5364=8011+Week+5

As technology becomes more of a day-to-day tool, districts must become more creative in how they train teachers and encourage its use in the classroom. According to Solomon and Schrum, several studies have found that the lack of technology implementation by educators falls on the administration’s lack of requiring accountability (111). If an administrator is committed to implementing new technologies, the staff will begin to follow (128). Administrators need to be aware of not only the initial cost of new technologies, but also the long-term cost of maintaining the equipment, paying for licenses, or other costs that will be incurred. Another area of concern for administrators is Internet safety for students. Pitler (et al.) reminds us that if schools ban online technologies, they also ban valuable teaching tools and an opportunity to teach students about online safety as well as ethical and appropriate use (223).
 * Final Reflection**
 * Part 3 - Week 5**

 While the readings in week one covered many areas, I chose to focus on finding new resources that I can utilize in my classes to help my students learn better. I began with Pitler’s (et al.) ideas for creating rubrics (30-33). The learning objectives are already created, so finding a better way to create rubrics that saves time is needed. A second area is student feedback. According to Kulik and Kulik, immediate feedback has a strong impact on student behavior (Pitler, et al., 42). My classroom recently received a set of student response systems or “clickers”. They primarily use multiple-choice responses, but limited short answers may also be included. By correctly designing the questions all levels of Bloom’s taxonomy, from recall through evaluation, may be evaluated (45). Seeing example of ways teachers have incorporated this immediate feedback into their classes provides ideas for incorporating this into my own classes.  One of the areas that caught my attention was the correlation between technology use by students in an education setting and self-esteem. Michael Page has collected numerous studies that show that using technology in a classroom can have a positive impact on student’s self-esteem, especially on students of low socioeconomic status (393). However, Page pointed out that in each of the experimental classrooms, the teachers were fully trained in the use of the classroom technologies as well as innovative instructional methods (396). This fact seems significant to me. Perhaps one of the biggest barriers to using technology in classrooms is that many educators are not comfortable with the technology (Solomon & Schrum, 103). There is an administrator on my campus who is a self-admitted "technophobe". She only learned how to add attachments to email and use the text feature of her phone in the last few months. Another coworker only began using a document camera a month ago. It had been in her room for months; she was afraid that she would break it. Until educators have used some technology with success, they are often not willing to add this to their lessons or encourage students to do so. Another part of the study included adding technology to the classroom control group and making it available for the students. In the traditional classrooms, no technology was added, so teachers continued to focus on a traditional model (Page, 397). While I have no doubt that incorporating technology into education is highly beneficial and necessary to students by helping prepare them for life outside of the classroom, I wonder at what point we stop demonizing teachers who do not use technology when they do not have access to the technology or the training needed.

 As a foreign language teacher, I began to see several possibilities for using the [|CAST UDL Book Builder] in various projects, both teacher created and student created. The simple method to add audio makes this a tool that could be used to easily create chapter vocabulary lists with pronunciation, a grammar handbook for specific aspects that students may need extra reinforcement, short stories using current vocabulary, and other possibilities. I think my students would enjoy creating the books as well, however due to email restrictions this would not be possible at this time. (District student email accounts have been disabled. They would have the option of creating the eBooks at home and emailing links to the teachers.) I did find that not having available illustrations or pictures was a major drawback. Finding the needed pictures was time consuming. My students who are creative may choose to create their own artwork, but those who are not as creative or simply don’t have the ability to do that might be so frustrated that the project became about finding ways to illustrate, not about sharing learned material. Technology in instruction is about choosing what is available, curricular goals, and time available (Pitler, et al. 11). For this to be an effective tool for students, time spent searching for illustrations does not meet our TEKS so it would have to be minimized in advance.

 Using the CAST UDL Lesson Builder was similar to the differentiated lesson format I am required to use in my district. It is actually simpler in the details required, but the online format was frustrating since it kept giving an error message and closing the link. I don't plan to use this site again for that reason. Using a lesson plan format can be helpful for beginning teachers or teachers who are teaching a subject they have not taught before. The CAST UDL Lesson Builder can be helpful by forcing the lesson planner to address many of the needs of a lesson in advance. This approach of knowing where the lesson will end prior to creating a lesson is one that many teachers have used for years.

 Other aspects of using the CAST site are being able to research lessons that others have created or storing your own lesson to change later. This could also be done with a simple lesson plan format created by the teacher to meet the needs of the subject. So, unless you need someone else to set a format for you, I don't see much need for the lesson builder. I have the advantage of having planned thousands of lessons, knowing my students and TEKS well, and knowing the expectations of my district. This was an interesting experience, but not one likely to be repeated unless required for another class.

