After thinking about Rogers categories I consider myself to be an Early Adapter. I cannot consider myself an innovator because I often work with technology that has been proven effective in other areas not necessarily related to education. I feel that as an early adapter I'm often looking how to implement new ideas in current work processes to make them more effective.
For example, in my current job as a project assistant I'm always looking for ways to improve communication with our target population consisting of faculty, supervisors, and students. As a web administrator I new that the next logical step from using plain html was to implement CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to a website in order to improve navigation. Also, CSS provided easy ways of changing the appearance of a site as it was all contain in the attached style sheet. I had seen the effectiveness of CSS in several other pages around the net and decided to adapt an implementation that would meet my needs. After sharing my finds several of my coworkers saw the benefit of implementing CSS as it made their program sites more effective and was less complicating than creating complicated server site websites or html sites that were difficult to update.
Activity Log:
Monday - Listened to podcast, posted responce item
Tuesday to Thursday - continue work on Project 1 and Project 2
Friday - post comments on other responces.
Monday, January 29, 2007
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Session 3
Responce Item
Can technology integration in US classrooms be expressed in a hierarchy?
I think that a hierarchy is adecuate to express technology use in classroom. I do not have experience as a teacher, but I have been assisting many teachers in my different jobs at CSUSB. I noticed that a pyramid structure like the one described by Dr. Newberry is very adecuate and I believe that teachers today move up the pyramid as they gain more experience. Today because of the NCLB teachers are under great pressure to give results and therefore many new teachers do not try to integrate technology into their classrooms as they begin their careers. It is important to realize that there is no significant difference in the way children learn with technology compared to traditional techniques and this often drives new teachers away from non traditional learning techniques. Knowing this experienced teachers often try to integrate technology based on personal experience and success with technology. New teachers I believe do not apply this into the classroom as they are not comfortable enough with their environment and will try to work with traditional techniques used in their teacher preparation classes. I think that the hierarchy shown by Dr. Newberry still applies to today's classroom even if it is several years old and the teachers at the bottom of the pyramid will be newer teachers and as they gain more experience in their profession they will tend to move up the pyramid.
Activity Log
This week I listen to the podcast and posted my responce. Also, my project topics have been approved and I have uploaded my proposals to my blog. You can find a link on the right side menu. This weekend I will respond to other posts and begin work on my different proposals.
Project Proposals
Proposal 1
Proposal 2
Proposal 3
Can technology integration in US classrooms be expressed in a hierarchy?
I think that a hierarchy is adecuate to express technology use in classroom. I do not have experience as a teacher, but I have been assisting many teachers in my different jobs at CSUSB. I noticed that a pyramid structure like the one described by Dr. Newberry is very adecuate and I believe that teachers today move up the pyramid as they gain more experience. Today because of the NCLB teachers are under great pressure to give results and therefore many new teachers do not try to integrate technology into their classrooms as they begin their careers. It is important to realize that there is no significant difference in the way children learn with technology compared to traditional techniques and this often drives new teachers away from non traditional learning techniques. Knowing this experienced teachers often try to integrate technology based on personal experience and success with technology. New teachers I believe do not apply this into the classroom as they are not comfortable enough with their environment and will try to work with traditional techniques used in their teacher preparation classes. I think that the hierarchy shown by Dr. Newberry still applies to today's classroom even if it is several years old and the teachers at the bottom of the pyramid will be newer teachers and as they gain more experience in their profession they will tend to move up the pyramid.
Activity Log
This week I listen to the podcast and posted my responce. Also, my project topics have been approved and I have uploaded my proposals to my blog. You can find a link on the right side menu. This weekend I will respond to other posts and begin work on my different proposals.
Project Proposals
Proposal 1
Proposal 2
Proposal 3
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Session 2 - Activity Log
This week I listened to the podcast, posted comments for responce items, commented on different posts, and send project ideas to Dr Newberry.
Project Ideas
Focus Area 1: Use of Web 2.0 technology in my program website. Using expert reearch to implement blogs, podcasts, and RSS to increase the use of our website from our supervisors and students.
Focus Area 2: Submitting a proposal for a technology conference. This will be in regards to one of the online assessments that we created in order to share our analysis, testing, implementation, and results.
Focus Area 3: Proposal for creating a recording facility to create podcasts to share some of the experiences of our supervisors and teachers with new intern teachers in our program who are first time teachers.
Project Ideas
Focus Area 1: Use of Web 2.0 technology in my program website. Using expert reearch to implement blogs, podcasts, and RSS to increase the use of our website from our supervisors and students.
Focus Area 2: Submitting a proposal for a technology conference. This will be in regards to one of the online assessments that we created in order to share our analysis, testing, implementation, and results.
Focus Area 3: Proposal for creating a recording facility to create podcasts to share some of the experiences of our supervisors and teachers with new intern teachers in our program who are first time teachers.
