Technologically Literate

Ah, the reality of accelerated graduate school classes.  The cohort, which seems to change rapidly, moves from class to class in 8 week intervals.  I have to say I was pleased with that until Action Research.  I admit I wasn’t big on this class at the beginning, but after learning the process and participating in several excellent conversations about PD, I was disappointed when it came time to conclude. 

According to everything the class taught us, data analysis and the subsequent action plan take up the majority of the time in the project.  We, the students, had three weeks to collect data and one week to analyze and conclude.  I am not complaining, I get it.  I get that this was an introduction to the process and now we can implement this practice with our districts, but I really go into it.  I am disappointed that I could not possibly put all of that data into a coherent form in just a few days.  I can’t believe it, but I am disappointed that I didn’t have time to write a bigger, better paper.  Looking at my schedule, odds are I will not get back to it for quite sometime. 

 That said, here is a small piece and please save your comments about my awful APA citation for an argument with a college professor :     (FYI: InfoSource is an internet based content delivery system that we are using to update MS Office skills)

            Question two will unfortunately remain unanswered until further research is conducted.  It is my opinion that offering online, on demand personal development is a more effective delivery method; however, the data collected from InfoSource (Pearce, 2007) proves the contrary.  A yearly assessment report showed over 300 failures, 54 incomplete tests, and only 45 passing scores in 2006-2007.  A quick look at the time spent showed that the average participant is spending less than 30 minutes on each quiz and often logging off after less than 10 minutes because of a failure of the pretest.

This is the only online assessment tool that we have, but it is my belief that it is not an accurate reflection of the medium.  In my personal experience InfoSource is tedious and difficult, offering material as drill and skill rather than exploration and reflection.  I point to the short amounts of time spent and the staggering amount of failures as proof of this.  As a side note, I am also taking issue with InfoSource’s overall data reporting.   To my knowledge, the system provides only one report listing access times and success or failures.  There is no way to filter, import, or export data making assessment beyond pass/fail difficult.  Chalmers and Keown (2006) suggested that the success of any program is equal to the amount of support provided.  Infosource is a stand alone quiz machine and, in my opinion, is proving to be an expensive experiment with very little reward.  

Although not addressing professional development on a mass scale, another popular method of teacher development is the conference.  With the assistance of the district office, I was able to access and manually record conference request data for the years of 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 (D.A.S.D., Appendix A).  For the last two school years there were 1086 individual requests filed.  Not having other data from other schools makes conclusions difficult, but cross checking the requests with the given rationale yielded some interesting trends.   Less than half of the requests appeared to be related to pedagogy.  Only 79 of the requests involved educational technology, while 364 requests were related to the administration and guidance departments.  The question that needs explored now is why teachers do not seek out more opportunities within their content area?     

I am finding it may be difficult to put into words what exactly is needed in professional development.  Please take a moment to finish this 6 question, anonymous survey.  Thanks, Ken

The data will be used in a graduate research paper for Walden University.

Click Here to take survey

I am in the midst of an ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT…

I would love to hear any thoughts and feelings you all have reguarding professional development and they way it is provided in your district.

Please provide me with name, experience (yrs), and location. 

Here is my problem statement:

Educators in the DuBois area school district need to provide a relevant education to their students.  Currently, few teachers are demonstrating 21^st century applications or skills in their classroom.  We believe that this is a result of inconsistent professional development and a lack of technical support.

Therefore, we will make a concerted effort to provide quality in-service training that is relevant to the educator’s aptitude and follow up with consistent skill reinforcement.  Furthermore we will make a concerted effort to provide adequate resources to educators whenever and where ever they choose to use the new knowledge or skill they have acquired.  

Research Questions:

1.  What are the 21^st century skills we want our teachers to model?

2.  How can we provide consistent and relevant training to 200 teachers?

3.  Will adequate resources encourage teachers to integrate technology into their curriculum?

I believe that feelings are relevant to atmosphere or environment so I encourage you to let it out.  If you would like to keep anything private, please note it so that I do not publish the comment or include you name on the paper. 

Thank you network.

Take Care.

First, what’s going on with edublogs?  I have spent more time waiting for these pages to load then I do writing. (Yikes!)  I keep getting SQL errors.  Maybe it is time to just keep everything with blogger.

I had a great conversation with a professor that will remain nameless.  From this conversation came the realization of what is actually missing from online universities. How about personality?  We mow through class after class, never really getting to know the highly educated mind behind the grades.  I think that is a shame.  What good is an all-star faculty with PhDs if all they really need to do is grade papers?  I am sure there is a program that will check for APA citation. 

Online universities are slaves to their own system.  It’s their books, their curriculum, their method of learning and assessment.  There is no room for creativity on behave of the faculty or the students, just a regurgitation of their resources.   I am currently on the tail end of a technology integration degree from WaldenUniversity.  Overall I am pleased with what I have learned, but after talking with the professor I have realized how much I have missed out on.

We learned at NECC that the company or persons that embrace new technology the quickest are the ones that survive.  Here’s hoping that the online institution takes a hard look at it self and realizes how far behind they are falling.  In my opinion, if you want to change, you need look no further than the qualified professionals that already populate your ranks. 

In the words of William Wallace (okay, Mel Gibson) “FREEDOM!”    

Clarification – In the past year I have learned a great deal about how learning occurs and that is thanks to Walden University.  I think they do a wonderful job in connecting MI Theory and Learning Styles.  I am a better professional because of continuing my education with Walden.  I just wish I had more opportunity to learn from the experience of the faculty employed by Walden.   

I want to thank Dave Cormier for a brillant idea.  Although he was rushed and met with one ill-prepared website, Dave’s presentation at the FOE (Future of Education)  online conference was excellent and could change the way we see the aggregator. 

