Rational For Purchase Decisions

While the purchases outlined above do not completely reflect my vision of the learning environment of the 21^st Century Learner, I recognize the limitations of planning and implementing technology across an organization as large as our school board. I feel that the tools that I have selected will meet a variety of important needs in the classroom.

I will address each of the 3 items using the following criteria: Instructional Relevance, Motivation and Engagement, Differentiated Instruction, Digital Literacy, and Equity. Prior to rationalizing the purchases in point form I will explain why I have chosen these criteria for the technology in my classroom. For each tool, I will also list some considerations or drawbacks that may apply.

Instructional relevance should be the primary consideration in any technology purchases. Recommendation #3 in the White Paper was “Student learning must be the foundation for all software and hardware purchases.” Each tool that makes its way into the classroom should have a positive impact on student learning and student achievement. The Technology and the Learner document refers to a “Foundation for Technology Integration” where the implementation of information and communication technology is not about technology, but instead is a vehicle to [extend relationships, build community, empower learners, implement curricula, and create essential, self directed, self motivated and self-assessing] learners.

Motivation and engagement should be important components of any use of technology in the classroom or purchase considerations. The tools, whether they be computers, SmartBoards, or cameras do little on their own to engage students, especially if they sit in a corner and are never used. When used effectively, the technology should allow students to access curricula through a variety of modes and media. Our School Plan for Continuous Improvement places a significant focus on increasing student engagement through a variety of strategies including the use of technology. Our School Effectiveness Framework Self-Assessment also showed us that we have some work to do in increasing student engagement, motivation and self-assessment skills. Technology will play a part in meeting those goals as well. “The Dynamic Classroom” section of the Technology and the Learner document states that students require opportunities to “engage in learning that is relevant to the world in which they live,” so what must happen, is that the tools that we purchase, must be able access engaging and motivating learning activities. Luckily, as more and more applications become web based, the drive to have the fastest computer with the largest hard drive in order to run current applications is slowing.

Any technology that is purchased should support differentiated instruction for all learners. Like motivation and engagement, the ability to differentiate is embedded in the technology and software or applications that it is used with, however, if not implemented effectively, computers will do little to meet the needs of all learners. The “Tool Software Focus” of the Technology and the Learner document specifically refers to the fact that “Information-communication technology can be used specifically to respond to differences in learning styles, paces of learning and in students’ ability to consolidate their learning of many skills.” I think that the recommendations that I have made will allow a variety of students to experience success using tools that help them meet their individual learning goals.

Digital literacy has at least two connotations within our school board. The first, is a set of skills very closely related to what I will refer to as “Traditional Literacy”, the skills of reading, writing, reading, writing, listening, speaking, viewing, representing and responding (from the Technology and the Learner document). It also includes the higher order skills of evaluating, and making judgements upon the media that students interact with and communicating effectively with others across a variety of media. The second set of digital literacy skills involves being able to evaluate and select the technology most appropriate to complete a certain task, flexibly apply a variety of technologies to different situations, and comfortable adapt to new technology. These are soft skills that don’t require learning a specific program or tool, but being comfortable adopting new technology and integrating it into their professional and personal lives. In looking at the technology below, I will assume that teachers are using the technology to fulfill “Traditional Literacy” expectations, and restrict my comments to how the tools can create students that are comfortable in an evolving digital environment.

When it comes to equity, I am in firm agreement with Dr. Lyn Sharratt that “We must diligently guard against creating technology ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ in our society,” and “Each school should have access to the technology such that it supports their learning needs.” Our students range from the very affluent to those who come from very challenging socio-economic circumstances. We have a responsibility to ensure that the student who does not have a computer or internet access at home, gets the opportunity to use technology in relevant and engaging ways that go beyond typing out the good copy of an essay. We can create more opportunities to improve equity by allowing students to bring their own technology into our schools, but also be allowing our students to take our technology into their homes.

Excerpted Section: Specific rationale for each item

Click here for full text document in PDF format.

This is one vision of what the classroom of a 21^st Century Learner may look like. Like the learners themselves, I think we must be flexible and willing to change with technology. We also need to be wise enough not to “jump on the bandwagon” of every new piece of technology that comes by and base our decisions on the goal of creating learners who are literate, critical thinkers and able to reach their potential by using a variety of technologies that they evaluate and identify to best meet their needs.

If you’d like to read the full text of my proposal and the rationale behind each particular item, click here to download the document in PDF format.

However, with only 11 teachers, there just aren’t enough of us to fill all the roles.  I’m a SERT, the Tech Lead, the Literacy Lead, and the basketball coach.  I think in the last three weeks, I’ve only been in my classroom for 9 days. 

I had planned to implement my electronic portfolio strategy with two classes.  However, because I’ve been out of the classroom so much, and because I can’t afford to take away too much from the homeroom teachers, I’m looking at just implementing electronic portfolios with my Special Education students.  Getting the students started using this tool is fairly intensive.  It isn’t a difficult tool, but it requires that you slow down and make them think about what they are planning.

