Summative Thoughts

Blog #14

The three weeks has been quite a journey through the web of technology.  I was a reluctant student going into this course, but now I have a purpose to pursue. Implementing technology to collaborate, communicate and to develop critical analysis.   Learning or becoming aware of the different applications was so informative, especially when our classmates were already using certain applications.  Their insight was invaluable and I now have a list of applications to explore and possibilities of uses.

The hard part is the advocacy for technology in such a way that we are not replacing good teaching with an application or using it without some sound pedagogy.  The community -sharing group that is created by collaboration is important, because if we keep it to ourselves, we are not helping our colleagues to grow as educators.  We need to model collaboration ourselves in a proactive way if we want our students to do the same.

The final project is a blog is intend to connect teachers with ICT – for the school it is the first step toward creating a technology learning community.  I emailed my principal and he answered me even though he was in Florence.  “Good idea” is all he said.  So I’m not quite sure how he will support the blog.  If I give him specific ideas and ways to go about it he can be quite supportive.  I remember when we merged the two library collections and I needed help with shelving the books.  When I asked for help, his reply was,  “What do you want me to do.?” Thank goodness I had a plan.  I told him I needed a “working bee”, I needed all the library techs to be released from the high schools to help read the shelves.  He was on the phone and had everything in place within the day.  That collaborative effort took us less than a day, had I tried to do it myself with the library tech, it would have taken a month. There is a lot of thinking and negotiating at a personal level to really make it work and to get administrative support.

I’m glad Jenny talked about our energy levels when starting our advocacy because I was thinking, “What have I gotten myself into?”  It is  my stressors-taking on this role and then not being able to fulfill how often I should post things.  Once a week might be too much to keep up on a consistent level.  I might aim for twice or once a month.  With my moodle course I post assignments every fifth of the month, so the students know to check.  Here again I’m taking on this role all by myself, I should remind myself that we have a tech committee and they should be the first people involved.

Being at the technical level I am, it was challenging to get the technical aspects of the blog up and going.  I was having a minor heart attack when seeing all the final projects on the last day.  My blog will need a lot of work, but it might be all the challenges that will keep me engaged.   Over the weekend, I talked to friends who have their own blogs and they seem to think consistency in posting is important, because it is what keeps followers engaged and fulfilling expectations.

I had wonderful collaborations with people interested in what I was doing.  I did get some advice and was on the part creating a sample handout for teachers on an application.  I had it all written up and decided a link to the information was more appropriate, because it looked too wordy.  I think I will have a 10 minute lunch hour meeting with food supplied by the principal (he doesn’t know yet).  I think I will call it the “Ten Minute Technology Bite”, strongly influenced by our “Ten minutes of fame”.

I wanted to add in a forum, but WP doesn’t allowed it unless it is a customized site, in other words, I would have to get my own domain name.

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Blog Link: SLSS TECH BLOG

Blindsight

The definition for blindsight can be viewed as looking or holding a view  of something with a bias without knowing a particular view is held.  I wonder how it develops.  Is it through experience, social conditioning, education etc?

When I think of this word it reminds me when our ESL department wanted to move towards eliminating marks and in its place  to use rubrics which would let parents know how their child was progressing in their English language skills.  We addressed the 4 areas of language development, reading, writing, speaking, and listening.  However, we had an imbalanced rubric because the section on writing was so heavily weighted.  Were we “blindsighted”?  We as a department didn’t realize it till someone outside the school said, our rubric heavily weighted writing.  How did we get that way?  We had a departmental discussion on this  and concluded that we took on the lens of the English department, who always complain about the lack of writing skills when ESL level 4 students enter mainstream English.  We obviously agreed and subconsciously produced the first rubric with its primary emphasis on writing.  We were our own barrier till we revised the rubric to make it more balanced.

Before we even got to this point of even creating the rubric we tried to get departmental consensus over the idea and implementation of this new way of assessment.  All of us agreed except one person.  She felt that the parents would not be accepting of this new way of assessment.  We couldn’t get her to agree, although she did attend the meetings when we tried to work on the criteria and language.

