How to do this in the classroom? Invite your students to create character profiles on Twitter, invite them to create new texts from the characters’ perspective
Begin by learning about these ideas for self-education, then moving into classroom and after school programs
Be conservative in content, but radical in approach
What’s essential, what can be transferred into a new medium?
Notes from “Blending Online and On-Site Spaces and Communities: Developing Effective Practices”
Niki Davis, Julie Mackey, Ann Mcgrath, Donna Morrow, Lawrence Walker, Nicki Dabner, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
E-learning blends to discuss
Blending physical and virtual spaces
Blending teacher’s online learning communities and local communities of colleagues
Blending teaching practice online with teachers redeveloping K-12 education
Online learning?
Learning with and through digital technologies
Online courses and resources for teachers, students, and the wider community
Online and blended learning is more effective
Creating learning communities
Characteristics of a learning community
Common cultural and historical heritage — build heritage with mediated artifacts
Interdependent system — sense of shared purpose and identity
Reproduction cycle — moving in and out, legitimate peripheral participation
Context of the two studies
Teachers participating in a graduate course, geographically dispersed across New Zealand
Took the ideas from the class back to their local classrooms, communities, families — need to think about how to value their local communities and classrooms in a way that lets them talk about the process that gets them to the point of participating in the online course
Blended learning, then, is a combination of the online class and the communities in which the participants are situated
Doug Hartman, from MSU’s Literacy Achievement Resource Center, spoke at MRA 2010 on “The Future of Reading and Writing at the Present Time: Preparing Students and Teachers for the 21st Century.”
6000 year history of literacy in just a few minutes (note: technologies don’t just go away… some features may return over time; e.g. “scrolling” and “tablets”)
finger writing in the earth
sticks and brushes
hieroglyphics
clay tablet
scroll (moving from clay to scroll was a dazzling shift at that time — length and durability)
Linguistic texts to semiotic texts (images, audio, etc)
The balance is tipping towards semiotic texts
Semiotic texts are increasingly digital
Digital texts are ever more online
Reading and viewing across these texts
Questions to pose:
Do our curriculum, standards, and assessments include the range of technologies that our students use?
Shift 2: The strategies that students use to read and write these texts are changing
Looking for information to supplement what they are able to find in textbooks and is able to find so much more
Reading the book, looks up words he doesn’t know, and may use a secondary source
Reading online requires different strategies — moving from one web page to another, back to the original, and one way leading on to another; the potential for his comprehension to be expanded is enormous
This second type of comprehension places a higher demand on people’s cognitive abilities than typical book reading
Types of knowledge for reading: declarative, procedural, and conditional; once online, also adding identity, locational, and goal knowledge. Read more on his Slideshare document. (NOTE: He said that the slides from this presentation will be posted there later today.)
Do our curriculum, standards, and assessments include the range of strategies that our students use?
Shift 3 and 4 — ran out of time in the session, but “moment to moment instruction” and “professional development” are the third and fourth shifts
Alfie Kohn, an outspoken critic of traditional schooling and standardized testing, spoke at CMU on Wednesday, March 17, 2010. Here are some notes I captured from his talk, “Overhauling the Transmission Model: An overview of traditional versus progressive teaching”
You may know if you have been a student or teacher that learning is not simply a process of absorbing information throw at you, but if that is true then it makes sense for this presentation to not be about me just talking at you
What I am going to describe for you is a first grade classroom in New England, where kids were studying the Mayflower, and the kids showed up to see that the chairs and tables were pushed to the edge of the room and the floor had an outline of a ship made in masking tape.
A classmate comes in and unrolls a scroll from the king — we cannot sail on the ship until we know how big it is. Teacher asks — any ideas for how to figure this out? Figuring out how tall a student is, using him as a measure, then with hands, etc. The king doesn’t know how long the child, the hands, etc are.
They don’t get it that day, but they return to it the next day… measure it with the classmate’s feet… he knows the king!
Finally, on the third day, the teacher finally introduces the concept of standard units of measurement, and gives them rulers.
What distinguishes this lesson, makes it unusual?
She took three days to let the students discover this concept; “covering” material makes you feel that you don’t have enough time — this is about “discovering” material
There was a rationale, not just “open wide” and here come the facts
Basis for life-long learning and problem solving
It was connected and inter-disciplinary
It was generative and collaborative
Invited the children to use their imaginations
Both hands-on and minds-on — they were inventing the idea of a ruler and figuring out standard units of measure
How might we find teaching and learning more generative if we were involved in these types of classrooms?
