One issue that is similar to many schools is updating older schools.  Here in Stafford County we have schools that are very old and very new.  The new schools are being built with all the technology needs addressed, but then the older schools become more and more behind the times.  It is harder to update schools that are older because structurally the school doesn’t support the materials needed to update the technology.  Another issue that is similar for all schools is that teachers need to integrate technology into the curriculum.  The chapter stressed how high-stakes testing is being pushed, so technology is put on the back burner because technology is not being tested.  All schools need to integrate technology more and all have the worries of the getting students to pass the standarized tests.  Schools need to begin to develop ways to integrate technology into the curriculum where the technology is used to increase test scores and motivate the unmotivated student.  Instead of seeing technology as just another thing the principal wants teachers to do, teachers should be encourage to use technology to make their job easier and help students learn better.  Many schools, urban or otherwise, sometimes struggle to find teachers who are technology literate.  The chapter discussed how many urban districts are struggling to hire any teacher, let alone one that is literate in technology as well as the content they are being hired to teach.  I believe this is problem for many areas.  Colleges and universities should begin to require teachers to complete a technology class, so that all teachers entering the profession will be technology savvy. 

I believe schools and businesses can create partnerships that are beneficial for both if both parties come to the table with an open mind.  Obviously schools may have more to gain than businesses at first thought, but businesses may get just as much out of the relationship.  Schools can benefit from the partnership because students will have access to businesses and be able to get some real world experience.  Students are typically interested in knowing how what they are learning in school will help them in their real life and this will give them an opportunity to do that.  Business can benefit because they can begin to see what furture employees may be like and can begin to train young people early and give them skills they will need for that particular profession.  I believe that the partnership is feesible, but it would take an effort on both parties, not just the school.  The school would need to be proactive and canvas the community to find business that would want to form a partnership for the right reasons.  Schools could then work with local businesses to help the business and their students.

At my school we don’t currently have a partnership with any local businesses.  I assume because we are a new school we haven’t made the connection with the community yet, but I know the school would like to work with businesses in the community.  I believe our school should form a committee and then brainstorm a list of businesses that we would like to work with.  We could then open the lines of communication and find out which businesses would be interested in forming a partnership.  Once we form the beginning stages the school can then begin to work the local businesses to help them and help ourselves.

My thinking hasn’t changed after reading these chapters, the reading reinforced my ideas about how important rubrics are for students.  The chapter discusses how assessments need to be made clear and need to be made available for students if you want the students to understand what is expected of them.  It seems so obvious that a teacher should make their expectations clear, but that isn’t always the case.  Giving students a rubric before the assignment will ensure that your goals are being met by the student and will give the student the best chance of completing the assignment correctly. 

Sometimes the hardest part of teaching is keeping up with the grading.  It is important to continuously assess students, but time constraints can hinder that for teachers.  One way technology can help support ongoing assessments is digital technologies like audio and video recorders.  By  capturing student work digitally teachers can easily have students review their work and save a lot of time.  Teachers can also use networked technologies, where students can post their ideas on-line and get other students in their class or other people all over the world to review their work and provide feedback.  Students can have their work continuously assessed if it is on the Internet.  Posting online gives students a chance to get other people’s opinions other than their teacher.  Students’ work should be assessed by multiple sources so they get a well rounded view of what they can improve upon and what they did well.  Technologies can also make it easier to collect work over time and evaluate it over time as well.  Having student’s work in a digital form will make it easier to store the work and easier to review it.  By making students’ work easily accessible, then teachers run a greater chance of reviewing their work throughout the process and giving them feedback all along the way. 

Technology is a great tool to get students collaborating and communicating with other people.  In particularly, digital technologies are great for collaboration.  Work that is done digitally can easily be changed and modified as all parties have their input into the project.  This gives all participants a chance to change, add to, and rearrange material so that everyone has a chance to give their ideas.  Networked technologies provide students and teachers an environment to publish their work and get a varied audience to review it.  Once a person’s work is on-line then people can communicate about it.  Networking sites make it possible for students to collaborate and communicate with others all over world. 

