Three Secrets to True Technology Integration

“When I come to your class to observe you, I would like to see a lesson with technology integrated into it.” That statement coming from an administrator is scary to many teachers. I’ve known some teachers to panic when asked to integrate technology into a lesson for an observation. What is the secret to a good technology integrated lesson? Keep the planning simple. True technology integration is a habit of mind that is routine and transparent. True technology integration happens spontaneously. It’s just done, almost without students realizing it. It happens when teachers are able to introduce lessons and units, reinforce what was taught, extend important concepts, enrich interesting topics, assess for content understanding and remediate student mastery.

Here are three secret steps that I refer to as the “ICE” method to help create worthwhile, relevant lessons that integrate technology:
                                                                                                                                                                
1. Investigate. What will students learn in reference to the curriculum?
Identify what you want your students to learn based on your curriculum. Use goals, objectives, lesson plans and assessments as you normally would. Technology should never take the place of good instruction.


2. Create. What will students do with the technology that will help them learn the curriculum?  
Form a lesson that utilizes some form of technology to introduce, reinforce, extend, enrich or assess an objective from the curriculum. Try to incorporate activities that utilize at least one of the four Cs: Creativity, Critical Thinking, Communication and Collaboration.


3. Evaluate. What 21st century skill(s) will the activity address?
Assess what students learned with the assistance of the technology and how the activity reinforced one of the four Cs. Create a rubric and checklist that considers the use of technology with the activity.


Administrators can’t mandate technology integration—they have to model it and give recognition when it is happening (I will save that discussion for another post). However, because technology integration is rarely planned for, or assessed for its effectiveness, considering these three secret steps may make planning a technology integrated lesson a little less scary for teachers.

Four mistakes educators make when integrating technology into instruction

Technology should never be the lead actor in the play. It should always be the supporting actor for good instruction. For example, if you are using cell phones in class, don't say to students, “Today we are going to do a cell phone activity”. Instead, you should say, “Today we are going to compare and contrast…”

Here are four critical mistakes that teachers make when integrating technology into instruction.

1. Becoming Masters of Technology. Thinking you have to master the technology before allowing students to use it. You do not have to be an expert with the technology before you allow students to use it (this is often just an excuse not to use the technology). Students will happily assist you.

2. Being afraid that you will “break” the technology. Sure hardware can be broken if not taken care of properly. However, for the most part it is difficult to break something that is on the Internet—Web 2.0 tools. You are not going to break the technology. 

3. Thinking too big. Every student in your class does not have to do the same thing at the same time. Differentiate. Use small groups. Assign a project that can be completed outside of class. For example, students could be assigned a book report where they use Animoto to create a commercial that summarizes the book. Students can email the final product to you. Another idea is to consider soliciting help from another staff member or parent to help in the computer lab instead of going it alone with 25 students and 25 computers.

4. Not identifying the purpose. Sometimes we use technology for the sake of using technology (bringing the WOW factor into the classroom). The WOW factor does allow educators to leverage novelty to engage students. The problem with this is, many times we miss a real opportunity to develop technology integration pedagogy and teach 21st century skills. For example, if you have students work in groups to produce a Google Doc, I would think the purpose of that activity is not just to have students use a Google Doc to complete an assignment. The purpose should be to have students communicate, collaborate and think critically (three of the four Cs of 21^st century skills- communicate, collaborate, create and critically think).

Putting the Genie Back into the Bottle

“What are you working on now Dad?”  “Ryan, I’m doing some research on students being able to bring their own computers to school. “  What?!  I wish we could do that in my school!” I asked Ryan if he were allowed to bring his laptop to school, how would he use it.  I guess since he was working on Spanish at the time he replied, “Well, today I would have used Google Translate in class to help with these translations instead of looking them up in the back of the book.  I could have saved some time.” Wow.

With the increasing popularity of students using cell phones, iPods and iPads in the classroom, the next logical step is to allow students internet access using their own devices.   Students just like my son and Joe would love an opportunity to use their own devices to expand learning.   

Recognizing that once you let the genie out of the bottle, it will be nearly impossible to put it back.  What are some things that should be considered before, during and after students are allowed to bring their own devices to school?

How to Handle the Haves and Have Nots

What do you do with students who don’t have cell phones? This question comes up quite often when I talk to educators about implementing cell phones in the classroom.  When parents ask, they can sometimes be rude—especially if their child comes home with a permission slip to participate in cell phone activities and they don’t own a cell phone.  To address this very valid concern, I would suggest trying the following:

1. Be clear and upfront with students when going over cell phone expectations-- put-downs should not be tolerated.
2. Design lessons and activities that require students to work in pairs or trios (no more than three).  
3. Design activities that use cell phones outside of the classroom. For example, have students post a blog response to a question via text message. They can borrow their parent’s cell phone.
4. Ask a local cell phone provider to donate a few cell phones for your class.  The calendar, calculator, stop-watch and camera functions can be used without active service.
5. Use one cell phone as a center/small group learning activity.
6. Look for mini-grants or ask your PTA to purchase a few pay-as-you-go cell phones (TracFones). 