Middle school example — what questions do you have about yourself? What questions do you have about the world?
Looking at questions together to develop themes, then the teacher takes themes from each of the groups and to synthesize what students are saying to look at some overarching themes to intrigue them all. Examples: conflict and war, the future, etc. This becomes the overarching curriculum for the entire school for the entire year. Teachers in this school see them as generalists first, then content area specialists second.
The teaching is organized around questions that the kids themselves have asked. The students themselves become scholars, far more engaged in what they are doing than in traditional school settings.
Cross-disciplinary unit on fast food and how it connects to health, economics, popular culture, etc.
Read Fast Food Nation and connected it to content in biology related to nutrition, digestion, etc.
Students then chose from magazine articles about the fast food industry — animal cruelty, locations of fast food in low-income neighborhoods, etc.
Went to restaurants and kept anthropological observation journals of patrons and employees
Some became activists around the issue
Did they test at the end? No… they kept portfolios of letters, pamphlets, and other materials that they created
What can we do in classrooms to make this happen?
Setting up a false dichotomy… but one to use as a way to compare/contrast…
Traditional — skill and drill (although, “traditional” models in the sense of being “old” is multiage learning and apprenticeship models)
A new, progressive way… as exemplified by the examples I offered
Differences:
Traditional — the purpose is to get the “right” answer and spit it out on demand to the teacher who has all the power and will determine who talks when (the point is not to have an intellectual conversation, but to give the one answer that the teacher wants, the one that she is fishing for)
I want to see stuff from the kids on the walls… but what does it look like? I don’t want all the pumpkins on the wall in a kindergarten room to look the same.
How to teach kids to read — a teacher thinking about phonics may look at the phonemes, the progressive teacher will focus on meaning
Standardized tests measure what we need least; efforts to improve tests scores lead to less authentic learning
Mom asks “what did you do in school today?” Kid answers, “nothing.” He is probably right — he may have had a lot done to him.
Old school — bunch of facts and skills. Worksheets to learn how to add, but not applying it.
Progressive school — facts and skills are taught in a context.
It is easier, not just more interesting, to make sense of this if there is a context… “I think that I could read this if I knew what it was about.”
Traditional — no good reason for learning
Progressive — create a lesson with and for your students that will engage them
When I talk about this in terms of context, problem-based learning, etc… I am referring to the idea that teachers have a collection of facts to but into students’ heads ala Dewey, Freire
When the kids have nothing to say about the course, the curriculum… consider the “ten year” question. What is left of your course after a decade has passed? We are creating elaborate snow structures on the last day before spring… it drains right out again if we are not helping students learn in real ways. We are meaning-makers, and we work from a constructivist approach. The best learning is a process of reconstructing ideas.
When people talk about making things more “rigorous,” we should be worried about that…
We often think that AP courses are the best courses in the high school because they are “accelerated”
It almost always works out that when we are trying to “raise the bar” and “close the gap,” we have kids who are poor who are being given more drill and skill while the rich kids are doing more real learning.
Last effect of traditional education is the loss of curiosity
As kids move into school, their intrinsic motivation dies off as a response to traditional instruction
Final question — if everything I have said is true, especially if progressive schools are proven by research to be effective, then why is the traditional approach still so common?
It is difficult to do well
Not given training in college
We teach how we are taught
“Any idiot can stay one chapter ahead of the kids”
Top down leadership; lack of autonomy
Q/A
Books: effects of grading, negative effects of homework, negatives of standardized tests, bribes and threats of disciplines
Question to ask at schools — How do you hope these kids will turn out? Happiness, problem-solving, ethics — these are the things that we care about in the long run and these are the criteria we should set as “standards”
The teachers who were glad to have me didn’t need me; the ones who didn’t want to talk fit the model of traditional education
Reflections
Alfie Kohn certainly stays on message, despite his “digressions.” I first started reading him over a decade ago, saw him speak about five years ago, and have been influenced by his ideas in many ways. There are some points that I disagree on, especially the idea that assessment is — in and of itself — an almost evil force, because I think that we can do assessment in responsible ways that help kids learn and help teachers teach. But, overall, he reiterates the negative data (and anecdotes) about testing, grading, skill and drill teaching, and awards for kids that he has been discussing for years. As I think about writing instruction, especially in an age of technology, I think that we can take some of these ideas and look at how a writing workshop approach can foster student learning in a constructivist manner, one that values the context in which students work and the authentic inquiry that they choose to pursue.
