One Word: Perspective

Every year I try to start the new year with a word that would be helpful for me. Last year I read Start with Why by Simon Sinek and it has led me to this year's one word: Perspective.

As an educator, reading Mr. Sinek's book made me start looking at the "why's" regarding the things I do and the expectations we place at our school regarding educational technology. I am a big fan of backward planning- starting with the end goal in mind and then working out what it would take to get to the end result wanted. By asking myself "WHY" I am making sure my perspective is correct. My goal is to always ask myself "What's best for the students?" That leads me to my goal of focusing on my perspective this year. 

Sometimes I find myself in meetings and it is only natural that we start thinking about changes from our own perspective. How is this going to impact me or my classroom? It's very easy to start worrying about myself instead of keeping my perspective on the real goal: "Is this what is best for the students?" It's a slippery slope where we can find ourselves making decisions based on cost or ease of use when talking about educational technology. But the bottom line should always be "Is this what is best for our students?" 

Perspective is different based on our individual pasts and training but if I focus on a guiding question that is bigger than my own "camp" then I am both open to the perspectives of others and feel confident about what I believe due to the desire to keep my guiding questions focused on my students and not me. 

As I work towards reminding myself of the needed perspective this year, I hope my focus on others will allow me to see big pictures better. I tend to be someone that gets excited about the potential of educational technology for our students. In my past it would be fair to judge me and say that I tried to lead with technology instead of student needs. I am not that person any longer. I am quite certain that through much reading, research and soul searching I am a better instructional technologist than I have been- I have grown. It is my desire to continue on this path. So my one word for 2018 is Perspective. May I ever be mindful of not allowing the technology to displace the pedagogy nor the pedagogy to displace the person. 

An LMS for Everyone?

Recently our school has been in the process of not only trying to decide if an LMS (learning management system) is important to implement school wide but also what LMS meets the needs of the community as a whole. Through this process over the last 5 years we have implemented in both large and small ways 4 different LMS solutions- Moodle, Edify, Google Classroom, and Canvas.

As a technology coordinator there are some moving parts that I think about that don't really impact the individual teachers:

1. Cost. Is it cost effective for us to choose certain LMS options. Is it going to cost additional funding to be able to integrate our SIS (student information system) into it for ease of use. 
2. Longevity. Edtech options are exponentially growing. Are we choosing an option that is forward thinking and that has potential to grow into the platform we will need for the future?
3. User friendly interface for teachers and students. Is the LMS set up in a way that it feels intuitive to the user with a bit of use? Is support good? Are answers to questions quick? Is there a community of users I can tap into to ask specific questions and learn from their usage as well? Are there resources available for teachers to access and pull into their curriculum?
4. Cross-curricular usefulness. Truthfully, it's fairly easy for a teacher that wants to do true/false and multiple choice questions to feel confident with almost any LMS but does the LMS lend itself to grading papers, short/long answer questions, graphs, math equations, scientific notation? It's imperative to choose a LMS that best meets a wide average of users or else there is a biased expectation of usage that just won't happen because it just isn't deemed useful.
5. Data accessibility. As research is showing, the data that quick formative assessments via technology is bringing to today's classroom can be a game changer for the teacher willing to utilize this mode of instructional practice. To be able to both quickly give and receive data from a formative assessment helps teachers plan forward and even personalize for differentiation. The easier it is to create assessments and the more people that can access that data, the better. 
6. Multiple Platform Interfaces for single sign-on access. Apps and software that interface with the LMS seamlessly create an easier classroom for the teacher and makes me feel better about student privacy with single sign-on options. 

While all these things play heavily on my mind I do strongly believe that the future of education will be LMS driven. Data will play a big role in helping educators meet the needs of individual students as education moves toward competency based assessment linked to essential questions or standards. An LMS will bring that all together for curriculum leaders and educators. 

There are many districts that already require their teachers, every year, to pull 3 years of summative assessment data and create plans to meet the needs for each student in their classroom. As we all know summative assessments are a blip in a student's year...many things can impact how a student does on those tests- sickness, cold air, warm air, attitude, nerves, distractions, etc. By also adding the value of summative assessments into the mix we get a better representation of who these students are. When all those on the educational staff that work with our students have access to this information we can all better meet the needs of our students. 

The future is changing, it will look differently for different subject areas but some things will be consistent- the need to leverage the tools for best practice to meet student needs.