Celebrating Success

Success is hard to see in my job at the micro level.  I don't know if it is because I am split between two schools or that I don't spend a lot of time watching individual teachers put into practice what I taught them.  The nature of my job has me working predominantly with those teachers who do not know what to do with a particular technology.  Today was different though.

I have been working with a team of teachers who are not very digitally skilled, but who are eager to learn and apply.  We have a software that most teachers are required to use on a monthly basis.  I started working with this particular team on this software at the beginning of last year.  Progress has come in fits and starts, but progress was being made.  Today I saw that come to fruition. 

One of those teachers asked me to help her with some tasks in this particular software.  Then she proceeded to do exactly what she needed to do without my help at all.  I was just there for her mental support.  It was knowing that she had support if she needed it, that freed her up to succeed.  A year and a half of work had finally shown results.

Kudos to that teacher for persevering and continuing to work with a software even though others in our division gave up long ago.         

My First Guest Podcast

I had an opportunity recently to be a guest on the Ed Tech Co-Op podcast.  This was my first podcast and my first guest appearance on anything.  We spent the 45 minute show discussing technology integration using a recent New York Times article as our focal point.  If you are an education technology integration specialist, interested in technology use in schools, or my mother, I highly recommend you check out the Episode 10 - Determining the Value of Tech in School.   

The Technology Feedback Loop

Today I had the opportunity to see two sides of education.  I started the day observing two high school Algebra classes in preparation for a data gathering project.  During my observations, I was surprised by the amount of down time the students had through out the course of the period and how boring it was.  The students had a number of practice problems to do on paper, but when they finished they had to wait until a teacher could review the answers.  If a student came across a difficult problem, more often than not they didn't do it, because they knew they could just wait for the teacher to review the answer.  During those periods of waiting their engagement with the content was lost.  In today's age of instant information and responses, this method seemed so antiquated.

On the flip side, later in the day I was able to participate in an iPod lesson with third grade students where they were practicing fractions.  Even though one of the apps we used had some really difficult problems, the students continued to try them.  They didn't lose focus and were really able to persevere through out the lesson.  I believe this has a lot to do with the immediate feedback that the app based practice provides.  Students didn't have to wait.  They could try a solution.  If it didn't work, they learned from their mistakes and tried again.  I didn't see the same frustration and lack of effort.   

I spent some time today thinking about how we can make the iPod example more of a reality in schooling.  I want to leverage technology to make learning more personal, exciting, and immediate.  We have the tools to do it.  We just need to find the right combination, put it together, and make it happen.   That is my goal.