Technology+Facilitation+&+Leadership+Standards+Reflections

It makes complete sense to place standard one where it is placed. It serves as the necessary foundation for all the remaining standards. You cannot demonstrate proficiency in the remaining standards without a concrete understanding of technology operations and concepts. Many of the courses touched on Standard I, such as Concepts of Educational Technology, Information Systems Management, and Web Design. Through these courses I experienced both performance indicators as I gained understanding of the concepts related to each of those courses and continued to grow and stay current with emerging technologies. I gained the greatest amount of knowledge in the Information Systems Management course. I had heard of terms used, but not realized the depth of what they consisted of. After interviewing the coordinator for Information Systems, I began to have a better understanding of her job and the people she manages. I learned about the barriers they her group encounters which allowed me to be more understanding when I request something of them and it doesn’t happen as fast as I would like. As stated before, I feel strongly about Standard I being the first standard as it lays the building blocks for all other standards as a technology leader. Without a concrete understanding of technical operations and concepts, I would have been at a loss when it came to taking on other courses. As Williamson and Redish state, “this standard will never be obsolete” (Williamson & Redish, 2009) due to the rapid pace of emerging technologies. It’s a bit troubling to find that although 45 states have technology standards for teachers, only 36 had standards for administrators. I believe that administrators should have the same standards since they should be the ones to model what teachers are expected to do. Luckily, our district, provides training for administrators to keep them as current as possible with technology. As a technology facilitator, I will continually address the standard as I look for ways to incorporate concepts and operations as part of the staff development that I deliver to both teachers and administrators. I would have to say that one of the puzzling issues I find is how to best stay current. This is something I intend to ask my mentor. What is the best way to stay current while keeping up with my job responsibilities? Are there certain journals or reports that do a good job of summarizing current trends that I should subscribe to? Finding some of the best ways to keep up with the rapid pace of changes in technology will allow me to stay abreast of current technology trends. Reference: Williamson, J., & Redish, T. (2009). //Technology Facilitation and Leadership Standards.// International Society for Technology in Education.
 * Standard I: Technology Operations and Concepts**

Standard II, Planning and Designing Learning Environments and Experiences is the biggest and most relevant standard in my particular job. The intro course, Concepts of Educational Technology, Digital Graphics, Animation & Desktop Publishing and Instructional Design all addressed this standard. As part of these courses, I designed learning opportunities that used strategies for diverse learners, applied current research and resources, and modeled management techniques. I continually provide resources for teachers and assist them as they work to integrate technology into the curriculum, but as a consequence of these courses my planning has become more intentional. Sometimes it takes longer to finalize my staff development plans because I want to make sure that I can model and provide everything that I want the teachers to model and provide for the students. The extra time is well worth it though. ** Teachers are slowly beginning to shift from more teacher-centered to student-centered learning as part of the process. Although hard to give up “control” of their class, by my modeling how the shift can smoothly occur, teachers are beginning to take the next steps necessary. As Williamson and Redish mention that 85% of teachers use technology administratively, it’s troubling to find only half of all teachers use technology to support instruction (Williamson & Redish, 2009). This is one of the largest barriers that I have to remove for the teachers that I work with. Many feel that they don’t have time to use technology. My job is to show them how to integrate, so that it isn’t something separate that takes up time, but something that can enhance learning while at times making things more efficient and allow for extra instructional time. I’m curious to see the growth of the teachers at the campuses that I support. I intend to have them assess themselves and to administer a needs assessment annually, so that I can see the trends and hopefully growth. I think the true key to responding to the challenge of integrating technology for instructional change is to “immerse teachers in the professional learning experiences similar to the learning experiences they are expected to design.” (Williamson & Redish, 2009). Seeing that I designed my staff development as they are expected to design lesson, shows that it is possible. Reference: Williamson, J., & Redish, T. (2009). //Technology Facilitation and Leadership Standards.// International Society for Technology in Education.
 * Standard II: Planning and Designing Learning Environments and Experiences