I think, too, that we have to recognize the overwhelming forces that teachers face — it is not just about individual choices inside our own classrooms, although that is important; it is about the structural aspects of schooling and the expectations of our society that place particular demands on schools, teachers, and students. At the end, he began to talk about the socio-economic and political influences on our system of education, and I think that we really need to talk more about these influences because they permeate our classrooms. Teachers can be progressive within their four walls, or their school, but that is not going to create substantive change in the system. It is a start, indeed, but will not change the entire system.
At any rate, I know that many of my CMU students were in the audience, and my sincere hope is that they have gained some insights into some of the perspectives that I bring to ENG 315. I try to alleviate the pressures of grading and invite them to think critically and creatively about what they can do as writers and teachers of writing. I ask them to do authentic writing, both personally and professionally, and I do not rely on tests in any way. Instead, I ask them to write in different genres, for different purposes, and to different audiences. As one student said in class the other night, “This is a lot of work.” Indeed, it is. And, I know that it is overwhelming and that my class doesn’t meet the expectations that they have of what a college course, or a methods course, should look like. Yet, I think that it is valuable work, and I hope that it will encourage them as writers and teachers of writing to be a little more, as Kohn would suggest, “progressive” in their own classrooms.
Earlier this month, I blogged about some sessions from the Wisconsin State Reading Association on the NWP Walkabout Posterous site and I am (finally) cross-posting them here with links to the original posts… sorry for the delay!
I really enjoy it when new technologies challenge me.
Honest…
Figuring out how to embed a Cinch into a Posterous, as strange as that all sounds, has been a challenge. I thought that Posterous only allowed posting from email, as that is how the technology had been introduced to me. That was my mindset, and I was struggling because I asked Paul how to post a Cinch and he said it couldn’t be done via email. I scratched my head as I worked from my iPhone, moving between Cinch, looking at Posterous on Safari, and reading Paul’s tweets… why not?
So, Gmail wouldn’t let me do it and, until I finally logged into Posterous, I couldn’t figure out how my NWP colleagues had done it. I didn’t see a “Publish to Posterous” button on Cinch, nor did I realize I could compose a “traditional” blog post through Posterous until I did some searching around today after Paul told me it could be done. Couldn’t figure out how at first, but I finally figured it out. It all goes to show that even the techies amongst us have our conceptions of how new literacies work challenged from time to time.
At any rate…
On to the real reason I am writing this post today — the Cinch recordings of Julie Coiro and Sara Kajder speaking directly to an NWP audience about their latest thinking related to reading and writing in digital environments, straight from interviews that I snagged with each right after their presentations at the Wisconsin State Reading Association Conference last week. Thanks to both of them for sharing their time and expertise.
1. Instructional challenge – find readers. Engage reluctant readers to create a book trailer via digital movie making in three class periods.
– examining movie trailers and dissecting them
– discussing how to craft a trailer for the book
– creating the book trailer in movie making program (or via the sims and using Jing to create a video)
– “Dr. Kajder, I don’t like to read and write, but I like to make movies… You tricked me!”
2. Instructional challenge – summarizing. Creating podcasts. What do you have to say about this book? It is a synthesis -you need to teach something to the other kids in the room. Then, the entire school votes to decide which podcasts go up on the school website.
– example of fifth graders podcasting about the six traits of writing
– in inviting other people into classroom literature circles via skype
– podcast with an expert (submarines in the American Revolution with Harvard Professor); listened to interviews on NPR as examples
– want to make kids “googleable” for the good, smart work that kids do (ala Bud Hunt), depends on where we save things and how they are archived
– creating visual “mentor text” via iMovie. Choose just a small portion of the text. Recite from the text (checking for understanding) and also thinking aloud with text-go-world connections. It is an assessment, but this is the least “assessy” assessment they have ever done.
– using delicious and diigo with kids to create their reader’s identity. This gives digital readers a way to hold on to texts and show what is important to them.
Many resources and ideas. We need to appreciate the ways in which kids work and play. How do we figure out a way to build curious readers?
Listening to Julie Coiro talk about “How Does Reading and Learning Change on the Internet? Responding to New Literacies” at WSRA 2010
Examing students’ reality of multiple and overlapping literacies – how can we capture some of that same excitement in schools?