We were told by the administration and I think our department head agreed that no one could be forced to implement it and we could move forward with or without her.  Our VP had some heated discussions with her in our meetings when we were working on the rubric.  Both VP and teacher wanted to know WHY and WHY NOT?  Most of the department was willing to implement the changes.

We finally met with parents to explain our reasons for assessing students with the rubric, and without too many problems the parents were receptive to the change. From that day, the teacher who resisted change felt a lot differently about the rubric.

When it comes to technology, I know there are teachers who are on board and teachers who are not on board to implement technology into their teaching practice or into the learning experience of their students.  Some say that it is a big investment and that retirement is coming and don’t want to spend the time to make the changes.  Others are just fine with what they are doing now-curriculum hasn’t changed or some don’t have the patience with the infrastructure that makes it hard to use technology.  There are many reasons not to use technology, but the phenomena of technology is here and with new changes to the education plan, we will be mandated to implement technology and we won’t be ready unless we start.  The why and the how are such important questions- a little scary to even try to or attempt to answer.  Educational leadership??

The final project, a blog which is trying to help teachers collaborate is coming along, but I’m a little scared to launch it because I can foresee the “blindsightness”.  I guess I need a plan to address the “what if” scenarios.

Interesting post on Ipads and how school districts are buying them and investing in them without even knowing if the infastructure or why we want them.  Our school has always had a broadband problem.  For some reason the old part of the school has had its issues.  About a year ago the tech department realized that student traffic was enormous at our school.  The broadband being used up to play games and download movies.  As a result, they cut cut down the broadband width, so they couldn’t do this.  The result is that the students can only email or text, doing anything else is painfully inefficient.  Bringing your own device to do research in the classroom is very difficult.

So everyone is keen to get ipads, but as a school we haven’t addressed the broadband issue.  We have a couple of servers, the teacher server is fine, and I’m sure the administrators are doing well with their access.  The techs seem to have a rule, if a student touches a piece of hardware must be configured to work on the student server.  So theoretically the laptop I have at school can only be used by me.  It makesso much sense to know the technological issues before spending so much money.

We don’t know why we want the Ipads.  It seems to be a trend and everyone is jumping on the band wagon and making Apple very wealthy.  I use some applications with my classes, but I haven’t had the chance to get trained.  We had a couple of older ipads which came to the school for a trial and teachers were able to sign them out for two months.  However without any training, it was a portable email reader.  We were allowed to download applications, but with so many in the app store it was a pretty intimidating process.  I guess in this situation we were the students thrown some device, and asked to get comfortable with it. There was no teaching or pro-d.,  nobody  tried to help nor did anyone think about setting up some collaboration time to help each other out.

I decided it was a waste of my time and left the thought of ever getting one to retirement.  I did get one and thought if I could get trained it could lead to possibilities.  I find an online Ipad course and am enrolled in it.  I have a year to learn the modules.

We had a mobile lab of Ipads come to the school, but the teacher using them wouldn’t share.  She didn’t want any student work lost and the time or booking wasn’t flexible for her.  I think we need all kinds of policy and infrastructure before we consider buying them.  I don’t think we addressed the “why” aspect of getting new hardware.  I know that the teacher who previously used them would book them and I might try something with my students, but two teachers are not enough teachers to make full use of them.  i know some teachers would use them for research, but we have a lab of new computers

We have two high def tvs with apple T v and ipads attached to them, but most of the time they sit in the VPs office collecting dust.  Teachers are busy people and learning how to use equipment is not always that easy.  The decision to buy those Tvs was an administrative decision and so it just sits unused.

I suggested that the tvs be relocated where teachers could have easier access.  To walk to and from the administrator’s office is 1/4 of a mile.  We are really spread out!  No wonder the majority of the teachers didn’t use it. For next year I suggested that at least one unit be left where teachers are so they could get more use out of the tv sets.

The future might be a scenario llike thiis,  the laptop to word process and the iPad to read something-two devices being used simultaneously.

Summary of Week #2 and Final Project Proposal

Had an interesting time connecting with my group members in the Inquiry group.  We had a mixture of elementary and high school so the mixture was interesting.  As for myself, “inquiry” was a new buzz word.  Was it the same as “resource” based learning or was it simply research.  I spent a few days just observing and seeing how they connected with the topic and finally I had to ask the basic question how is “inquiry” based learning different from just plain research?  They were able to explain the difference and the importance of  the “big question” based on the curriculum.