There are so many pieces of standard III that fall right into place with my position. As part of facilitating technology rich experiences, I use current research to create units of instruction that meet the needs of diverse learners and use higher-order skills and creativity, all while being able to manage learning activities. That is the meat of my job. It one thing to say that you should use technology, but it another if you are able to show just how to do that. By incorporating the performance tasks of standard III in my staff developments, I’m able to model these shifts in teaching as Williamson and Redish (2009) state so it “doesn’t create a classroom management issue” and carefully craft my examples to make good use of the little time available for training. As I continue to add to my learning through the standards I continue to find research that troubles me. The lack of emphasis on the TEKS is one that has many roots. I can see from the chart provided by Williamson and Redish that the responsibility for implementation is the key factor. Not having an accountability standard that is uniform nationwide allows states and districts to create their own standards, if any. This is alarming and will become even more evident as our youth graduate into the competitive workforce and are left behind. As we continue to strive as a district to be one that is competitive, we will continue to work on the integration of technology in teaching, learning, and the curriculum. It is a struggle that will have it ups and downs, hopefully more ups as we work to establish accountability efforts that will make a positive impact in our youth. Reference: Williamson, J., & Redish, T. (2009). //Technology Facilitation and Leadership Standards.// International Society for Technology in Education. **
 * Standard III: Teaching, Learning, and the Curriculum

To me assessment and evaluation was only a term meant for classroom teachers, assess the students and see where they ended up on an end of year evaluation. As I encountered standard IV in courses such as Leadership for Accountability and Instructional Design I begin to draw a bigger and better picture of the true meaning of assessment and evaluation. Standard IV encompasses not only teachers, but facilitators and leaders as well. As Lead of the elementary facilitators, I am a part of a number of meetings that have involved assessment and evaluation of different products the district is thinking of purchasing. As Williamson and Redish (2009) state technology facilitators “must apply formative evaluation measures to ensure that implementation is leading to desired results.” I’ve been able to apply this to discussions that I’ve had concerning a new online presence the district is looking into. We continue ask ourselves if this what we want in the end and will it ultimately give us what we want, student success? An example of assessment is in the use of classroom performance systems, clickers. I model the use of these tools to assess student learning and then adjust instruction based on the data I get from the programs. Another example is how the district is now moving toward an assessment product that allows the teachers to scan benchmarks and receive immediate feedback. I’ve been involved in guiding instructional coaches and teachers in how to view and analyze the data once it is available. Having the results immediately at their fingertips has helped to improve instruction as we don’t have to wait for the 2 week turn around period as in the past. Students have definitely benefitted from this as teachers are able to make adjustments quicker than before. As the district moves closer to ensuring that students in 8th grade are technology literate, we will continue to evaluate different products that are being marketed. Currently, we don’t have a long term product that meets our needs due in part to limited tools, expenses, and unfortunately lack of federal requirements for reporting. Hopefully, we can soon be confident in saying that we have a solid product that meets all those needs. Reference: Williamson, J., & Redish, T. (2009). //Technology Facilitation and Leadership Standards.// International Society for Technology in Education.
 * Standard IV: Assessment and Evaluation**

