will be held on November 29th. Common Sense Education will also record and share the webinar for future use by educators, if they cannot attend but RSVP for the event. A website resource that teachers can use with students to teach and reinforce internet safely or digital citizenship is https://www.brainpop.com/digitalcitizenship/. Although many school systems subscribe to BrainPop all school systems do not. In order to view over a dozen BrainPop videos under Digital Citizenship a teacher can sign up for free access to the digital citizenship resources on BrainPop. The Online Safety video specifically covers six topics: that include the following rules 1. Online life is real life 2. Keep your identity a secret 3. Be extra careful with strangers 4. Tell somebody. 5. Protect your passwords and 6. Be nice. Global Collaboration Projects I explored Flat Connections and Journey North Global Collaboration Projects. Flat Connections provides opportunities, for a fee, for students of varying ages from Kindergarten to age 18, to connect with classrooms around the globe to share and learn about the culture of other students. Students can use suggested Web 2.0 tools such as Edmodo or Padlet to share information. However, they could also use other Web 2.0 tools. For example, I can easily see how a student could use a Flip Grid video or blog to share cultural information as well. The standards of the Flat Connections- Friends for Sustainability Project connects with Georgia Standards of Excellence on the Environment as well as ISTE Digital Citizenship standards. Protecting student privacy and moderating the shared information would be the challenges in participating in a CGP. Making sure that parents are fully aware in all aspect of the project and ensuring that all information shared and received by students is moderated would help overcome the challenges. Journey North provides opportunities for students to become actively involved in documenting migration patterns in their environment. Students use communication, map and technological skills to document migration patterns. For Example, in Monarch Butterflies, students can photograph or film and document the location of Monarch butterflies as they travel on their migration and they can view and analyze the data other students and project coordinators submit. Students answer questions, participate in activities and analyze maps for each “news update” created by Journey North. Students could use a variety Web 2.0 tools from flip grids to Google Tour Builder while participating in this activity. The challenge to participating in this GCP is finding a bio-migration that includes the teacher’s location in order to make the project more engaging for students. Teachers could collaborate with the Journey North creators to ensure that the best migration was selected for the students. It is also possible that some teachers would need to have fund-raising activities to take their students to locations where they could experience the migration. Both these Global Collaboration Projects include environmental based standards and include language arts, math, science and social studies standards. Teachers in multiple content areas could elevate the projects by collaboration. VR, AR, and MUVEVirtual Reality was something that was only in science fiction films, but now it is a reality for anyone with a cellphone and Viewfinder. I reviewed several of the VR and AR resources available today. In reviewing EON Reality's Tutankhamun, Google Expeditions AR, Google Tour Builder, EcoMUVE, EcoMOBILE and iCivics there are so many opportunities for students to learn in visually stimulating and interactive environments. VR King Tutankhamun is a good program for students to experience an environment. They could also use the experience to critically think and communicate about the items they see and why they are placed in the tomb. Instead of students reading about King Tut and having to imagine what it would be like to experience exploring the tomb or to only look at static images. Students who struggle with reading can experience King Tut. I wish that AR example from Google Expeditions AR was available when I was a child. I would always love looking at 3-D models when they were available in science and I would use my imagination when they were not available. Examining models would provide a great opportunity for students to collaborate and communicate regarding their analysis of the AR item. I am not sure if it is possible, but students could collaborate and create their own AR model as a presentation and for other students to view and examine. There are students who are visual learners who will thrive in a class with a teacher that uses AR Google Expeditions to help teach lessons. Google Tour Builder is a dream for a Social Studies. Click on the image for my Google Tour on Mansa Musa. Some students don’t really like Social Studies for some unknown reason. Teachers who are experts in their fields can use Google Tour Builder to help bring history to life for students with interactive maps, images, videos, etc. Students can also collaborate and create a Google Tour to explain or evaluate an event or series of events in history. Students who struggle with writing or other processing issues can use Google Tour builder to tell the story via pictures and videos. EcoMUVE graphics are a little dated but the learning that can occur with the Pond and Forrest