She just cited Tom Freidman’s “The World Is Flat” as the source for the phrase “racing to the top.” I didn’t realize that, but sitting here next to Sara Kajder and we both agree that this makes the clear economic focus of RTTT
Online readers and offline readers are successful in different ways. What’s the difference?
1. Identifying important questions – yes, we have a curriculum to follow, but students can ask questions that they are curious about that will likely meet the objectives, too. For instance, why do cats cough up hairballs? As this moves into MS and HS, the questions become deeper and more substantial.
2. Locating information – for instance, finding a website bit then searching within it (can’t rely on a site’s navigation bar alone any more, espe ially with graphical interface). Teach kids to be flexible to take what they know about layout and design to seek out new info. Using kid’s search sites vs regular search engine. What about limited engines or visual searches like Kartoo? Tag clouds?
3. Evaluating Search Results – how many sites found? Who sponsors the sites? What sites may not be available in a few months? How can you tell, in the results, what search terms are used? What disadvantages would visiting the sites have?
— play a game with kids to make the number of search results go down (refining the search) of making it go up. Looking at the number to make it go up or down is a process of adding and subtracting words to refine.
— Teaching about context clues to help students to read URLs — why is it important to know who sponsors the site before you even view it? Do you make predictions when you read inthe Internet? We do so all the time with stories, sometimes in content area texts, and rarely online? Put a label on it — call it predicting, and help them know what they are doing? This can “take all the fun out of searching,” but if helps students pause to think. Need prior knowledge about URLs and how sites are housed. — prior knowledge if the topic used to be critical to comprehending texts, but know google can give you prior knowledge in a snap and bring you to that level.
4. Where do I read first? — am I on the homepage? Like a book walk, help students take the “brain steps” to preview a website. Who is the author?
Great ideas, had planned for two hours, but had to end!
From School to Screen: Why Digital Writing Matters (9:30 – 10:45)
Without question, writing continues to change in the twenty-first century. Teachers, administrators, parents, and other stakeholders value the teaching of writing — and see that our very notion of what it means to be literate is evolving — yet continue to wonder how best to teach writing in a digital age. Based on work with the National Writing Project, we will discuss practices that hold promise as we develop understandings of what it means to write digitally, create spaces for digital writing in our schools, and extend assessment practices that account for the complexities of writing in a digital world.
Creating Your Digital Writing Workshop (1:30 – 3:30)
Digital writing tools such as blogs, wikis, digital stories, and social networks can contribute to what you are already doing in your writing instruction as well as appeal to a new generation of students. Building on the principles discussed in the first session, we will explore how new ways of thinking about well-established practices in the writing workshop—student choice and inquiry, conferring on writing, examining author’s craft, publishing writing, and broadening our understandings of assessment—could be updated for the digital age. With examples of how to teach digital writing throughout, this session will help you create your digital writing workshop. Join the Ning!
For both of these presentations, I want to acknowledge and thank my many colleagues from the National Writing Project with whom I have been able to collaborate in my research, teaching, and professional development work.
As the holidays begin, another conference season comes to a close.
For the past week, Sara and I have been in Philadelphia at the National Writing Project‘s “Digital Is…” pre-conference, the NWP Annual Meeting, and the National Council of Teachers of English Annual Convention. As it is each year, we enjoy spending time with colleagues and find opportunities to learn about their work. Moreover, we pause to think about our own work including what we have accomplished in the past year and what we are looking forward to in the next.
To that end, I began writing this reflection in the lobby of the Sheraton in Philly, continued it at the airport and on the plane, and now post it as I spend Thanksgiving with my parents. Here is my day-by-day account of NWP/NCTE 2009.
Tuesday, 11/17/09
Arriving in Philly on Tuesday afternoon, we had some time to enjoy a quick walk and prepare for the “Digital Is…” reception. Sponsored through NWP’s work with the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning Initiative, the entire “Digital Is…” conference was designed as an opportunity to convene teachers, teacher educators, and other stakeholders in conversations about what we know about teaching and learning with digital media. The opening reception was fun, followed by dinner with colleagues from Science Leadership Academy. A great way to begin our week, for sure.