**Standard V: Productivity and Professional Practice I’ve been able to experience many of the performance indicators and tasks of Standard V: Productivity and Professional Practice as part of my job and within the course. I kept up with standard TF-V.A engaging in ongoing professional development by not only attending activities and conferences (Tech Forum, NECC, TCEA, and ASCD) and belonging to organizations (TCEA, ASCD) as performance task TF-V.A.1 states, but also by disseminating information concerning professional growth opportunities for staff, TF-V.A.2. In courses such as Teaching with Technology 5364, Digital Graphics, Animation and Desktop Publishing 5366, and video Technology and Multimedia 5363, I’ve been able to use a number of productivity tools. ** Continually using productivity tools has allowed me to perform my job better without having to worry about learning basic tools. By participating and attending a number of conferences, I’ve gained a wealth of knowledge about upcoming productivity tools that I’ve been able to not only use by themselves, but in conjunction with older tools that I was already familiar with. For instance, I learned about an animation tool that could be used to make a picture speak to you. I used that in combination with a wiki, that I already knew, and created a better representation of my learning with students. I’ve used communication with others via online collaborative projects (TF-V.D.4) to help in the deployment on iPods within our district. By participating in this professional practice, I’ve been able to avoid pitfalls that other districts ran into when deploying iPods. I would be in constant catch up mode had it not been for my interactions with the collaborative group. Williamson and Redish (2009) mention barriers to productivity tool usage being that they are usually designed for corporate purposes and the amount of time to master such tools. I’ve seen this barrier in addition to the fact that so many new tools continually come out. Once you think you finally know one tool, another one with a few more bells and whistles emerges. The high learning curves lead to under usage. I’ve witnessed this in trainings, at times. Many times I’ve heard teachers say, “it’s easy when you do it, but I won’t remember when I get back to my campus.” Without making your practice effective by being innovative and adaptive, teachers will not see the need to practice and incorporate their learning to reduce the learning curve. I’ve helped many teachers leave with a sense of accomplishment because I have learned what it takes for adults to learn and change. As I continue to build my leadership skills it will become ever important to master my productivity tools. I’ve seen the number of emails my supervisor receives and wondered how I could ever manage such large amounts. She has shown me her organization method with email, from creating different folders to categorizing by subject line. I never understood how important the subject line in an email is until I discussed it with my supervisor. Getting so many emails, she can easily sort through the most urgent ones by subject line content. The courses within this program have reiterated what I already knew about the importance of being a lifelong learner, I’m just puzzled by the amount of teachers who still see no need for continued learning. Many attend only the two required summer staff development days and go no further to learn more. It troubles me that they are in effect hurting the learning of students. Reference: Williamson, J., & Redish, T. (2009). //Technology Facilitation and Leadership Standards.// International Society for Technology in Education. **Standard VI: Social, Ethical, Legal, and Human Issues The social, ethical, legal, and human issues as addressed in Standard VI are important to administrators as well as district technology leaders. We covered such issues in 5365 Web Development and Design, 5344 School Law, 5362 Information Systems Management, and 5333 Leadership for Accountability. Of most importance is the protection of student information, whether part of an Information System or part of a web page. By reviewing the district Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) I was able to compare our district’s outdated AUP to a draft of a newer one that included more recent technology that wasn’t available when the previous one was written. Personally, I gained a better understanding of how AUPs have to be written in a broad sense because of what might come. I found that we couldn’t mention specifics such as wikis or blogs, but had to use broad terms such as online activity. ** Learning about laws such as FERPA and CIPA, I was able to model and teach ethical practice related to technology(TF/TL-VI.A). As part of my beginning of year training for teachers I’ve helped develop strategies and provide professional development at the school level to teach responsible use of technology (TF-VI.A.1) by providing a brochure on cyber-bullying and netiquette. In reading the ISTE standards I agree with Williamson and Redish (2009) when they state, “most educators do not fully comprehend copyright law and, therefore, are not able to model and teach basic principles to students.” There have been numerous occasions when teachers required students to have pictures from the internet without mention of citation. When I asked them if they required proper citation, the response was that they didn’t know how to properly do it, so they didn’t require it of the students. I’ve since added this to my returning teacher training and now post a copyright poster in the lab that summarizes copyright laws related to images, music, video, and other digital resources (TF-VI.A.2). One of the concerns that continually bothers me is the limiting of resources by the district. I have teachers who are eager to use new technologies such as wikis, blogs, and cross-site communication products only to be told that they aren’t allowed. With more and more teachers learning and wanting to use these products, the feeling of the group is one of frustration. I am currently part of a committee looking into purchasing a product that will provide a safe way to use these new tools. We’ve come across many questions that we’ve had to address from administrators and the superintendant. Most important, is always student data. What student information will be available? Who will have administrator rights? Are there different levels of administrator rights? Is there backup of data? What kind of access will parents have? Do we want parents to access certain areas or not? As you can see there are many stakeholders. One final issue that puzzles me is the lack of concern by teachers when it comes to password protection. I address this in my beginning of year training and have to actually tell teachers not to leave passwords on sticky notes beneath the keyboard or anywhere in sight. I get a chuckle, but I’ve seen way too many in plain view. Hopefully, in time, I will begin to have a more and more security-conscious faculty.

Reference: Williamson, J., & Redish, T. (2009). //Technology Facilitation and Leadership Standards.// International Society for Technology in Education.

