The Why, What and How of Technology Integration

This article is cross posted at the Technology & Learning Advisor blog.

If your school district is anything like mine you have been deeply entrenched in creating Professional Growth Plans (PGP) and Student Growth Objectives (SGO) for the better part of last and this school year. With all of this busyness we can lose focus of the continuing need for professional development and research to improve our craft. It’s time that school leaders let us all get back to what we do best, teach, no matter what evaluation model you may follow.

With that in mind, and that fact that we are getting bombarded by ed tech companies all the time, we need to have some guidelines to follow when it comes to integrating new technologies. I recently attended a symposium that reinforced some standard, and maybe forgotten, guidelines to follow for the integration of technology both in the classroom and district.  The keynote speaker, Joshua Koen of Passaic Public Schools in NJ, did a great job outlining some important things to remember before we purchase and integrate technology into the classroom.  Here are some of his points with my own added:

1. You need to have a good reason why.

If you can’t specifically answer why you want to integrate a technology into your curriculum you need to go back and rethink your process.  With shrinking budgets and more demands on all staff you have to do your homework and not be won over by the hype that technology vendors create in their products. We need to approach it with a critical eye and look at marketing campaigns with the same media literacy skills we try to impart in our students. From the top down, we have to make sure that it will improve instruction and that we can’t use an existing technology, in an innovative way, that does the same thing. We live in a more technologically open world now than ever before, with lots of great free tools, so we should really have good reason why before asking  to purchase new classroom technologies.

2. You have to know what you want.

As the saying goes “Sometimes you don’t know, what you don’t know.”  We have to be sure that we know exactly what we want to accomplish in our classrooms to make the biggest impact. Teachers have to be researchers and work with their technology and curriculum people to get the right fit for what they want their students to accomplish. Have your administrators or tech director call vendors and ask for demo units that will allow you to run a proof of concept trial before making the purchase. This is really important since we all know that we don’t always get what is advertised, or it’s just not the right fit.  I have seen this happen too many times and it creates frustration and the technology ends up not being used. Only the classroom teacher can know if it’s the right fit, so don’t force it, and ask the vendors for those demos.

3. Have a plan for how to make it happen.

We all know how important planning in education is for success. Looking back at the first step and remembering the reason why you want the technology will drive the planning process. Teachers need to collaborate in their professional networks, and look at best practices to help inform their decisions and instruction. If you do make the purchase, put the time in on the back end with professional development and training before you introduce it to the students . Start slow and pilot it with a chosen few students to give you feedback since they are the end users that should matter most. Most of all innovate as you progress and leverage this new technology to go beyond it’s initial purpose. Just like any tool a multi-tasker is much better than an expensive, specialized, single  use one. Finally, by all means share your experiences with your colleagues and your Personal/Professional Learning Networks (PLN).

By following some common sense guidelines you can save yourself, and your district time, money and frustration. You can also make the most of the district's funds, improve instruction, and create an authentic and collaborative learning environment that will help you and your students achieve those professional development and student growth goals and objectives.

Student Centered PLN's

I was thinking the other day just how much I have been able to learn from my Personal Learning Network (PLN) and how I have been able to take the information that I get from it and share it with my colleagues. The information that I have received from some of the most respected names in educational technology, as well as teachers in the "trenches," has been priceless. I primarily use Blogs, Twitter, Facebook and a variety of Ning's to aggregate and share information. As professionals we need to develop the skill of choosing these tools, as well as who to follow, what hashtags to use on Twitter, and how to "mine" for the information that we are looking for to achieve our desired result.

But, what about our students? In our 21st century learning environments it would be an injustice if we didn't teach them how to develop a PLN. If they can realize the value of the information that they can receive and share with others, as well as the collaboration that can take place, they will have a tool that will help them throughout their lives.

So, how do we do this and still accomplish our curricular goals and satisfy the requirements for standardized tests? Well, I have to say that I definitely don't have all the answers but, if we use the power of this PLN and collaborate then maybe we can all benefit. So here are some of my ideas:

1. Be A Model - Show your students your PLN and have a conversation with them about how you went about developing it. Let them know the work you had to put in at first and, if your like me, how it just got easier as you made those connections and learned about more resources. Remember, once they get the concept, and see the value, they are going to start to get more and more ideas.


2. Start with an inside out approach - Start in your classroom. Develop a PLN amongst you and your students. It's an easy thing to do with Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs and wikis. Start a class blog for discussion and collaboration or maybe a wiki for students to share resources or brainstorming ideas. There are a whole host of other tools out there, just think about how you can use them to start a class/course PLN. From there encourage your students to invite other teachers, administrators, or even parents to your PLN. You may be surprised at the response you get.


3. Social Networking - Of course, there is Twitter and Facebook and Ning's, and now Google+. But, depending on the grade level that you teach, they may not be feasible. Facebook has a policy that you have to be thirteen years old to be a member, so that disqualifies most of the younger students. Some Ning's may not be appropriate for students and Google+ isn't widely available yet.
   Twitter is valuable if you use it appropriately. One idea is to teach your students about hashtags or create lists for them to follow on Twitter. It's important for them to see social networking as a tool for learning.

OK, so there are three of my ideas. You may think that they are pretty obvious but if you are innovative enough, and listen to your students ideas, then you will reap the benefits of your hard work. If you can get your students to buy in to the value of PLN's, and allow them to explore a bit, they will do much of the innovation for you. Heck, you may even learn something!

One of the goals of this post, as all blog posts should do, is to get your opinion and collaborate. So, please comment and post your ideas or resources for developing student PLN's here for others to see. Also, why not post to Twitter. Use the hashtag #studentpln and let's get the ideas "flowing." Remember, we are the examples!!