Wednesday, 11/18/09
“Digital Is…“convened in the Sheraton, with two slideshows from Danielle DeVoss. The first ran as a background show during breakfast, the second was her keynote. There is no way to capture the energy that she shared during this session, except to say that she really framed the day with her eight key themes about “digital is…” that I outlined in a previous post. So, even though the experience is not nearly the same, here are the slideshows:
For the afternoon, I was again fortunate to present with Dawn about our work with podcasting, as featured in Teaching the New Writing. By doing a protocol analysis discussion of the work, we were really able to dig deeply and think about what was there. One of the more stunning realizations that we had in the conversation was about the ways in which the composing process changes when writers begin with the goal of creating a spoken and, in some sense, permanent text. I think that the line from the notes that captures it best is that the process of recording the podcast “reinforces writing as a capacity that changes across genres and audiences and mediums.” It will be interesting to see where Dawn goes next with this work.
The second round of discussion was interesting, too, as we mixed up groups and have conversations across the elements of student work. Rather than try to capture all the complexities of that conversation in writing, I will share two items. The first is a list of “final words” that I asked participants in our session to state in relation to their thoughts about composing in digital environments at the end of this hour-long conversation. The second is a concept map that I tried to draw while we were talking. Neither alone captures all that happened in our session, but perhaps will give you some insights into what happened.
Concept Map from Digital Is
Hybridity
Genre
Messy
Openness
Elegance
Excitement
Immediacy
Future
Mistakes
Surrender
Reciprocity
Space
Dirty
Play
Organic
I had the opportunity to then help close the day, asking participants to create “invitations” that could be used to ask other stakeholders to join in the conversation about digital writing with youth. One of the most consistent themes from throughout the day was the fact that most of the digital writing opportunities that students have are taking place outside of school. This is a travesty. If we can create these types of engaging opportunities outside of school, then surely we can consider how to do better at creating these types of learning spaces inside of schools. This is something to chew on in the weeks and months to come as I figure out where to go next with my own work and the direction of our writing project.
The NWP Annual Meeting kicked off with morning and afternoon workshops. In the morning, I attended one on developing site leadership and, in the afternoon, on integrating new literacies into the site’s work that featured Paige Cole, Joe Conroy, Shasta Looper, and Sara Beauchamp-Hicks. Along with Sara’s overview of how she integrated her own growth as a tech leader into her site’s work and securing mini-grants and creating professional development experiences, I was particularly interested in watching Paige and Joe talk about the work that they initially developed at Tech Matters 2007 and to see how they have grown work at their sites. Literally, I had goose bumps watching Paige’s video reflection. Taken with ideas from the morning about how to support and encourage site leaders, the two sessions reminded me of the power of the NWP network, and how small doses of encouragement from a mentor can turn into incredible work.
Friday, 11/20/09
More NWP today, with Billy Collins bringing down the house at the general session. Truly, truly wonderful. Also wonderful was the introduction of the Chippewa River Writing Project as one of the new sites in the NWP network! Later in the afternoon, I was able to attend a session on community partnerships, including a presentation from Joel Arquillos from the amazing 826 organization (which, if you haven’t heard about, watch Dave Eggers’ TED Talk and then visit the 826 website). Also, I got to hear about the Eastern Michigan Writing Project‘s Family Literacy workshops from their program director, Kim Pavlock. So many powerful ideas here from both Joel and Kim, but the biggest one being that we need to make learning to write purposeful for students and the process of doing so clear to their parents. What incredible programs to model from. To close the day, I got to hear from two of my mentors — Patti Stock and Peter Kittle — about the power of taking an inquiry stance towards teaching demonstrations in the summer institute. I am very much looking forward to returning to CRWP and talking over all this information with my leadership team, most of whom were there with me and will have ideas of their own to share, too.
Saturday, 11/21/09
An early morning brought both Sara and me to the NCTE booth, leading Tech-to-Go sessions for those beginning their day at NCTE. I talked about wikis, while Sara presented on Google Forms and then, later in the day, on iPod Touch applications. This led us to my presentation with Bud Hunt, “Reports from Cyberspace,” This was truly an amazing session, as we tried to incorporate a backchannel discussion through Twitter, delicious, and Chatterous. Also, in trying to use newer tools for presentations, I created a Prezi and Bud made a Voice Thread. The conversations that occured in the session, both face-to-face and online, were amazing, and we are thinking about repeating the session again next year. One recurring question was about access, and both Bud and I contended that it is reasonable to expect kids to do digital writing now, because there is access available in many more places and most of the tools are web-based. We also touched on issues of filtering, curriculum, assessment, and how to begin digital writing workshops.