I was later able to connect the “Inquiry” model with what I planned to talk about (Bloom’s New Taxonomy) and Language  in my summative talk, so I was pleased.  For someone who has been out of school it was a quite a thinking process.  For me, the theory has to connect to my practice and implementation, otherwise it gets filed in the back of my brain and could lay dormant.

At this point I’m not sure how the summative presentation will connect, with the final project, but it just might still need to be processed.

Proposal for Final Project

One of the things I have notice and it was not such a concern for me at the time is the growing divide between technology and teachers.  We have a group of teachers who are willing to embrace technology and don’t have too much difficulty connecting with it.  There are some who have greater difficulties.  This creates a disparity and divide between these groups of teachers.  Of course there are some teachers who can find themselves in between the two groups.  However, the goal for the final project will be to create a blog to connect teachers and support staff with technology at SLSS.  This method will enable ways for me to communicate information on how to connect with technology and how to encourage users and let those who are more comfortable with technology the latest trends.  It will be our own online professional library that focuses on the connectivity between teachers and technology. This is a synthesis of “World Libraries”, Diigo, and Blooms taxonomy (which might be the organizational way in which I might discuss different applications)

To start might a question on why do we need to connect with technology?

What the BC ed plan is expecting teachers to do, and encouraging?

What steps might the school take to implement technology in the school.

I made some progress with the blog last night.  I was able to fill in the About page and start the home page.  I actually wrote questions to help me write the blog for the opening.  Thinking about structure helped.  This is where creating a blog is different than responding or just writing a blog.  There needs to be a plan.

I had some technical questions and thank goodness for the 10 minutes of fame.  I was able to ask Kristine about Word Press.  Some of the terminology and where they were located on the blog was confusing and I had a hard time distinguishing between a page, a widget and blogroll.  I think I have the terminology sorted out.  Kristine mentioned that a lot of what she learned was by doing and trial and error.  I’m glad she mentioned that because that is how I felt when trying to put this blog up.

As I was writing the intro to the blog the idea of members to the blog came to mind.  At first it was everyone, then it was just the teachers and then it was anyone who wanted to join or wanted to be “friended”.  After some consultation, the group supported the idea of inviting everyone on staff so I wasn’t creating a exclusive group.  Inclusivity is important and if I don’t do this from the start I might be creating bad feelings before I even start.  So I will have to change my welcome page.

Another worrisome idea came up and it was regarding participation and creating an active community.  Creating a blog with the best intensions doesn’t necessarily mean that there will be participation.  The group suggested a combination of writing blogs and meeting periodically with the principal buying food.  I don’t want to make it into a study group.

Kristine showed me a blog of the daring librarian.  Visually it looked stunning, but it seemed that there was a lot of constant updating and work involved.  As a visitor to the blog I might just look at it visit a few links, but I’m not sure if I would participate, because she is soooo “connected”.  I guess finding a balance and growing with the community that it will hopefully created might be a way to pursue this.

Two things to consider for the next pages-

1.  language cognitive domain

2.  structural coupling

How do you do this without being intimidating?

I added a share button to the blog.  I don’t use facebook, but I guess I shouldn’t impose my reasons on others and people are connected in various ways so I added some butons for people to share ideas outside the school.

Starting to firm up the purpose of my tech blog for my school.  I emailed my principal (in Florence)  and he thought it was a good idea.  “Continue on” was his comment.  I’m finding the technical aspects of WORD PRESS challenging.  To set up a blog is much different than writing a post for our class.  So many things to consider.  The aesthetics, or how it looks visually.  Content is another aspect to consider, but I’m not quite there it.  So much research to do, for every little bit.

