This piece is a long time coming. My excellent visit to India sadly went downhill as I got a bit sick and had to miss part of the ASB conference. Still, I wanted to get these notes and thoughts up to the blog! Here are some of the things I learned on Day 3 of the conference:
Technology Audit:
I went to a very interesting presentation by some of the technology staff at ASB on a technology audit they completed. The purpose of the audit was to see how they were meeting the ISTE standards through their instruction, and then linking that to individual teacher professional development. With their large tech team (18 people!), they were able to complete the audit over a number of months. The process was quite interesting – they interviewed all of the faculty in order to collect artifacts of their technology instruction. They then linked each of these artifacts to both an ISTE standard and a level of Bloom’s Taxonomy. The result was a matrix in which they could see which teachers were meeting which standards and at what level of Bloom’s. This allowed them to evaluate their technology program both on an individual teacher level and at a school level. They then used this data to design individual professional development plans with teachers.
This was a fascinating (and lengthy and time-consuming) process that left me quite amazed. I can’t imagine doing something like this at most schools, since they don’t have such a large technology staff. I question whether the amount of time and effort that went into this program will be worth it in the end, but it’s clear that ASB has made a real commitment to evaluating how they are using technology in order to ensure that it is constantly improving and making a difference in their teaching and learning. Amazing!
Gaming in Education:
I attended a really great session on gaming in education by two Middle School science teachers at ASB. They shared their process of developing a curriculum game for their science class. The game had a zombie theme and was tied to their curriculum on viruses and disease. They shared some excellent resource and ideas for how to create a game for your classroom, and I definitely left inspired to try this in my own classroom. After watching some of Judy McGonigal’s great TED talks (including her recent one about the game Superbetter), I would love to make a classroom game that focuses on character education and our school values. This is definitely something to think about!
Technology mastery:
I loved Scott Klososky’s model of Technology Mastery. For a school to reach technology mastery, they need to ensure they have these things:
- Leadership knowledge and wisdom
- Technology guideposts – 3 to 5 specific guideposts (big goals) that let us know where we are going. These might complete the sentence, “We want to be the best at …” Schools need to refresh these guideposts every year or two.
- Adaptive culture – Willing to change at rapid rate
- The technology team – You are never going to be world class if you don’t have the best technologists
- Technology processes – e.g. When a new student comes in, what data so you gather? When a new teacher arrives – what is tech training? Organizations that have mastery have documented processes.
- Digital marketing, digital plumbing – the right architecture, vendors, software, hardware
- Measurements and analytics – How do we measure whether we are doing well with technology?
- Self education – rivers of information – soak up info that is free online
- Team education – workshops, trade shows, webinars
Wow! A daunting list. This shows why it is so hard to be a leader in the area of educational technology. You really have to have the leadership and vision to ensure that all of these things are in place. I loved this model as a guide for reading technology mastery in a school.