As we get into standard VII we begin to get into more tasks that have to do more with individuals outside of the classroom. We encountered standard VII in EDLD 5306 Concepts of Educational Technology, EDLD 5365 Web Design, and EDLD 5362 Information Systems Management. As part of our Student Information System we have to TF-VII.A.2 use mass storage devices to store and retrieve information and resources. Having to access our SIS, we continually access student data without ever thinking about the policies and procedures that went into the planning of the system itself. When we looked at our district web policy we discussed TF-VII.B.5 policies and procedures concerning security for managing computers in a variety of school settings. This is something that I cover each year with my returning and new teachers. Finally, I’ve fulfilled TF/TL-VII.C participating in professional development related to management of school facilities, technology resources, and purchases. ** I was able to use all of this knowledge in multiple aspects of my position. I’ve since updated my training manuals to address security and used concepts of adult learning theory to the staff development that I design. As Williamson and Redish (2009) discuss the total cost of ownership (TCO), I’ve never understood it better. I have a voice in school technology purchases and I have to agree that TCO plays a major part in our decisions. Many times we are offered free products, but when you look at the TCO it becomes more expensive in the long run. Another aspect of standard VII during procuring products is asking for a RFP, request for proposal. Taking part in a committee on web presence for students and staff, I was exposed to them for the first time this year. I was amazed at the amount of detail that they called for and the breakdown of each RFP. As we move toward implementing new technologies, I see future trainings as vital factors. Williamson and Redish (2009) state, “weaknesses in training or other implementation components may also contribute to teacher access levels.” This weakness keeps the technology from being used properly. That is why future trainings need to be strong. Looking in from the outside, one might not understand the policies and procedures that go into planning and budgeting for technology. When I get requests for software or more technology equipment because what we have is insufficient according to some teachers, I can feel their dissatisfaction. In a way, I can relate, but knowing that what is being decided is in the best interest of students and the district, I understand. As we move closer to our next bond proposal, I intend to research other needs assessment and compile the best ones to make ours the best it can be. I will poll teachers to see what they were dissatisfied with when the previous needs assessment and technology rollout occurred. In administering the last needs assessment before the bond proposal, I was puzzled by the lack of concern or interest from teachers as if it didn’t matter. Seeing that we listened to what they asked for, I think their attitude will change next time around. Reference: Williamson, J., & Redish, T. (2009). //Technology Facilitation and Leadership Standards.//International Society for Technology in Education.
 * Standard VII: Procedures, Policies, Planning, and Budgeting for Technology Environments

Leadership and vision play a big part in making sure that our instructional models move toward more student-centered models instead of teacher-centered. Unfortunately, many of our stakeholders “have difficulty imaging how new technologies can support educational endeavors which may create resistance” (Williamson and Redish, 2009). As we took part in EDLD 5368 Instructional Design and EDLD 5333 Leadership for Accountability, we encountered some of the performance tasks in Standard VIII. ** As part of a grant that our district received I formed school partnerships to support technology integration (TF/TL-VIII.C.1). Not only did I participate in the collaborative partnership as part of the grant, but I created a collaborative wiki within our district after seeing the importance of the partnership. By using the wiki we were able to communicate across the district with others that were part of the grant and whom we may not have had a chance to meet with otherwise. The group as a whole had a sense of belonging and a closer bond. Teachers were happy to be able to post and share examples of their work as they learned new pieces of the software we used. Another opportunity I had was working with science teacher leaders in developing curriculum. I was able to describe curriculum activites that meet state and local technology standards (TF/TL –VIII.D.4) as we worked to integrate technology lessons. In reading the components of technology plan, it seems simple to take on this task, but as Williamson and Redish explain, it doesn’t ensure an exemplary plan. They qualities mentioned are key to making the technology plan a success. A few years ago our district implemented a plan and now as I read about standard VIII, I see all of the components and realize what an enormous task it was to complete and the leadership qualities necessary. We are actually still trying to complete some pieces of the plan to make it successful. Based on our district plan, our district will be successful in the future use of technology. In fact, we are already so successful that we have additional requests for more technology. Our teachers are excited about what is to come next and look forward to trying new products as they continually emerge. If I was ever to take on leading and developing a technology plan I would first research how it was done in the past. What sources or key players were involved in the process? Where did my supervisor, at the time, get her ideas from? The resources at the end of the chapter also offer valuable guidebooks detailing planning. The one issue that continues to puzzle me is the lack of concern teachers took when asked what technology they needed. Each time they ask why they didn’t get this piece of equipment or that software, I simply ask them what they answered on the needs assessment. I helped to piece together the results and we were able to give the teachers what they asked for to a certain extent. Knowing that now, why wouldn’t the teachers take a little more concern when the next needs assessment comes? With the right leadership and vision, our district will have another successfully implemented technology plan for the future. Reference: Williamson, J., & Redish, T. (2009). //Technology Facilitation and Leadership Standards.//International Society for Technology in Education.
 * Standard VIII: Leadership and Vision