Apart from the visual format of the blog, I need to consider content.  I don’t want to scare the teachers or writing such huge “editorial” type of posts, that it becomes uninteresting.  Need a way to gently get our staff to buy into this idea.  I just finished the “About” part, with a graphic and included a brief explanation or purpose of the blog which is to connect the staff with technology.  i might look into doing a padlet about technology and create pages from there and also offer help by letting the staff what I am able to do to help them.  Thinking also of including some resources that we already have.  Perhaps using shelfari might be visually stimulating for the participants of the blog.  I can see why Jenny only expects it to be a work in progress.  Something like a tech blog continues until there is no one to participate.

How can I get contributors to the blog?  I’m going to get the principal to write something and to perhaps contact our tech committee and the staff members that have given tech workshops to include their views or tips.

i wonder if blogs take on a life of their own, or is it always in the hands of the creator or manager of the blog?  I need to see some samples of other blogs.

World Libraries

The idea of World Libraries-never even thought about it, I was so busy maintaining my library that I couldn’t think beyond the physical walls and my own mental wall.  This is something to explore and to include on my library website. I’ve used the Internet Public library for myself, but never thought to make it accessible for students.  Opened my eyes.  I will definitely look at this and find some sites for students to visit.

I asked my group if they ever thought about something on a smaller scale, at the district level to be exact.  As we turn to more digital materials, access to  digital books would be a great way to start to move towards digital media.  It was the vision of our previous district library person to move to this end and house the ebooks in Elibrary.  The only problem was the accessibility and the records not being included at the school level.  Students don’t want to do too many tasks to retrieve information or they will simply turn to Wikipedia. Access had to be simple. I asked for the collection to be distributed to all the libraries with the resources to be cataloged.  It took many months to get it up and running.  Our district was not doing the updates necessary to house ebooks in the various school collections.  The IT department found out that the last update was not enough to get the ebooks into our collections.  All updates were interrelated and were needed.

A couople of years ago I sat on a  committee with TLs and librarians from public libraries in Richmond.  The public libraries wanted to meet to discuss how they could provide programs for students.  Most school librarians saw this as a plot to have the public librarians replace school libraries or teacher librarians.  I didn’t feel this way, our collections are different, the mandate of the public libraries has a much broader focus and school libraries support the curriculum being taught.  We are specialized and they are not.  It has been a while, but the committee slowly faded because we as a group were not willing to find a collaborative model to share resources.  I wonder what it would be like if we called on the public libraries to incorporate some of their author visits to our schools?

What I wanted to see was something more local and obtainable than having a “World library”.  I didn’t think it was a wise choice for school libraries and public libraries to pay for the same databases and licenses.  Nothing came about, but as budgets get tighter, it might be something to re-examine.  We should be sharing resources, however we were told, and I can’t recall that our electronic link to our public library website was not to be used as an extension to our library. This is the exact opposite of the idea of World libraries!!  By the same token it is funny that we use our computer labs (mine is attached to the library and students use the lab and or library to do their projects).

Leading Cultural Change

Interesting food for thought today.  I’m trying to grapple with the three terms and how it can affect change within the school environment.  Like the natural environment, the school environment exists with the living entities  (teachers, students, administration, support staff) within the structure.  We certainly can’t have one without the other and so we are connected.

In our current educational framework, we often see ourselves and our classrooms as our domains and exist within the framework of what we call school.  We see ourselves as autonomous professionals (may be even masters of our class, what ever the teacher says goes).  We are the sages on the stage in this model.  Our job as we have been taught (at least in my era) was to impart information and our students’ job was to learn what we taught, but can this be the model for the 21st century?  How much information can we teach when the world is changing so quickly.  New information is being added all the time.  With the current model of classroom teaching are we not isolating ourselves from the real world? People in industry work collaboratively all the time.  The school environment as it is can’t really exist unto to itself.  It is part of the greater environment or the greater world.  We are in trouble if we continue on this way and not embrace change with technology and the curriculum.

Schools and the educational system need to think about structural coupling with technology.  The environment we live in has changed in terms of our technological use and influence and we need to examine how we can connect with the changes we are experiencing.  Human beings have a drive to feel connected in the broadest terms, biologically, culturally and technologically.  So how do we connect ourselves with technology?