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Session 2
Manager vs. Leader
After listening to the various definitions Dr. Newberry provided us in regards to the differences between a manager and a leader, I believe that I'm a combination of both. I'm not an educator, but I do work and interact with educators and students in my current job. In my job I consider myself a manager, I'm in charge of the maintenance of our website and our online assessments, that include tasks such as updates, registration, and compilation of grades. In the previous case I consider myself a manager, but in the last couple of years I believe I have developed some leadership qualities. In my job we already had a website and an online assessment for our program, also I had access to many different software that was not being used at its full potential. My first step was to conduct an analysis on how the site and online assessment could be improved in order to better serve our students. My proposal included the use of new technology to make this improvement, such as the use of an interactive movie created in flash for the online assessment to ensure its effectiveness and security. Also the use of CSS to make our site easier to navigate and and most importantly ADA complient, features that the previous one did not include. The success of my first proposal gave me the necessary confidence to keep improving my leadeship qualities as well as the resources that our program provides to educators and students with the integration of new technology.
After listening to the various definitions Dr. Newberry provided us in regards to the differences between a manager and a leader, I believe that I'm a combination of both. I'm not an educator, but I do work and interact with educators and students in my current job. In my job I consider myself a manager, I'm in charge of the maintenance of our website and our online assessments, that include tasks such as updates, registration, and compilation of grades. In the previous case I consider myself a manager, but in the last couple of years I believe I have developed some leadership qualities. In my job we already had a website and an online assessment for our program, also I had access to many different software that was not being used at its full potential. My first step was to conduct an analysis on how the site and online assessment could be improved in order to better serve our students. My proposal included the use of new technology to make this improvement, such as the use of an interactive movie created in flash for the online assessment to ensure its effectiveness and security. Also the use of CSS to make our site easier to navigate and and most importantly ADA complient, features that the previous one did not include. The success of my first proposal gave me the necessary confidence to keep improving my leadeship qualities as well as the resources that our program provides to educators and students with the integration of new technology.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Session 1 - Activity Log
Activity Log
Tuesday 9
Listen to session podcast
Thursday 11
Created blog
posted responses
posted comments
learning contract
Sunday 14
activity log
posted comments
Tuesday 9
Listen to session podcast
Thursday 11
Created blog
posted responses
posted comments
learning contract
Sunday 14
activity log
posted comments
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Session 1
Welcome to my blog!
I'm glad to be participating in this class, I'm looking forward to the different projects and activities.
Learning Contract:
I plan to complete the 3 projects. I'm currently brainstorming ideas on how these can be benificial to my current job.
Ways of approaching technology;
Area 1
I work as a project assistant for a grant at CSUSB to assist teacher internts at different districts in the Inland Empire. For me it is important to use technology to increase my effectiveness in order to provide a better service to our students and to be able to effectively showcase our progress to our administrators. When I arrived at this position there was very little use of technology, but now we have all of our forms posted on our website and available for download. Also we constructed several online assessments in order to better serve our students. It is always my goal to keep our site updated so that students can have better access to our information, for example I have converted the site from basic HTML to include CSS and in the future some audio and video resources.
Area 2
At times it can be a challenge to implement changes to processes that have been in place for a long time. Fortunately I work with a great group of people who are always looking forward on how technology can improve their daily tasks. This happened to me when we posted our student supervisor forms online as PDF documents. As part of one of our inservice sessions we took some time to guide them through the download process of the software, making changes, and saving them so that they could be used through out the course of a quater without having to fill out recurring information each time they supervised a student.
Area 3
Supporting the effective use of technology for planning for technology use, promoting, and staff development. I help create two online testing resources for our students and our student mentors. For our mentors we created an online quiz that guides them through our program information, at the end they can print out a certificate to provide successful completion. Before I arrived to this position there was an online assessment but it was very basic and provided little to non security features. Also, because of a state lawsuit our students needed to completed 10 hours of orientation in teaching english learners, but instead of having them over the weekend in long full day workshops we created an online assessment that they can do at their own pace.
I'm glad to be participating in this class, I'm looking forward to the different projects and activities.
Learning Contract:
I plan to complete the 3 projects. I'm currently brainstorming ideas on how these can be benificial to my current job.
Ways of approaching technology;
Area 1
I work as a project assistant for a grant at CSUSB to assist teacher internts at different districts in the Inland Empire. For me it is important to use technology to increase my effectiveness in order to provide a better service to our students and to be able to effectively showcase our progress to our administrators. When I arrived at this position there was very little use of technology, but now we have all of our forms posted on our website and available for download. Also we constructed several online assessments in order to better serve our students. It is always my goal to keep our site updated so that students can have better access to our information, for example I have converted the site from basic HTML to include CSS and in the future some audio and video resources.
Area 2
At times it can be a challenge to implement changes to processes that have been in place for a long time. Fortunately I work with a great group of people who are always looking forward on how technology can improve their daily tasks. This happened to me when we posted our student supervisor forms online as PDF documents. As part of one of our inservice sessions we took some time to guide them through the download process of the software, making changes, and saving them so that they could be used through out the course of a quater without having to fill out recurring information each time they supervised a student.
Area 3
Supporting the effective use of technology for planning for technology use, promoting, and staff development. I help create two online testing resources for our students and our student mentors. For our mentors we created an online quiz that guides them through our program information, at the end they can print out a certificate to provide successful completion. Before I arrived to this position there was an online assessment but it was very basic and provided little to non security features. Also, because of a state lawsuit our students needed to completed 10 hours of orientation in teaching english learners, but instead of having them over the weekend in long full day workshops we created an online assessment that they can do at their own pace.
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