First, I can’t say that I am a big fan of the online conference.  It’s the blur of a chat room, the bad audio, and sometimes disasterous presentors that keep me watching re-runs rather than participating in real time.  (By the way, thank you to the person that thought of recording and posting presentations.  It’s like TiVo’d education ) However, Dave did it right.  He demonstarted a tool within the context of potential use.

Dave used the aggregator, PageFlakes, as a web portal.  (see it here) He set up each of his ”flakes” to aggregate certain tags (in this case foe2007scm.)  He then encouraged the students to create a blog post or tag a flickr pic.  After a few minutes and a quick page refresh, links started to pour in from the attendees.  I literally sat slack-jawed in my clunky K-Mart recliner.  It was so simple, yet so cool.  

Sure wikis and even expensive web-portals can do similar things but here, right in front of our eyes was a FREE 10 minute answer to keeping everything…and I mean EVERYTHING, in one place.  Just off the top of my head.  This is reseach, assessment, collaboration, community, and even entertainment placed into a nice neat package.

Here are two communities I am working on.  I cannot stress how ease this was.  I hope that I can energize others the way Dave unknowingly energized me.

For teachers at DuBois  http://www.pageflakes.com/kpruitt/11176389   

For PA tech Teachers   http://www.pageflakes.com/kpruitt/11201963

Obviously, I am only working on local items.  I have no idea where this is going nor am I sure what the impact will be.  I can tell you one thing, the success or failure will be clear.  In fact, it will be availble for millions to see. 

I am not going to get into particulars, but during a nice conversation about using web tools in the classroom an interesting comment was posted.  The source, who ironically declines to post a picture,  questioned if using web tools is a step toward killing FTF communication and if we advocate them are we teaching our children that it is okay to ignore the human element?  Hmmm. 

Short answer, no.  I don’t think anyone who cares enough to be a teacher is advocating dropping out of society.

Long answer, this question always seems to be posed when education is involved.  Be it secondary or university is e-learning as good as FTF learning?  Personally, and I may step in it here, I feel that the e-learning I have experienced is and has been more substantial than the 4 years  I spent at a small university in PA.    How can I rationalize such a statement?  Thought you would never ask.

I agree the e-learning is not for everyone.  I am a self-motivated individual that will dive head on into just about anything that catches my interest (keyword).  I like reading, I love learning, and yes, I like that the majority of the time the outcome depends on me.  In my mind, there is no comparison between 8 weeks of on-line grad work and the first 2 years of on-campus undergrad.  During the “gen ed” years of college I was stuck paying 10,000 a year for part-time faculty that wanted to be there less than I did.  I was automatically enrolled in classes to make sure I was ”well-rounded” and was only able to sniff my interests once a semester.  I went from jazzed about running a real TV studio to a careless frat boy 2.0 seconds.  (oh yeah, and back in my day, we had to live in those 8×8 concrete cells, not these 5 room condos they get today) 

Before I go too far, I think what I am trying to say is that there is room for everything, like I said before, balance.  Technology is not going to replace FTF communication.  As human beings we long for connections.  As soon as electronic communications turns personal you know that someday you will meet that person face to face.  With the web we get to seek out exactly what we are interested in.  When I looked into grad programs it was between a $40,000 PSU diploma in curriculum and a $20,000 diploma in technology integration from Walden.  A PSU branch is within walking distance, but they did not have the program for me.   In the past I would have been stuck, but e-learning provides the platform for experts and interested students to connect and focus like never before.  There is no way a rational, educated human being can say that the 2 credit Health course with 800 people is better than an email conversation with an industry leader.   

Heck, we are all going to meet in ATL in just a few weeks and I am excited for that opportunity.  I have ”met” several people that I consider true friends and even though it may take us a few minutes to recognize each other, I guarantee we’ll be laughing and sharing stories in no time. 

Take Care and hug a friend, or as our European pals say, 

Cheers!

Ken  (flickr photo by Bonedad)         

I cannot say that I am as engaged in my graduate work as I should be.  Life often interferes and one must do what one can.  I am attending Walden University online and I am partially through a graduate degree in technology integration.  The class I am currently in is a study of habits of mind developed by Costa and Kallick (check older posts if you want to read about that) 

This week the class is learning more about rubrics within the discussion of teacher to student feedback.  This is what I submitted for discussion this week:

As we move our way through the degree program I try to adopt things that change weakness into strength.  The problem is that, as a new teacher, I find I am not often aware of my weak areas.  Feedback is one area where I have grown in this degree program.  I like to think of myself of a nice guy.  I talk with my students as much as I can and I try to reinforce the behaviors that I think are appropriate.  I have come to find that, although the students consider me easy to talk to about life, the classroom feedback I provide them is very general.  “Good job, well done, here is a good grade.” I am a guy against grades that is providing feedback in almost exclusively grade form. 

Lately, I am trying to incorporate more thought and even further action in my day to day feedback.  I comment on the overall design and color schemes of projects.  If possible I quickly bring up other examples and ask them to compare.  I ask if the students have come across interesting information related to their project.  I try to do what I can to spark a conversation about the content that the students are covering. 

Although I use rubrics, I don’t think I clearly explain why I do the things I do.  It is my goal in the future to include the vocabulary of feedback into the everyday classroom so that the students not only understand what I want, but can also see and understand it in situations outside of my classroom.    

Yes, I love myself; however, the purpose of posting this is to hear from other, more experienced teachers about the feedback they provide.  It may be teacher to student, teacher to teacher, or how you set student to student feedback.  Here is a cross section of  the people I would love to hear from:

Jim Gates

Ryan Bretag

Vicki Davis

Teacher Dude

Jennifer Dorman

Karl Fisch

Anastasia Goodstein 

Anyone else that wants to comment on the value of feedback in education.