Overall, technology is a great way to collaborate and connect with people all over the world.  Teachers need to use technology to make the learning experience better for the student and easier on themselves.  Technology is a something that will hopefully help make students ready for the 21st Century by communicating with different people with differing views.

Many teachers complain that student motivation is a large problem in their classroom.  Using the concept of learning organization would help because the tasks would be interesting and challenging.  Students could also take ownership because they would be creating their own learning goals. 

Anytime teachers can use real world examples students can then think critically of real life problems.  A great way to find solutions to problems would be through scientific investigation using the scientific method or research.  Students should learn to write critically and synthesize information that they read.  This way they can form their own ideas and solutions to issues in the real world.  It should be the school’s job to ensure that students can formulate their own ideas and express them to others.  A good way to then share their ideas with the world would be blogging or wikis.  These two technology tools would give students a forum to share their findings and comment on other’s posts as well.

Teachers at my school motivate students with award assemblies.  We try to recognize students for their hard work by giving awards for honor roll, most improved, and citizenship.  We also recognize students by giving awards for students who may not be making honor roll necessarily, but who are working and doing their best.  I think there is a fine line between recognizing achievement and giving everyone an award for something.  If you award too much then I think it becomes meaningless.  We also motivate students by having fun activities on several Fridays throughout the year where students who are working hard get to participate.  Motivating students is always a discussion we have in team meetings and department meetings

Not as much as we should.  However, we have a program called N-Star, where people from the Military come in to do work with robots, which students really like.  Some teachers also have weatherman come in to talk about the weather and I had a man from the FBI come in and talk about fingerprinting and actually had students finger print themselves. 

The greatest resource at my school for planning with technology is other teachers.  Working collaboratively and observing lessons using technology is a great way to see how to use technology and see what ideas others have for technology.  Otherwise, I am unsure of other resources we have on how to use technology in my curriculum

Our main strategy for planning is creating pacing guides based on the SOLs and working in professional learning communities to stay on pace with those guides.  Collaboration is very important at my school and the principal stresses working together and keeping pace with each other.  However, the school does not stress on how you teach, except for differentiation.  Technology is mentioned, but it is not required and is typically not factored in the planning of curriculum. 

As I was thinking of project-based activities that I have used and I have seen used, I actually believe that most project have made students think and manipulate information.  For example, students in a Social Studies class worked through civil rights stations looking at primary sources and listening to speeches.  Students were then asked to synthesize information based on the sources.  There was little teacher directed instruction during this time and students made some great inferences during this project.  The teachers I have worked with over the last few years have really created many great project-based activities that are thought provoking.

I believe that what makes a good activity and performance is setting appropriate goals and targets.  Teachers need to know exactly what they want their students to get out of the activity and plan the activities that would be best at achieving those goals.  I also believe the best activities I have done or seen are when students are in charge of their own learning and are only facilitated by the teacher and there is much less teacher directed learning.  When students have ownership of their own learning it becomes more real and relevant.   To ensure students will be able to complete the activity and reach the goals determined by the teacher, a teacher must scaffold the information so that students will be able to be successful.  They need to introduce students to the activity and build some foundation so the students can connect what they are learning to something previous they have experienced.  Sometimes teachers give students too much responsibility in an activity and students are not successful because they were not adequately prepared.  This is why the sequence of activities is imperative to student success.  Giving a introduction, a guide instruction activity first before you ask the student to do something with the information will likely make the student more successful.  Also, having student finish with a culminating activity that they are responsible for and that they must synthesize what they learned rather than regurgitating information presented by the teacher will ensure that students are actually thinking and using their minds. 

In chapter 5 that author says, “…the use of technology….reminds educators to focus on improving the learning processes and outcomes, not just adding some attractive bells and whistles to the education experience.”  I thought that this was extremely important.  Teachers need incorporate technology to enhance their current lesson, not just to use it to use it.  Technology can give students are opportunity explore new ways to express themselves and perhaps help students make connections they might not have made otherwise.  For example, a teacher on my team using Comic Life to have students illustrate the Great Depression using pictures rather than words.  Students would need to be very knowledgeable on the subject and also need to be able to show information they have only read about in pictures.  Teachers should plan the lesson and goals first and then decide if technology would enhance the activity.  I think to often teachers decide they want to use a specific technology and then try to come with an activity to go with it.  Doing it this way could lead to the “bells and whistles” activity rather than one that focuses on student performances. 