When working with one boy on goal setting, in response to the prompt “How will you know that you’ve done a good job?”, he responded “I will know that I’ve done a good job, when I’ve completely finished my work to the best of my ability.”  Does that sound like a phrase that he’s picked up from a teacher or what?  I wanted to refer to the waste products of male bovines.  I had to work with him to really have him set a goal that was meaningful to him.  He ended up reflecting on a past group project where his wiki entry was completely changed by a group member and his feelings and self esteem were really hurt.  What he finally decided was that his goal was to make a contribution to the group project that was good enough that the other group members felt they wouldn’t need to change his content.

So while there have been some frustrations, there have been some small successes too.

I’ve finally got ePearl up and running. 

Wait a minute – what are you talking about?

In looking at our School Plan for Continuous Improvement (SPCI) and completing the School Effectiveness Framework (SEF), one of the elements where we saw a need was to increase student engagement, self-assessment and self-reflection.  After seeing an ePearl overview video we decided that it was a tool that was worth investigating further as a tool we might use in our school.

I had my first “hands-on” look at ePearl back on February 18th when I attended a workshop with my principal at the ABEL (Advanced Broadband Enabled Learning) office at York University.  ePearl is an electronic portfolio package that’s been developed at the Center for the Study of Learning and Performance (CSLP) at Concordia University.  ABEL is piloting the software and was offering some training to help schools get up and running. 

We ran into a few difficulties getting things up and running during our initial attempts, so I decided to download and install the software on my own domain (it’s free!).  I’d had some success with setting up other server based applications like blogs and even setting up a Moodle site, but this was a little trickier.   However, after a couple hours of uploading, installing, configuring, reading and learning about php (don’t ask!), and tweaking some more, I got everything running.  I was then able to populate ePearl with teachers from my school and made up a demo class and a few fake students.

After all that work (and my eyes going a little buggy) I’ve now got ePearl running on my own domain.  I’ve started creating my own portfolio and testing out the various features as both a teacher and a student.  The experience is starting to make me focus on how I’m going to roll this out to the rest of the staff and students.  Luckily, the folks at the CSLP are teachers and have put together a lot of great resources including a teachers guide book, lesson plans.  I’m also wondering if I’ve got enough time to answer my action research question [Can I improve student motivation, reflection and self-assessment using electronic portfolio software (ePearl)?].  It may be difficult to really measure, in a quantifiable way, if these elements of learning actually improve or not using ePearl.  Perhaps I’ll be looking at whether or not student engage in self-reflection and self-assessment when they use electronic portfolios. 

Anyway, if you’re interested in getting a look at the ePearl environment, send me an email and I’ll make you up a teacher and student account for my demo school so that you can go in and play.  I’d be glad to hear back about your ideas.

Click here to view the Presentation in full screen (recommended).

The site I used to prepare it is called VoiceThread.  To learn more about VoiceThread click here.

I’m a poor writer.  More specifically, my handwriting and printing is poor.

It’s been like that since I was young.  I’ve always blamed it on being left-handed, though I know a few lefties who can write neatly.  While my handwriting and printing are legible, I don’t think they’re very professional.  It looks like I haven’t improved much in that department since grade 4 or 5. 

The other issue is that I find my brain works faster than my hand can.  I’ll be thinking four or five words, or even two or three sentences in advance of what I’m putting down on paper.  This leads to frequent mistakes.  Not that I don’t catch them, but I find it doesn’t look very good if ever 7th or 8th word is crossed out in the feedback your teacher gives you.

Interestingly, I find a lot of the LD kids I teach (currently 75% are left handed boys – interesting!?!?) find they have similar issues to me.  They say that they find it difficult to have their hands keep up with their brains while they are writing.

So, that’s a big part of why I use technology.  It lets me model neatness and organization much better, and I create a more polished product (from lessons to feedback).

I have my students use Google Docs a lot in my Student Support Centre.  There are a few reasons for this that I’ll save for another post, but what’s most relevant here is that there are a couple of ways that I can give feedback to my students.  My students know that for each document they create, they are expected to share with me as a collaborator.  Often, I will create a template or organizer on Google Docs and share it with them so that I’m already set up as a collaborator.  As they work, I can observe their progress (even if I’m out of the school at a workshop, etc.) and make comments or suggestions as they work.

To give an example of what this looks like, I’ll use screenshots from a document that we collaborated on during the second night of our course.

Perhaps the simplest way to give feedback is to enter text directly into the document.  Usually I use a different font/colour so that it is easy for the student to find my feedback.

Another way to give feedback is to use the built in “Insert Comment” function.  This will create a text box with the comment inside it.  The student can then make some choices about what to do with the comment.  To use this function, go to the Insert menu and then choose Comment.