Ecosystem immersive virtual environments incorporates great skills building activities and for research, analysis, comparing and summarizing for the inquiry-based project. It touches all levels of Blooms Taxonomy. It also includes all the 4 Cs by allowing students to collaborate and use critical thinking skills for on problem solving. Students can also communicate their ideas and creating concept maps as a part of the activity. Students with different skill levels can work in heterogeneous teams to problem solve and explain the changes in the ecosystems. EcoMOBILE extends the learning for students in an authentic setting using authentic devices. Students working in groups are able to collaborate and communicate while gathering data and solving problems in the environment. Putting students in heterogenous groups allows students to take on roles that support their learning style. A student can provide their observations, be the data collector, or use the digital equipment in the group which will enhance their learning even if they have difficulty in traditional classroom settings. The iCivics MUVE allows students to participate in numerous civics centered MUVEs. The topics of these MUVE’s range from general subjects such as Branches of Government and Counties Work to hot topic subjects such as Immigration Nation and News Feed Defenders. The MUVEs are free and students are not required to login to play the games. Students will even receive feedback at the end of the game directly connected to the student’s choices even if the student does not login. Students can play the games individually, but they could also play in partnerships or small groups and discuss topics prior to making their selections. This would address the collaboration and communication aspect of the 4Cs. The MUVEs provide opportunities for students to have a choice in how they play the game and how the games proceed. All of the games allow students to mute the musical accompaniment with the games, which helps students who struggle when distractions are embedded in an activity. Some of the games allow students to take them in Spanish, and some have voice overs for the text which is helpful for EL students and students who struggle with reading comprehension. However, these options are not available for all of the iCivics MUVEs. Some of the games allow students to determining how they will complete the games and another one allows students to determine the difficulty level of the game by selecting Elementary, Middle School or High School options. One of the games, “Activate” even allows student to set up the framework to grow their own movement. The games range in completion times from a suggested 0 to over 30 minutes. However, all of the games require more than 5 minutes if they are played with fidelity. Teachers would need to make sure that students have time to complete the games or preselect which game students will complete on a specific day. Digital DivideThere is a digital divide in our school for Low SES students that have multiple kids enrolled at our virtual school. I have noticed that some households with multiple students only have one computer/laptop. Younger kids often are further behind in courses because device access priority is given to the older sibling who is in high school. Household with less limitations on budgets allow for each student to have their own laptop if not multiple devices. The same type of problem with access for Low SES students occurs if the primary student device needs replacement or repair. Students end up falling further behind because it takes the household a longer time to replace or repair the device. We encourage open communication with our families when incidents such as this occur and as a team of teachers we collaborate on removing late work penalties and increase communication with families. We also encourage our families to communicate with our help desk support staff. They often help guide families to solutions to problems.
In the past, there were also students whose families who could not afford to purchase the MS Office Suite of products for students to write papers or create presentations. As a response to those difficulties our district provided student access of LibreOffice which is a Microsoft compatible free productivity suite. Our district has recently adopted the use of the Google Suite of products, so our students can also use free Google-based software to produce presentations for course assignments. Recently a student submitted a project to me using TextPad. Because she lost numerous points based on the rubric requirements by using TextPad and not submitting images with her project, I suggested that she use one of the programs from the Google or LibreOffice suite. Hopefully, as more products are provided free for students to use and as more teachers become familiar with them, student access and productivity will increase as well. The “Homework Gap” video really resonated with me and I immediately sent the 1 Million Project link to colleagues who teach at Title I brick and mortar schools. One of them recently indicated that students use the wi-fi at school but do not have internet access a home so they catch up on all their social media at school instead of using the devices for school appropriate purposes. |
E. DrakeVirtual School Educator, ITEC Ed.S. Candidate Archives
May 2019
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