 From UDL lessons to eBooks to action plans, technology is being used for many purposes in the classroom. Finding things that work for each teacher (or for me), eBooks, or don’t, UDL lesson plans, are just another step in creating a learner-centered, technology rich educational environment for my students. Solomon and Schrum are right when they say, we may not agree on the purpose of education or know what works in all cases, but at least we can sound a promising note about technology’s use in schools (5). The educational system is undergoing a painful, yet exciting change. Web 2.0 is driving the change, and it is up to educators to keep pace. With each new technology or use of technology, my classroom changes. My students are exposed to the learning right after I am. When explaining that students are not allowed to listen to mp3 players during tests due to the possibility of their having downloaded a podcast of the material, a student asked if that was really possible. After hearing that it was, he asked if I would teach him how to podcast, not to cheat, but because that would be a really “cool” thing to know how to do.

 In order to promote the active use of technology in education, schools have to change the ways they train teachers and administrators. According to Solomon and Schrum, one of the most successful ways is to use technology to learn how to use technology (111). Unfortunately, my district is only using the pretense of doing this. An online, book study of ways to begin to utilize technology in education was offered. Principals chose who would participate. Only teachers who currently utilize technology on a regular basis were enrolled. The reasons given were that they would be comfortable with the online format for training, and that those teachers who are afraid of technology would not participate fully. A dozen teachers and I, who already integrate technology into many of our lessons, spent a month studying how to begin to integrate technology into our lessons. The online training looks good to outsiders, but wasted valuable resources that could have been used to train teachers who don’t know how or where to begin using Web 2.0 tools to enhance their students’ learning. Educational leaders have inherited the task of guiding not only the intellectual growth of their students, but also their teachers (Solomon & Schrum, 117). They must help teachers make the transition to using new technologies and new methods (118). Unfortunately, this will mean making decisions that will make some of their staff unhappy or uncomfortable. Prensky reminds us that the most important changes required of educators are not technological, but conceptual (13). If we are going to prepare our students for the world in which they will live, we must change how teachers teach.

 The research tells us that not all students realize the importance of effort. Many attribute their success or failure to external factors (Pitler, et al., 156). A few years ago, I had a group of students who simply would not complete assignments. I made a spreadsheet that showed the average assessment scores of students who attempted every assignment, those who attempted all but one, and those who skipped two or more. My students were surprised to see the large gap in scores from the group that attempted every assignment and those who skipped two or more. I have done this again when it has been a factor, and the gap and reactions are almost the same. I have even heard other teachers lament that they could not do a subject because their parents had done poorly; they were simply waiting for their children to do poorly as well. I also like the Effort Rubric (157) and plan to create a version of this for my students. In the Homework category, it refers to skipping problems that appear long or difficult. That is an issue for many of my middle school students. They simply won't try if they think it might be hard to do; yet when they are forced to try in class or tutorials, they are often shocked that they can do it. It amazes me that sometimes students will spend more time creating excuses for not doing the work than the time it would have taken to complete it.   Overall, the best aspect of the class was the team that I worked with to create a technology plan to solve our scenario. We created a site, [|Teaching with Technology], and a plan to solve the problem. My team was professional and made the project a pleasant learning experience. I learned a great deal about the technologies used in their districts as we compared available resources, some of which I plan to investigate further in the future. Each of us brought different skills and experience that worked well together.   CAST UDL Book Builder. (2006-2011) Retrieved from [].  CAST UDL Lesson Builder. Retrieved from [|http://lessonbuilder.cast.org] __. __  Page, M. S. (2002) Technology-enriched classrooms: Effects on students of low socioeconomic status. //Journal of Research on Technology in Education 34 (4).// International Society for Technology in Education.  Pitler, H., Hubbell, E. R. Hubbell, Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007) //Using technology with classroom instruction that works.// Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.  Prensky, M. (2010). //Teaching digital natives: Partnering for real learning.// Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin. <span style="line-height: 19.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"> Solomon, G. & Schrum,L. (2007). //Web 2.0: new tools, new schools//. Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology in Education <span style="line-height: 19.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"> Teaching with Technology. (2011) Retrieved from [] <span style="line-height: 19.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">.

<span style="line-height: 19.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"> The research tells us that not all students realize the importance of effort. Many attribute their success or failure to external factors (Pitler, et al., 156). A few years ago, I had a group of students who simply would not complete assignments. I made a spreadsheet that showed the average assessment scores of students who attempted every assignment, those who attempted all but one, and those who skipped two or more. My students were surprised to see the large gap in scores from the group that attempted every assignment and those who skipped two or more. I have done this again when it has been a factor, and the gap and reactions are almost the same. I have even heard other teachers lament that they could not do a subject because their parents had done poorly; they were simply waiting for their children to do poorly as well. I also like the Effort Rubric (157) and plan to create a version of this for my students. In the Homework category, it refers to skipping problems that appear long or difficult. That is an issue for many of my middle school students. They simply won't try if they think it might be hard to do; yet when they are forced to try in class or tutorials, they are often shocked that they can do it. It amazes me that sometimes students will spend more time creating excuses for not doing the work than the time it would have taken to complete it.
 * Part I - Week 5**

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E. R. Hubbell, Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007) //Using technology with classroom instruction that works.// Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.