One way is to connect with language, it is what educators are best at, communicating with language. In my library I am trying to connect research projects with technology and also connect teachers with technology as a way to reflect the changes in the world that influence who we are, how we live and how we influence each other. To get the teachers to “buy” into technological change and learning  I create “tip sheets” for students and teachers to use when introducing new technology.  I don’t put any identification on it such as created by Ms. Shigeno or SLSS Library Program.  It is “tip sheet” to be used collaboratively.  Some teachers will go through it on their own time, others will not.

This is part of a conversation I encountered.

“Mr. Bentley, I can’t make any changes to Glogster poster”

“Did you read the tip sheet?  It says here…” as he walks over to the student with the tip sheet.

“You have to read the handout, you need to go into edit mode.”

“Oh, thanks Mr. Bentley.”

The teacher was able to help with student without having to teach the application, and felt like he was contributing to his student’s learning.  I never distribute the tip sheet, I want the teacher to feel a part of implementing technology into student learning.  Language was an important element in changing behaviour.

I’m not quite sure how I fit into my group since I’ve chosen to take Bloom’s taxonomy and to create a repository of ICT skills that I would further like to develop as a librarian to facilitate learning.

I might try to develop an inquiry question and start to work on the ICT skills for ESL students.  I will be teaching ESL science next term and it has always been difficult to find projects for them to do that are manageable.

Cultural Change

Six years ago our school went through an amalgamation with another school.  The other school’s building was falling apart and we had a newer school.  The funding was to add an extension on to our existing school. It was a difficult process.  The other school had a longer history and considered themselves to be more academic.  We were a former junior high school which fed into the other school at one time.  They didn’t consider us as quite academic.  But our dwindling numbers forced us into a merge and this was a difficult process.  We had to merge two different school cultures.  So what were the issues and what were the cultures?

We did things differently, we had different events and as educators we valued different aspects of teaching and learning.  Senior teachers taught grades 11 and 12.  Everyone else was considered to not have enough experience.  The library had a circulation, but was not welcoming.   The librarian did not do any orientation, or teach any research skills.  This is only conjecture and not substantiated by research on my part.  On the other hand, we had a website, orientation for all new students, research skills were taught in context to various assignments.

When we came together, we were two different and separate entities.  Our science department, the most cohesive department in terms of goals and teaching were doing ELOs.  They continued with their ELOs and the other teachers did their own thing.  The students must have felt this because they wanted to go back to their own old school.  Even though it was run down.  For spirit week, some of the students would wear their former colours.  We were two solitudes.

We did come together and last year we had our first graduating class which came into our first year as grade 8s in the amalgamated school.  Trust and prejudgement were factors which inhibited us from coming together sooner. For the other school they were leaving their territory and coming to another school’s territory (our). We must have made them feel like the guests, hoping they would leave.

How did the library figure into this picture of cultural chaos?

• Get to know the staff, names and positions
• Bend over backwards to get the teachers from the other school to buy into what you have
• Respect where they are coming from and the assignments they give.  Just as you, the librarian is worried about how they will receive you, they are just as uneasy.
• Build new relationships, let them know you are there to support and facilitate the learning of their students (I think this is the heart of the manner and defines your relationship with the school and in my case teachers from another school)

Previously the senior English teachers and the librarian used microfiche to do their English research essay.  I loved the idea, senior English students were getting exposure to what it was like to do an “university level” essay which included research.  I had to change the method of research.  When I merge the collection, I kept all the print resources they wanted to be included in the collection, but I did not even bring over the microfiche reader, let alone the film. The teachers didn’t have to learn anything, but my purpose in this case was to keep the integrity of their assignment, but show them a different way to access information.  Using the Internet was what students were used to, so it wasn’t a problem and the teachers after seeing how their student’s learning and access to information was supported were enthusiastic.

When we use technology, I think we are imposing a cultural change whether we accept or are aware of it.  How do we use technology to facilitate learning?  How do we make our student active learners?  How do we bring learning into the 21st century?  Students can buy into technology much easier than adults sometimes.  Sometimes, students do not want to deal with change.  For example, some students didn’t want to learn how to use Glogster, this would mean they would actually have to learn some technology related to learning and it wasn’t leaning how to play a game.  Others couldn’t believe how great their posters were.

TLs are the forefront to make educational change happen in a school, but we have to be willing to make the change first.

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