2019 One Word: Resolve

Sometimes my career feels like a battle. As an instructional technologist, I don't feel like my role has ever just been trying to help willing teachers integrate technology but also to be an evangelist or even prophet about the future of education and the impact technology can have. About this time every year,  I begin to feel a wee bit weary. I feel fatigued from having to defend educational technology which is always odd to me that this has become part of who I am.

I look back over the past few years and see a theme:
2015's one word was "Let's"
2016's one word was "Beta"
2017's one word was "Brave"
2018's one word was "Perspective"

This year as I tried to decide which one word to choose to help me as a professional, I found myself feeling less joy about what I do because of the weariness of having the same old conversations year, after year, after year. Every year, choosing one word in January gives me a sense of where I have been during this school year and a focus on where I want to be at the end of May.

So this year my one word is RESOLVE. After a year of diligently trying to look at and balance perspectives of others, I am ready to own who I am. I am an instructional technologist who currently is in the role of Director of Instructional Technology and Innovation. This year I am resolved to stand firm in sharing the virtues of educational technology with the educators, students, and parents that I come in contact with day in and day out. For me, this means that I will stand firm in touting the importance of students having the skills that support the ISTE Standards for Students for their futures.

I have been toying with the one word, "Resolve", for a few days now. This morning I felt affirmed in that word as we read the scripture from Mark 6: 1-4 in church:

Jesus left there and went to his hometown, accompanied by his disciples.2 When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were amazed.

“Where did this man get these things?” they asked. “What’s this wisdom that has been given him? What are these remarkable miracles he is performing? 3 Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph,[a] Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him.

4 Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home.” 5 He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. 6 He was amazed at their lack of faith.

Now, I'm no Jesus but these words resonated deep within me this morning. Jesus's own family and friends in his own hometown didn't believe in him and the things he was sharing. One of the hardest things about my role is that I am often asked to speak at other schools and educational conferences but my fellow educators in the school I've been at for 15 years push back the hardest. My insecurities imagine what they say "Who is she? She was just an elementary computer teacher?" "How could she possibly think she could tell me better ways to teach my class?" "She knows nothing about my subject matter." None of those things have been said to me, mind you. Then my pride gets in the way and I'm convinced I do know best sometimes (hence the chosen word "perspective" last year to make sure I was being balanced.) 

But here I am today choosing "resolve," not to push my ways on others but to stand firm on believing I have an important role at my school to be an evangelist and prophet about the future possibilities of education. My prayer is that just like Jesus in the scriptures we read this morning, I can do it with humility (this was his second time to go to his hometown and try to reach them). I want to have the resolve to bravely share concepts and ideas based on what I have learned might be helpful regarding technology integration.

What will this look like immediately?

• Explaining the analytics data of digital testing inside Canvas and how it can benefit or students and teachers when creating assessments.
• Explaining how we are in an era that has never been before: we can now have immediate feedback after a lesson and adjust our teaching to that feedback to best meet our student needs.
• Harking the benefits of rubric-based assessing so that students can share their learning in ways other than a paper/pencil/digital assessment of questions.
• Explaining that Canvas is a learning management system that our school can "grow into"  as we consider mastery paths and learning outcomes associated with our questioning of students.

The Writing Process that Utilizes Tech Integration

I've been thinking about ways to utilize the efficiencies of edtech and create consistencies for our students lately. While teachers may all expect MLA format at our school, do we also expect the same process in writing? I am not an english teacher but I do enjoy writing. Our school does a wonderful job of growing students that can whip out a paper in no time. It's definitely one of our academic strengths. I believe that is because we see writing across the curriculum, which is a wonderful thing. I also know that some rubrics are either being worked on or are in place to grade papers equally no matter what the subject matter. I love that. 

I can't help but wonder how does technology support that well-oiled process because well...that's what I do...wonder about technology. So I am using this blog post to brainstorm possible ways to suggest technology be utilized both for efficiencies of the teacher/grader as well as to create efficiencies, standardized expectations, and additional learning opportunities for the students. 

http://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/paragraph_hamburger

Prewriting: That time when students are gathering together in their mind what this paper will say and look like. It's the prep stage. I'll always remember sitting in on a fourth grade teacher explaining the parts of a paragraph to his students as a hamburger. I had never heard that before and it has always stuck with me. We, as educators, work hard to help our students learn to write. For many students this planning stage might best be done through pen and paper. Why not allow students to plan using the Wave Rocketbook notebook that would back up to their Google drive? Or let them use some mind mapping tool like Popplet to organize their thought processes to decide which direction to go? Or let them organize their main parts of their paper in Google Docs and allow peer review feedback via comments? 