I would also suggest monitoring interactions between students during the activities and address any issues immediately--just as you would if they were sharing crayons or markers :-)

Google Docs Forms Uses for Ed Leaders

For the last few months I have been hearing how great Google Docs is for educators.  The potential is unlimited--especially for Principals!
 
Each year we give our teachers an End of the Year Packet (a pretty thick one) that includes directions on how to close out the school year. Most of the time, the staff gets pretty excited about the packet because it means that they are one day closer to summer vacation. The packet typically lets staff know when to turn in items like, books, equipment and keys. The forms they have to turn in focus on classroom repairs, committee/club sponsorship and things that we should continue, stop and start at our school.

This year I looked for an easier (free) way to collect , compile share (not to mention save some paper) this information. So, I decided to use Google Docs to collect data for the six forms that I typically have staff complete and turn in to my Secretary. In just a couple of hours, we had data for 15 teachers--without counting a single piece of paper!

I used Google Forms for these three items:
Committee and Club Request

Classroom Repair Form

Continue, Stop, Start Form

I also used Google Spreadsheet to collect information on students that were in Child Study or the 504 Process and students that we place on a "watch list" to receive academic intervention for the following school year (I did not share those because of student confidentiality).  The great news is that everyone can work on the same document.  Analyzing the data is relatively simple and collaborating between teachers is a breeze.

Using Twitter for Professional Development

When I first signed up for a Twitter account, I did so to be in “the know."  I’d seen Ashton Kutcher on Larry King live talking about how he tweets and how many followers he had   (I think he had 1 million).  I really just didn't get it.  After watching, I tried it a few more times and still didn’t get it. 

Although I didn’t get it,  I really liked the aspect of being able to tweet by phone and immediately saw some applications that students could use in the classroom, i.e. using Twitter for Socratic seminars, as a backchannel or to write Twittories.  Uses in the classroom seemed almost limitless.

Believing in the old adage, "Two heads are better than one", I gave my staff a homework assignment over the summer to open Twitter accounts to use for our back- to- school activity.  Our staff went to the movies and used Twitter as a Back Channel and Tweeted during the movie Julie & Julia.  The purpose was to encourage all of our instructional staff to host a blog with the plan to increase student performance in writing. That was eight months ago.  While several staff members hosted blogs this year, little tweeting took place in the form of professional development (we have however used it as a parent communication tool for activities and events).  I knew I wanted to use Twitter regularly with staff, but I just could not see how to make it work--that is until about a month ago.  So, here is what we are planning:

1. Host a PLN Blog for staff. I post once a week (Passage PLN Blog).
2. Include a feed to my Twitter so staff can get an idea of other educators they can follow and get some of the great links that I come across from my PLN.
3. Have staff sign up for their own Twitter account (in my case, ask my staff for a do-over)
4. Create a Wiki (probably Wikispace) so we can share websites, web 2.0 tools, blogs etc…
5. Include useful articles, sites, blogs on the PLN Blog and offer incentives/encouragement to those that post to the Wikispace. I think this will be the tough part—convincing staff that Twitter is more than just sharing what you are doing. After all, it took me eight months to figure Twitter out.
6. Use our Technology Integration Specialist as a resource for teachers to plan lessons and activities that integrate the resources/ideas into the curriculum.

Wish us luck!  Any ideas are welcome!

Mobile Phones, Best Supporting Actor of Instruction

And the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor goes to...

We are preparing for a mobile learning project involving smartphones with two seventh grade English classes at my school. Today it took about 45 minutes of collaborating with the two English teachers (Rock Stars), our Reading Specialist and our Technology Integration Specialist to brainstorm activities for an entire unit using the graphic novel, Maus. Together we decided on activities that involved polling, blogging, google presentation and forms, creating podcasts, photostories, PSAs, digital story telling, posting to a social network, commenting/critiquing, back channeling and interviewing. All these activities were to be completed using literature circles, DRTA strategies, small groups, checking for understanding, rubrics and differentiated instruction.

The beauty of the 45 minute planning session was that during the conversation, the smartphone did not upstage sound instructional practice. In fact, if I could have obtained a transcript of the planning session and Wordled it, the words summarize, create and contrast would probably be the larger words in display.

As we plan on integrating mobile learning with instruction, mobile phones (or technology in general) should not be the lead actor in the movie. They should be supporting actors--of good instruction.