Later that night, Sara and I were able to join the Heinemann reception and found out that my book sold out in the convention hall! Thanks to everyone who picked up a copy there, as well as to everyone else who then ordered one online. I am looking forward to where my next writing opportunity may take me…
Sunday, 11/22/09
We awoke Sunday morning for a wonderful session on erasing copyright confusion, and I was then able to interview Renee Hobbs for an aricle on fair use for CCCC-IP. We also were able to meet with the CEE Web Site Editors, and came up with a plan for developing some basic content for the site. Our afternoon found us on adventures in Philly with my friend Carl Young, and we enjoyed a visit to the National Constitution Center. In thinking about how and why we ask students to compose digital writing, our visit to this center was particularly appropriate, as we were greeted with remixed versions of “People” magazine covers, featuring such historical figures as Abraham Lincoln and Betsy Ross, as well as a highly-interactive multimedia experince in the museum.
Monday, 11/23/09
While we had planned to go to SLA, and appreciated the invite to be there, we ended up spending most of our day at at the Franklin Institute. Perhaps we will have to do EduCon instead. So, even though we missed SLA, we greatly enjoyed the Body Worlds exhibition, and felt that was a good use of our final hours in Philly.
Also, we realized that we missed the NCTE Centennial Preview, but John Golden provided the link for me, so you can enjoy it online!
As with all NWP/NCTE trips, this one game me so many good ideas and connections with colleagues. Next on my agenda are to begin planning next summer’s CRWP SI and, ideally, an advanced institute related to digital writing and copyright. Also, I am working on writing the article for the Cs Intellectual Property Caucus, CCCC-IP. Still thinking about so much, and hoping to get back to Philly with my entire family for more of the historical aspects of the town that we missed.
And, so goes another NWP Annual Meeting and NCTE Convention. Thanks for sticking with me through this whole pose.
The guidelines that have been created since the implementation of the 1970s copyright law were brought about from negotiations by the media industry; the guidelines that were created are not set down as the law
Notes from “Integrating New Literacies into Classroom Practice and the Resulting Impact on Site Leadership”
NWP 2009 Annual Meeting
This session invited four teacher consultants/tech liaisons to discuss their personal experiences with technology and the ways in which these
experiences led to changes in their site’s work. Knowing two of these teachers through my work with NWP’s 2007 Tech Matters Institute, and
one as my wife and tech liaison for our site, I found the stories shared here very powerful. Each one of them talked about a key
technology and professional development experience that launched them into new work, both in their classroom and at their site.
Shasta Looper, Upstate Writing Project
Used Voice Thread in her summer institute in 2008, then incorporated it into her classroom through the use of a persuasive writing assignment
Paige Cole, Red Clay Writing Project
Experience at Tech Matters in 2007 which led to creation of tech team, the “Army of Dorkness”
Advanced institutes came from Tech Matters mini-grant
Learned iMovie and other technologies in support of classroom and site work
Joe Conroy, NWP at Rutgers
Looking at the history of the writing project’s website over time; Joe’s history as webmaster
Use of Yahoo groups; began there many years ago and it has worked for us
But, the website didn’t filter into the site’s work — then attended Tech Matters in 2007
How can I use Web 2.0 in the classroom without having access to Web 2.0?
Podcasts were still accessible, use of NPR’s This I Believe and Audacity via Portable Apps
Shared work at site’s mid-winter writing conference through a technology strand and “Tech Thursday” workshop series
Topics for future Tech Thursdays
Bulletin boards for Socratic Seminars
Podcasting
Ignite
Voice Thread
Wikis
Blogging
The site has integrated technology into the core of “what we do.”
Sara Beauchamp-Hicks, Upper Peninsula Writing Project and Chippewa River Writing Project
14-year veteran special education teacher, TL for UPWP
Story about involvement in summer institute by organizing pictures in 2005 SI
Growth is not linear; there are all sorts of influences that impact your growth in technology use over time (created concept
map/timeline with VUE and shared in Skim)
Site development at local level and through participation in the national network
Summer institute to annual meeting to advanced institutes next summer
Also incorporated outside funding from state professional organization grants to fund tech team, many of them TCs, in one school
Key Themes
Accessibility — trying new technologies and being willing to change; the issues are difficult for all of us in our own classrooms
Continuity — meeting regularly and sharing ideas and questions about tech use
Site Development — developing technology work at your site is a messy process
We are in a time where there is more questions than there are answers
You have to have patience and flexibility when you are in the tech world and with site development