Drafting: We are a school that uses GSuites. The ability to create their first draft in Google Docs adds so much robustness to the writing process because of the ability to give immediate feedback as soon as a peer or teacher makes suggestions. The ability to see past correction histories in the process can help writers maneuver forward in creating a very good paper. The beauty of self-saving Google Docs is there is less pressure to work on the fine tuning and more ability to just GO while writing. Research shows us that in the process of paper writing creativity is stronger when typing due to the fact that the brain works faster than we can physically write. The act of "writing" slows us down. While I don't believe technology integration = typing papers in class, I do believe the efficiencies of faster creation and a teacher working the room either virtually in a document or reading over a student's shoulder is a huge benefit to today's classrooms. 

Revising and Editing: There are multiple ways that Google Docs aids the revising and editing stages even before anyone other than the author lays eyes on it. For instance, teaching students to turn on the editing options (to the upper right of the paper) as they type allows them to learn as they go. 

One of the more recent features of Google Docs that can help students in researching is the "EXPLORE" feature that allows a student to access a web browser within the Google Doc to quickly look up things to support their writing. This can be found under the Tools tab on the tool bar.

While talking about research, here is where others might disagree with me but I think we are at a time where it is more imperative than ever that we help students learn what plagiarism is and we allow them to make corrections before they actually "turn in the paper."  When I was in high school (a long time ago) I think it was easier to realize if you were plagiarizing or not. I went to a library to gather a limited amount of resources and I read through them. Because it was a limited amount of resources, it was easy to remember what I read verses what I inferred from what I read. Today's students can pick up their device and have access to oodles of information on any given topic. I think it is easier than ever before to plagiarize and not even realize it. Look at all the hot topic media reports of various celebrities and politicians being called out for plagiarism. I know this is a judgment on my part but I wonder if it is truly intentional plagiarism much of the time. 

By expecting students to import their papers to something like www.turnitin.com before turning it in for grading, we help our students become aware of what plagiarism is in the process. Not only that, we put the owness on our students to correct grammatical errors before they get to the teacher (this works unless you are actually grading for grammar obviously). The point I'm trying to make is this can become an effective teaching tool in itself and make for efficiencies for our teachers. I do not think running a paper through a self-checking software means it is a good paper. I do think it can be part of steps that could ensure a paper is well written though.

Rewriting: Teachers being able to give feedback during the revisions stage (after going through something like turnitin.com) via Google Docs comments allows the teachers to see if corrections to suggestions were actually made or just ignored. Instead of having multiple papers in front of them of drafts, this makes for efficiencies as well. On the student side, to be able to click "resolve" in the process of rewrites creates a neatness of process for the student. Dare I say receiving suggestions or questions from a teacher via comments instead of pen marks potentially written all over a page is also both easier to read for the student and less overwhelming when doing final writes?

Publishing: In the past, a "published" document basically meant a teacher and maybe the students in the class got to see the finished document but in today's world the ability to allow students authentic feedback from the world at large is both an amazing ability and meets the ISTE (International Society for Technology Education) standards for students in multiple areas in regards to educational technology. What if our students added their paper to a blog? Shared their paper with a prominent author on the subject of their paper? Created an opportunity for authentic feedback by emailing the paper to scientists, historians, or others they feel might connect with what they have said? 

To repeat the process I think might best meet both student and teacher needs in integrating technology into writing:

1. Students receive rubric for assignment when the assignment is explained.
2. Students create mind maps in their planning stages, either by using digital paper or online graphic organizers.
3. Students draft their paper in Google Docs and utilize both the editing options and the explore options during this process.
4. Students upload the paper to www.turnitin.com to look for both grammatical and plagiarism issues and then rewrite after receiving the results but before sharing with teacher/grader.
5. Students share document with teacher/peers for review and feedback. Comments in Google Docs are used to make the process of corrections more streamlined for students.
6. Expectations for publishing are in place for (x) number of papers a year for every student.

I know I am not an English teacher so I wonder what parts of this seem worrisome? A burden?....Thoughts?