Being a new middle school, we have several ibook carts with Comic Life, Garage Band, etc.  We also have smartboards and every classroom has an airliner.  We also have several computer labs to use with our students.  Each classroom also has a projector mounted on the ceiling.  We have several sets of Quizdom and subscriptions to StudyIsland.com and UnitedStreaming.  I feel that our school is very technolgy savvy and provides a lot of technology opportunities for the teachers and students.

The Tips and Tricks session was very helpful in getting a feel for navigating the TappedIn site.  I thought it was good to get a course in how to use it before entering a “real” session.  The tour guide showed us how to update our profile and we discussed how important it is to know some personal information about the people whom you are chatting with.  We also had a side tour to a classroom with the teacher who set the classroom up.  He and his daughter showed us a classroom that his daughter used and how classroom teachers can use TappedIn.  He did some “magic” with the setup for the site.  I thought that was particularly helpful as a classroom teacher. 

I would say that my only negative would be that the tour guide would take a very long time between comments and there seemed to be a lot of down time.  It was sometimes hard to stay focused when nothing was going on.

Overall, I thought the “Tip and Tricks” sessionn was very helpful and I am glad I went through that before attending a regular session.

Professional development at my school is somewhat limited.  The professional development that is available if offered before and after school and it is there is teachers want to go.  They are not required to attend any of the training sessions put on by the TRT.    Chapter 5 in LeBaron, et al describes steps that schools should take in training their teachers in technology.  These trainings are not occurring at my school, specifically lessons using the technology, instruction on techniques for student inquiry, and instruction with new technologies that even technology savvy teachers may not know about.  I believe that the professional learning at my school for technology is limited for two reasons.  One I feel that the administration does not push for the use of technology.  We are not required to use technology and the administration does not encourage or ask if we are using it.  I also feel that our professional development is limited because of TRT is limited in her knowledge of some of the programs and resources.  For example, during the few training sessions I have been to, my colleagues and I did more explaining about the program like ComicLife, than the TRT did.  When teachers feel that they know more than the presenter, it can become difficult for the TRT to be viewed as a knowledge resource.  I think the best thing that our school does to integrate technology is the fact that we have a lot of technology for teachers to use.  I think our school is new and will take a few years to get everyone using everything, but over time the teachers that use technology will get others to use it to.  In my experience, the best way to get teachers to use a new program is to let them see it in action. 

Technology access is a major issue for schools.  Not only do they need to ensure student safety on the Internet, but also making sure students are using it correctly and not trying to plagiarism or commit copyright violations.  At my school we have an acceptable use policy that every students must read and sign before they are given access to the computers at school.  Also, before every time you login to the system you must click that you have read the policy and agree to it.  I feel that teachers have to be vigilant in ensuring that students read and understand the policy.  Students need to be made aware of what expectations are made when they use the school’s computers and Internet.

I also think teachers need to be more proactive about plagiarism.  In my experience teachers are quick to hand out zeros and punishment for students who copy and paste information from a website, but I have seen little evidence to where students are taught specifically how to read, summarize, and cite information.  I also think parents have to be informed about plagiarism.  More than once over the past few years, I have caught students with plagiarized work and they say their parents helped them.  It is obviously the work had been copied directly off the Internet, yet they didn’t even know they had done something wrong.   I think it is in the schools best interest to become more proactive rather than retroactive when it comes to plagiarism.

I would like to use MovieMaker to enhance a lesson focused on summarizing and retelling a story.  By using technology I could have students use only pictures on MovieMaker to retell the story rather than words.  This would give them a deeper understanding of character and what facts are important to the plot.  The technology would be an integral part of the lesson.