Digital Portfolio for Teacher Leader Corps
Before
When Dr. Muttillo asked for volunteers for the Teacher Leader Corps, I immediately signed up. I was looking for a place to get involved, and I have a natural interest in technology. I was also very interested in the idea of being given devices to create a digital learning lab in my classroom. Other than that, I had no expectations.
Year 1 - Low-Tech/High Tech: Paper Slide Videos
In our first year we spent a lot of time learning about Discovery Ed, but the high school Social Studies resources on that site are fairly limited and outdated so I haven't really used its site as much I hoped I could. What I took away most from that year were some simple ideas about how to use basic technology in a more meaningful way. For a long time, I have required students to use technology to create presentations. In some cases, I noticed that the students spent more time with the technology than they did thinking about the concepts they needed to explain. After we were presented with the strategy of using "low tech-high tech" paper slide videos, I tried it out with two different classes. In Civics and Economics, even academic level students were able to demonstrate a complex process like how a bill becomes a law, a criminal court case, or a civil court case. In Honors Sociology, students presented a group research project that walked through the steps of social science research. I found this most appropriate for these assignments because it was showing a process, not just presenting topical information.
Civics and Economics: Rubric and Student Sample
Honors Sociology: Rubric and Student Sample
Year 2 - Literacy Strategies: Stations and Text-dependent questions
In Year 2, the TLC focused more on literacy since the funding for the new technology was frozen. Since I was still experimenting with new Common Core methods, I actually found this more helpful than the stuff on Discovery Ed. For example, we focused on building content-specific literacy - reading like an historian. We also examined all the different types of text that can be used for literacy skills - documents, videos, images, music, artifacts, etc. The topic that I applied the most to my teaching afterward was writing Text-dependent questions. The New Deal DBQ I created in American History II included primary and secondary sources with text, graphs, political cartoons, and song lyrics. The questions I wrote were very text-specific, so the students had to dig deep into the text to look for evidence, meaning, and inferences. For Sociology, I created online modules with a wide variety of media with text-dependent questions.
Staff Development: "NOT Discovery Ed Training"
American II Document Based Questions: New Deal DBQ Documents, Questions, Group Essay
Honors Sociology Online Modules: Family, Religion, Education, Government, Economy
Year 3 - Student Collaboration: Google Docs
This year I have added more technology components to some projects to increase collaboration, authenticity, and creativity based on our consideration of the Technology Integration Matrix. In Honors American II, I used to create small groups in Edmodo for students to write a muckraking article about Progressive reforms together. This semester, they created a Google Doc and Weebly to write articles for a common news blog, peer edit, and give other groups "reader" responses to their articles. In Honors Sociology, I used to have students write a script and perform a play to demonstrate the theory of dramaturgy in social interaction. This semester, the students wrote their scripts in Google Docs, added side-note annotations to explain how they were illustrating the concepts throughout the play, and created a video for their final product. During both of these projects, there was a point when it got pretty logistically complicated. But the students handled it well and the quality of the products was far better than anything I have seen before.
Honors Sociology: Rubric, Script Sample, and Video Sample
Honors American II: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Rubric and Student Sample
After
To be honest, I have gotten increasingly frustrated with the slow pace and long hours of the training and the lack of devices provided for our classrooms as they promised in the beginning to create learning labs. That being said, I have to admit that I am much further along in understanding how to integrate technology in the classroom. In fact, I feel like we were just getting to the most helpful stuff when the program ended. I am most disappointed that the in-service training the first year were so weak that we lost our colleagues. We now have some great stuff to share but they don't want to hear it. If we hadn't lost so many Early Release Days to inclement weather, we may have been able to get their buy in. This has been a lesson in leadership, just not how it was intended.
When Dr. Muttillo asked for volunteers for the Teacher Leader Corps, I immediately signed up. I was looking for a place to get involved, and I have a natural interest in technology. I was also very interested in the idea of being given devices to create a digital learning lab in my classroom. Other than that, I had no expectations.
Year 1 - Low-Tech/High Tech: Paper Slide Videos
In our first year we spent a lot of time learning about Discovery Ed, but the high school Social Studies resources on that site are fairly limited and outdated so I haven't really used its site as much I hoped I could. What I took away most from that year were some simple ideas about how to use basic technology in a more meaningful way. For a long time, I have required students to use technology to create presentations. In some cases, I noticed that the students spent more time with the technology than they did thinking about the concepts they needed to explain. After we were presented with the strategy of using "low tech-high tech" paper slide videos, I tried it out with two different classes. In Civics and Economics, even academic level students were able to demonstrate a complex process like how a bill becomes a law, a criminal court case, or a civil court case. In Honors Sociology, students presented a group research project that walked through the steps of social science research. I found this most appropriate for these assignments because it was showing a process, not just presenting topical information.
Civics and Economics: Rubric and Student Sample
Honors Sociology: Rubric and Student Sample
Year 2 - Literacy Strategies: Stations and Text-dependent questions
In Year 2, the TLC focused more on literacy since the funding for the new technology was frozen. Since I was still experimenting with new Common Core methods, I actually found this more helpful than the stuff on Discovery Ed. For example, we focused on building content-specific literacy - reading like an historian. We also examined all the different types of text that can be used for literacy skills - documents, videos, images, music, artifacts, etc. The topic that I applied the most to my teaching afterward was writing Text-dependent questions. The New Deal DBQ I created in American History II included primary and secondary sources with text, graphs, political cartoons, and song lyrics. The questions I wrote were very text-specific, so the students had to dig deep into the text to look for evidence, meaning, and inferences. For Sociology, I created online modules with a wide variety of media with text-dependent questions.
Staff Development: "NOT Discovery Ed Training"
American II Document Based Questions: New Deal DBQ Documents, Questions, Group Essay
Honors Sociology Online Modules: Family, Religion, Education, Government, Economy
Year 3 - Student Collaboration: Google Docs
This year I have added more technology components to some projects to increase collaboration, authenticity, and creativity based on our consideration of the Technology Integration Matrix. In Honors American II, I used to create small groups in Edmodo for students to write a muckraking article about Progressive reforms together. This semester, they created a Google Doc and Weebly to write articles for a common news blog, peer edit, and give other groups "reader" responses to their articles. In Honors Sociology, I used to have students write a script and perform a play to demonstrate the theory of dramaturgy in social interaction. This semester, the students wrote their scripts in Google Docs, added side-note annotations to explain how they were illustrating the concepts throughout the play, and created a video for their final product. During both of these projects, there was a point when it got pretty logistically complicated. But the students handled it well and the quality of the products was far better than anything I have seen before.
Honors Sociology: Rubric, Script Sample, and Video Sample
Honors American II: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Rubric and Student Sample
After
To be honest, I have gotten increasingly frustrated with the slow pace and long hours of the training and the lack of devices provided for our classrooms as they promised in the beginning to create learning labs. That being said, I have to admit that I am much further along in understanding how to integrate technology in the classroom. In fact, I feel like we were just getting to the most helpful stuff when the program ended. I am most disappointed that the in-service training the first year were so weak that we lost our colleagues. We now have some great stuff to share but they don't want to hear it. If we hadn't lost so many Early Release Days to inclement weather, we may have been able to get their buy in. This has been a lesson in leadership, just not how it was intended.