Field+Based+Reflections


 * // Monthly Logs: //**


 * // August Reflections: //**

While working with the instructional technologist in my district during the new teacher orientation I became very knowledgeable about instructional technology on a district level. It was rewarding to work with other teachers to help them better their knowledge of computers so they can communicate more effectively to parents. The director of Instructional technology is the one who is in charge but delegated out the jobs to everyone. I was in a room with the secondary technologists and together we taught and moved around the room to help teachers learn how to make their websites. There was a lot of collaboration going on during this activity between the teachers and us as the instructors. I feel like we did a great job of making sure every person was heard. We allowed all the teachers to present what they created at the end and everyone did participate so there was not any conflict happening. The only issues that kind of puzzled me was that the teachers are required to have a website to communicate with the community but are not allowed a whole lot of freedom to do it. They are required to make it on school wires that does not have a whole lot of options and they also really want everyone’s to be kind of uniform. The only issue I have with that is we are trying to make our students more creative and think more using digital blooms but we are not asking that of our teachers. I met several of the indicators under standard five of the Technology Facilitator Standards. Teachers will continually evaluate and reflect on practice to make informed decisisons regarding the use of technology in support of student learning (TF-V.B.1). They have learned to select appropriate tools for communicating concepts for an intended audience or purpose (TF-V.C.6). During this activity I helped teachers undetrstand how to communicate with colleagues and discuss research to support instruction through different tools on the web (TF-V.D.2).
 * Activity 1:**

I received a lot of insight on the concept of training the trainers. The Director of instructional technology trained each of the campuses instructional technologist and me how to use the Aware and PDAS software. Then we were to go back to the campuses and train the teachers how to use it. I learned the difference between learning how to train someone and training someone. While training the teachers on my campus I did run into some conflicts. The conflicts that I ran into were that the teachers did not understand why they were learning Aware. They knew that it was for looking up test data, but for teachers like CTE, fine arts and health they have never really been trained on what to use this data for. I was not knowledgeable enough to help them out with their concerns about it. I did on the other hand ask an Assistant Principal to come in maybe help answer their questions. The training itself went well and the Assistant Principal helped to ease the questions of the teachers. I feel like I need to research a little more about collecting data and how to use it to make the classroom a more effective environment. The one thing that I liked was knowing that I had the power to make sure that these teachers gained the knowledge they needed to be successful at using the software. I met two performace tasks in Standard four in the activity. I assisted teachers in using the Aware software to improve learning and instruction through the evaluation of data (TF-IV.A.2). I also guided teachers as they used the software how to interpret the data, analyze it and communicate it to enhance student learning (TF-IV.B.1).
 * Activity 2:**


 * // September Reflection: //**

Substituting in as a principal for a few days was an amazing experience. I observed and gained knowledge in a wide variety of things. I observed teachers in the classroom and gave input on how to add technology to integrate their lessons. Most of the teachers were very accepting of my input because of my technology background. It was good for me to see other classes in action as well. Being a technology teacher I experience technology everyday and this helped me understand more of how to use their lessons in my class as well. Interacting with the leaders of the school was incredible. They are very technology minded and want to move towards integration fully in the classrooms. Since they are so technology minded they allowed me to help them understand how to use the IPod touch to do PDAS evaluations in the classroom. I would like to research and talk to my site mentor about another piece of technology to use for the PDAS rather than the IPod touch. Some of the administrators claim that using the touch was hard because it was so small. Being principal put me in situations to deal with a lot of conflict. Most of the conflict or confrontations came from discipline issues of students. The most reassuring part about that was how the administration all supports each other and work through situations as a whole. Being a technology teacher and also being in the position of principal for a few days helped to assist teachers in how to get the ongoing development that they needed for understanding technology systems, resources, and services that are aligned with our technology plan (TF-I.A.1). It also helped me to be able to help teachers identify what technologies they are needing to meet specific learning needs (TF-I.A.2). When working with the other principals on the IPod, I was able to model the appropriate strategies essential to continued growth and development for the understanding of technology concepts (TF-I.B.3).
 * Activity 3:**


 * // October Reflection: // **

During this activity I learned a lot about communication, collaborating with other teachers and creating lessons. The process and flow of this project was relatively easy for me because the teacher I was working with did not know a lot about computers. Basically I created the entire lesson with her help on the science part of it. Then I taught her the technology part of it. This integration project brought this teacher out of her shell a little bit by doing something that she was not very comfortable with. We worked very well together to make sure she was comfortable when it came time to teach her students. The main concern that I have is that a lot of teachers are not being educated on the importance of integrating technology into their curriculum to help our students have a more successful learning environment. The other concern that I have is that the academic classes are so structured to the TAKS that they feel like they cannot change things that have already been set. I am going to talk more with my site mentor about promoting and offering more tech integration staff development to help these teachers become more comfortable. I met two performance indicators under Standard three for this activity. This activity allowed methods for the concept being taught to support the use of media. In this case it was print and graphics with the books (TF-III.A.5). The technology used allowed students to use higher order thinking skills and creativity (TF-III.C).
 * Activity 4:**