Here’s an example (my comments are in the blue text box):

By right-clicking on the comment, students can then choose to delete the comment and add their own changes, or they may accept the comment and have it added to the writing the way it is.

Creating a Record of Your Feedback

You may want to create a record of the the feedback that you’ve given students as well.  There are a couple of ways to do this. 

The first would be to download a copy of the writing.  The File menu offers several options for how to do this. 

Another way is to save a new copy of the document.

This will save a copy of the document in its current state with your feedback.  The student can continue to work on the original document..

Each time you or the student makes a change to the document, Google Docs will actually record who made what changes (this is great for sorting out who did what for group work projects that run into conflict).  To see a record of these changes, click on File, and then choose Revision History.

Clicking on any of the “Revision” links allows you to see what was changed, and you can move forward and backward through the revisions.  Notice that you can see who made what changes for each revision.

Google Docs is comprised of a word processor (Word), presentations (PowerPoint), and spreadsheet (Excel) program.  Each of these has similar features to those explained above, permitting you to give effective feedback in any of these tools.

If you’re a teacher and you’re reading this, you’re likely familiar with the difference between effective or descriptive feedback and evaluative feedback (you can find Anne Davies definitions at the bottom of this post).  What you may not be familiar with is what is meant by the term Web 2.0.  There are a lot of definitions out there (a Google search for define: web 2.0 came back with over 20 definitions) but for our purposes we can consider Web 2.0 as a tool or site that may use the internet in one or more of the following ways (this is definitely not meant to be an exhaustive list):

• It is more interactive
• It is social (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace)
• It allows for collaboration (Google Docs, Wikipedia)
• It allows the user more control in what information he/she is presented with (iGoogle, blogs)
• It responds to the user as an individual (iTunes store recommendations)
• It uses media (YouTube, iTunes)

One of the simplest ways to give feedback is to comment on someone’s writing or work.  Think of all the places we can do that now on the web – blogs, news media sites, YouTube videos, Facebook pages, hitting the reply button in Moodle. 

I’ll try and keep posting on this topic and share some examples of things that I’m doing in my classroom that allow me to give effective feedback to my students and how it helps them in their learning.

Descriptive  feedback  supports  learning  because  it  reduces  the uncertainty. It tells students about their learning – what is working (do more  of  this)  and what  is  not  (do  less  of  this). Descriptive feedback helps learners adjust what they?re doing so they are more successful. Descriptive  feedback  can have many  looks. Teachers give descriptive  feedback when  they highlight which criteria are met and which criteria need  to be met. Students give  themselves descriptive  feedback  when  they  compare  their  work  to  models, posted  samples  or  detailed  criteria.  They  receive  descriptive feedback when they compare their work to models, posted samples or  detailed  criteria.  They  receive  descriptive  feedback  when  a classmate uses criteria to describe one specific thing they did that meets the criteria and one question they have.

Evaluative  feedback  is  different  from  descriptive  feedback because  it has usually been encoded and  is reported  in summary form  using  letters,  numbers,  checks,  or  other  symbols.  Students may understand whether or not  they need  to  improve but unless descriptive  feedback  is  provided,  students  do  not  get  enough information to understand what they need to do in order to improve. Evaluative  feedback  tells  learners  how  they  have  performed  as compared to others. It often makes comparisons to other students and  is  sometimes  attached  to  rewards  and  punishments  such  as grades or other consequences. Teachers seeking to improve student learning  are  advised  by  researchers  (Kohn,  1993;  Black  and Wiliam,  1998)  to  reduce  the  amount  of  evaluative  feedback  and increase the amount of descriptive feedback (Davies, In press).

Source:  Davies, A. (2003).  Feed Back . . . Feed Forward:  Using Assessment to Boost Literacy Learning.  Originally published in Primary Leadership. Vol.2 No. 3 Spring Issue  (2000) p.53-55.  Accessed from http://www.annedavies.com/images/PDFs/FeedBackFeedForward.pdf

There is a great post over at ReadWriteWeb that goes over the features of EtherPad, but basically it opens a very simple document collaboration space.  When one person opens the document, he/she just sends the link to the other collaborators (or posts it on a Moodle forum) and those collaborators can join the space.  Everyone can edit the document at the same time or at least see what others are doing.  When I tested it out, changes appeared within a second or two.  One of the things to keep in mind about EtherPad is that it isn’t secure.  Anyone who has the address of the workspace can join and see what’s going on.  So while it’s unlikely that anyone is going to be actively looking for what you are doing, it definitely wouldn’t be an appropriate setting for confidential information.

Additional Information:

EtherPad: Simple Real-Time Collaboration (ReadWriteWeb)

Etherpad Screencast (EtherPad.com)

Google Docs in Plain English Screencast

How to Create a Google Custom Search Engine Screencast
(Higher Resolution than the embedded video below)