And the goals are.....

For all of the categories on the Technology Integration Matrix I fell within the adoption level. I know that I have dabbled in technology use in the classroom, but I have fallen short on using it in creative and student directed ways. As a PLC Data Coach, my students are actually teachers in fourth and fifth grade. I believe that as I learn new and exciting things, I can help them use more technology in the classroom. It is my hope that by the end of this class I will have done these three things:

First, I want to create professional development opportunities that help teachers be more digitally communicative with parents in their classrooms and at their schools. Using Google Classroom and classroom web pages can help teachers communicate with parents about big and small things that are happening. I know that a teacher's job is HUGE and learning and doing one more thing can be daunting. I will need to give teachers several options to choose from and then clear and easy to follow directions about setting up whatever THEY choose to use. I believe that this goal falls within the Active domain of the matrix. In order to accomplish this goal, I will first need to find willing victims,...ahem...teachers, that want to either try or hone this valuable undertaking. I will do research and practice with several programs and then provide training and support. There are teachers within the district that are successfully using tools like these and I will search them out and question them endlessly...

Secondly, many of the teachers at my grade level have limited technology for student use. I want to find creative ways for students to collaborate in the classroom with only one or two iPads. This goal becomes two fold...because many of those classrooms also have teachers who struggle with technology integration. My plan is to create some curriculum centered projects for students to work on and then model those lessons in classrooms. I know that I will need to see some of this "creating" in progress and many of the teachers taking this course are already doing these things. My hope is to see a few classrooms and then move forward with planning and modeling. There are many useful blogs, articles,  and websites regarding this topic and I have already started doing research on this goal. I think that this will help improve my practice in the collaboration and goal oriented domains.

My last goal seems like it should be a no brainer...especially since we are a Google district...but I really, really want my fourth and fifth grade teachers to ALL be using Drive and Google Apps to communicate with each other, share lessons and ideas, and collect/monitor student work. I know I will have to use baby steps, but I think I can begin addressing this through our work in our PLC's. I can increase my own skills in this and then push out some of our work in this format. I can also model. There are many teachers in our district who already use Google to do a lot of work in their classrooms. I will ask them to help show the others the value of this by arranging peer observations and other opportunities for collaboration.

I know that there are many, many tools and apps and such out there. I know that I have a lot to learn. I know that when it comes to technology usage some teachers are leery and reluctant. I know that I will need to be flexible and adjust these goals. I know that I can become a more digitally savvy educator!