I met with the CTE coordinator to set up a staff development to help the CTE teachers learn how to use the flip cams that were purchased for them to use in class. The main purpose of this project was to draw those teachers out to do more with technology and collaborate with each other in a learning community to come up with ideas on how to use these in the classroom. Working with the CTE director we came up with the idea of also using these to film activities in the classroom to promote the CTE classes. The training went well but when the collaboration was happening there were some teachers that were having a hard time coming up with ways to integrate this piece of technology. The group agreed that it would be a better scenario to use them for promotion and then integrate into the core classes. My concern with this situation is that the CTE classes that are not technology are that all the CTE classes need to be integrating technology into their lessons. The interaction with the teachers was not the most positive interaction that I have has thus far which is shocking to me being that CTE stands for Career and Technical Education. There was some hurt feelings because CTE consists of a lot of technology classes and those teachers were not having problems putting things together when others like home economics was having a difficult time. This activity met Standard two, planning and designing learning environments and experiences. Within this staff development I was able to provide teachers resources and feedback as they created appropriate curriculum units that use technology and consulted with them about their strategies of teaching the technology concept in the classroom (TF-II.A.1, TF-II.A.2). I helped to provide teachers with ways to manage student learning using technology (TF-II.E.1)
 * Activity 5:**


 * // January Reflections: //**

I was actually approached by an English teacher for this project because of my class and computer background. This teacher got a lot of grief from her department about deviating from the original assignment. She wanted her students to make movie trailers using video editing software. The other English teachers were not in participation of this project. This teacher was in charge because she knew what she wanted to do. I just helped her figure out what software to use and how to teach her students how to use it. The core classes have been getting some influence from administration to integrate technology to help enhance learning. Advice from my site mentor help me realize that this could be a great opportunity to make this project a cross curricular project. We did this in my class as well as hers. What I found puzzling after doing this project was that the administration is putting pressure on to integrate but doesn’t think about helping them out through staff developments or learning communities. This is something that I am going to research with my site mentor about. What is out there in the way of having some learning communities or online course help for these teachers? The detail of this project helped me cover standard six and a few performance tasks. It was important that I went over the copyright laws related to pictures, music, video and how to use things legally (TF-VI.A.2). The teacher and I selected several different programs to use that would enable diverse learners in this project (TF-VI.B.1).
 * Activity 6:**


 * // February Reflections: //**

This project was the most fun. Thing most important thing that I learned out of this one was how to interact with the community. The people involved in this project were the director of CTE, director of Education Foundation and Time Warner Cable. This project consisted of the CTE director putting together a script of what she wants in a video. She did not take much input from me which caused for confrontation but we agreed to allow me to take care of all the video effects and creating of video. This video was presented to the school board to help educate them about CTE classes. Working with the Education Foundation was much more one sided. She left me completely in charge and allowed me to make script and put everything together. This video allowed for community involvement which is great for the students. Time Warner Cable agreed to play the videos on TV. I would really like to research more of what type of technology is used at Time Warner Cable to possible upgrade our equipment and at least be on the same page as the up and coming industry. I feel like this needs to be done so that it better prepares our students for the real world. The detail of this project helped me cover standard six and a few performance tasks. It was important that I went over the copyright laws related to pictures, music, video and how to use things legally (TF-VI.A.2). The teacher and I selected several different programs to use that would enable diverse learners in this project (TF-VI.B.1).
 * Activity 7:**


 * // March Reflections: //**

This was a three and a half hour team integration project between a high school physics teacher and myself. It was very easy to communicate everything because this teacher already has some technology background. She wanted to use a different way to teach students the concept of light. My suggestion was that they teach themselves in the way of going around the school and finding different examples of light, video taping it and editing it into a quick video to present to the class. I taught her one day after school to use the video editing software and how to teach it to her students. She taught me the physics concept of light and how to demonstrate it to my students. Together we accomplished making a cross curricular project that integrated two classes. The only problem that we ran into was being able to outfit the physics class with enough video cameras for the students. I think that it would be a great idea for the school to have the adequate resources available for teachers to check for their students. It was puzzling that our administrators who are very technology minded can’t seem to figure out how to get a classroom set of these things to have for teachers to check out. I helped to assist this teacher in how to get the ongoing development that they needed for understanding technology systems, resources, and services that are aligned with our technology plan (TF-I.A.1). It also helped me to be able to help teachers identify what technologies they are needing to meet specific learning needs (TF-I.A.2). When working with the other principals on the IPod, I was able to model the appropriate strategies essential to continued growth and development for the understanding of technology concepts (TF-I.B.3).
 * Activity 8:**

This activity was to bring together curriculum specialists, core teachers, and CTE teachers to focus on integration with one vision. We discussed a strategic plan of integration between core and CTE classes. This experience was a littel ackward at first because change is hard for people and this was asking people to change around the curriculum and they way they teach to try something new. The one vision in mind is that we need to help students learn. CTE teachers paired up with core teachers to try and match up their TEKS to form a bond and correlation. The only problem I feel is who is going to be held accountable and check up to make sure things are happening in the classroom to hlep our 21st century learners. Everyone seemed to work together very well after awhile, it took some to time to come out of that comfort zone. Standard eight was met with this activity. In this activity we discussed the importance of partnerships to support technology integration (TF-VIII.C.1). This was a very effective group process (TF-VIII.D.1). We also set aside time to discuss what it is we already do that meets to national, state and local standards for integrating technology (TF-VIII.D.4).
 * Activity 9:**

I was placed on the District Technology Committee this year. I attended the meeting this year and learned a lot about the technology in my district and how it is all represented in the budget. This was a hard group meeting because there is a representative from every campus and they could not agree on what was right as a district it was more for their campus. We looked at the technology plan to make sure we are supporting the technology resources for teachers and staff to improve student learning (TF-VII.A.8). As a committee we made a proposal for a special budget request for Office 2010 because this software will enhance school curriculum (TF-VII.B.1). We have some new campuses being built so we discussed budget planning and technology planning for these new campuses (TF-VII.B.4). I did find out that my school district does not put a lot of money or concern into technology as a whole. Some campuses have a variety and plenty of ways to incorporate technology and then there are campuses that have nothing. As a district I feel that this is something that should be looked at and fixed so that all of our students at every campus has the same opportunities.
 * Activity 10:**