Project plan
The current situation
Today we’ve got plenty of technical equipment
in our schools but we lack a clear purpose on how we’re supposed to use them in
an efficient way to improve teaching and learning. In a way our computers and
tablets are mostly used as word processors, search engines and video players. The
technology is rarely used for assessments and when it is, it’s mostly in
written form, not different from writing with pen and paper. We do have some
programming (in very few schools) but it’s mostly confined to the subject of
programming and not a tool to be used in other subjects. When multimedia is
used to document the students work progress it’s mostly about recording a short
movie for an arts – project. There is also a lack of policies at school and
city levels regarding how we should use technology to enhance education in a
way that will result in an increased rate of students reaching the requirements
for passing (minimum grade E).
I’ve willingly tried new tools in my education but
I’ve felt that I haven’t been able to justify in what way the tools actually
would improve my teaching. It’s also my experience that there has been a lack
of a common framework for knowing which technological tools that are an
improvement to education and which tools that are not an improvement. There has
also been a want for a common base of conceptions that would be able to discuss
our experiences and issues when it comes to the use of technology in the
classroom.
What I’ve learned!
During my days here at the “Transforming
Teaching and Learning with Technology” – course here at Stanford I’ve learned
of lots of new tools and ways to use them to develop and make my education
better. I’ve also been given a framework (the SAMR – model) that I’ll be able to
use when I get back home to my colleges and in the county – wide ICT – network
I’m participating in. The SAMR – model will certainly improve the way we’ll see
at technology in school and I’m confident that it’ll make the transition of
technology as a substation to something that will be able to redefine the way
we educate and help our students to achieve a higher degree of understanding
what they learn in school. I’ve also appreciated the discussions we’ve had
about the different learning standards in our different countries and I’m a
little bit surprised that they are so similar. Other interesting points have
been the discussion about digital citizenship and digital literacy which I
think will be a very important subject in my upcoming project. The focus on how to be mindful about the
increased use of technology has also been something that struck me as something
I need to be both aware of and better at teaching.
The goal
Enhancing education
Starting this semester I’ll focus on
introducing two tools to enhance my education and two tools to enhance my
assessment. The two tools that I’ll use to enhance my education are “Nearpod”
and “Instagram”. “Nearpod” is a presenting tool with interactive elements that
will help me make the students an active part in my lessons. I see it as a way
to involve the students in my education and give them a possibility to
influence their education. The possibility to save the student’s work is a
helpful tool when it comes to the formative assessments I’m continuously doing together
with my students.
“Instagram” is something a lot, if not most of,
my students have come in contact with. They’re mainly using it to document
their daily lives and rarely use it as a part of their education. My goal with
using “Instagram” is to connect the student’s surroundings and daily life to
their learning. By letting them taking pictures and recording short movie
clips, tag them with a hashtag connected to the school and then a subject they
find suitable for the picture or movie clip, we’ll then find questions to their
pictures or movie clips together that we’ll connect to what we’re studying. By
using serviced like gramfeed.com we’ll be able to document our local area over
time and connect it to our education and in that way we’ll create a kind of
local learning environment that over time will create a bridge between past,
current and future students.
Enhancing assessments
It might be wrong to split up education and
assessments because they have so much in common and in the way we use formative
assessments these day it’s very hard to separate them. I’m mostly doing it here
to keep the focus on the different tools we’ll use. For tracking the student’s
work when it comes to writing my plan is to introduce “Draftback” which lets me
see how my students are writing their projects after they’re done with them.
It’s a great tool to see if they’ve written their essays by themselves or if
they’ve copied it from another source. It also gives me charts and diagrams
that let me see which parts they’ve struggled with the most and how much time
they’ve used in the different parts.
“Kaizena” is another tool that I plan to
introduce in my work and the purpose of “Kaizena” is to let me give my students
oral feedback on their work. During our classes at Stanford we were shown that
oral feedback in many ways is better than written feedback, especially when it
comes to working formative, since it often make the instructor giving a feedback
focused on higher order of concerns (structure of arguments, overall
organization and use of sources). I think this tool will make it easier for the
students to get a better understanding of the feedback they are given in the
different tasks.
Organizational level
When it comes to how to spread what I’ve
learned here at Stanford and the work I’ll do in my classroom I’m certain that
I’ll be able to use the county-wide ICT – networks I’m a part of and the
different platforms (e.g. blogs) we’re going to use in our different classes.
The use of the SAMR[1] –
model will give us a very valuable framework to improve the use of technology
in education at a city- and countywide level. I’m fully convinced that the
school management will welcome the SAMR – model as a way to evaluate how our
schools are using their technology and how they’re able to improve it. At the
moment most of us are working at the S – step of the model but I’m sure we’ll
be able to improve on that and reach for the R – step during time I’m working
on this project. I’ll also make sure to participate in our regional
“teachmeets” and at conferences sharing my experience when it comes to
transforming my education with technology.
Key points
- My project is to use certain tools (Nearpod, Instagram, Draftback and Kaizena) to transform the way how we use technology for teaching in our different subjects.
- I’ll participate in conferences and “teachmeets” to meet with and share the results of my project and my ongoing experiences with my work to transform my education with the help of technology.
- Share my work on a national level with the help of my blog http://dpamp.blogspot.com/ which will give me an opportunity to discuss my work with others.
- An ongoing evaluation will make sure that we’re on track with the project and that we’ll able to measure the effect of our use of technology with the help of the SAMR - model.
- In January 2016 and June 2016 written reports will be made were evaluations and progress will be presented and discussed.
Wish
It would be welcome if courses like these at
Stanford could be arranged in Sweden as well and if it’d be possible I’d be
gladly to help organizing it (maybe as a speaker) to spread the good examples
of how to teach for excellence and improve our education. A rotation of the
organizing university would be welcome since it’ll make it possible to connect
teachers all over the country and also make use of the different universities
different specialties.
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