You Can Do This!

Veteran teachers ! Are you on the integrating technology into my classroom bandwagon yet?

Veteran Tier 1 teachers in New York State are a dying breed! I don't mean that literally, though some would disagree. I mean there are fewer NYSUT Tier 1 veteran teachers in active classrooms within the state.If you began teaching before 1973 and did not leave the workforce for an extended period, you are a member of this retirement tier.

Veterans can tell you of all the acronyms and testing programs of earlier years, the PEP, PET, Compact for Learning,Madeline Hunter, Middle states accreditation, the list goes on and on.

The new, new thing however is integrating technology into everyday classroom practice. Smartboards, e-mail notifications, online learning, pd use, laptops for students, Sharepoint,Activboard and more, teachers are being asked to use technology on a regular basis. Veteran teachers have sometimes been described as less than enthusiastic with using the new technology tools.

How about blogging or contributing to your union newsletter? Are veteran teachers using this technology or social media strategy to voice their opinion?

This school year, administrators and teachers are trying to craft strategies to minimize loss of instructional time should students become ill with the H1N1 virus. What is your school district doing to prepare for an outbreak?Will school districts look to e-learning as a viable means to deliver instruction? If so, will Moodle be their LMS? Will Moodlerooms be their training, hosting and support partner? This is a shameless promotional plug btw!!

How are our veteran teachers holding up on the technology front? Are they members of The Future of Education website contributing to the ongoing discussions, webinars and online meetings with educators and authors?

How about maintaining membership in ISTE 2010, -International Society for Technology in Education Conference, formerly known as NECC, the National Education Computing Conference.

This annual conference welcomes educators from around the globe as they share proven ways technology use can assist in delivering instruction in the classroom. Have you investigated your local public television resources as an entity offering information about instructional technology?

As the instructional leader in the front of the room, how are you coping with the demands of integrating technology into your classroom? Are you improving your computer skills? Are you helping your students use technology to extend the learning in your class?


You can do this! Your voice is sought after as the school doors opened this year. Newly hired teachers and principals asked for your assistance on a whole host of procedures and practices that were used in past years to smooth the first days of a new school year. Using technology regularly is now second nature to many of your students. They've forgotten more about technology than you'll ever know! They are digital natives. They don't know of a time in their lives when they didn't use the internet or a computer.

Your level of knowledge as the instructional leader is critical to your success in adding technology to your teacher toolbox.The Power of Educational Technology blog is an interesting commentary on one veteran teacher's journey into using technology in her classroom. There are also state accrediting and research organizations examining the standards teachers need to meet to successfully integrate technology regularly in their everyday classroom practice.

Revitalizing the Veteran Teacher slide show. What do you think?

ID- Instructional Design-Do you have one and if so, what is it?

It's that time again! School is about to be in session and teachers are organizing their materials, gathering their thoughts, preparing for the upcoming in-service meetings, thinking about lesson plans and trying to squeeze in their last bits of summer fun.

Whew! Just the thought of juggling all of those proverbial "balls" is giving me a headache! As a 34 year veteran of the Long Island, NY middle school classroom, I know just what teachers are feeling right about now all over the country and I don't envy them!

I "retired" in 2005 and in my "unretirement", co-founded an e-learning business called Moodlerooms. We offer training, hosting, support and customization on the open source Moodle platform (Learning Management System). If you want to instruct others in an online course in k-12, higher ed, corporate training, government,faith based or small business, Moodlerooms is the vehicle.

Instruction..., that's been my raison d'etre for so many years, I can't abandon it it now in my un-retirement. Veteran teachers, never die , they multiply! I just read a recent article in the eSchool News, "Let retiring Boomers transform schools", which made the case for not letting a significant knowledge base walk into the sunset with their considerable skills unavailable to new teachers and their former students.

So how do we tap into this gigantic pool? How can they help our newly hired teachers?How can we use this pool of talent to retain and sustain new teachers as they hone their skills in America's classrooms? This article, though focused on the STEM areas, does emphasize 21st century skills of collaboration in the classroom; students and teachers learning from each other.

This collaboration could begin with the most basic of tenets in the classroom; that of instructional design. ID or instructional design is normally not a familiar term in schools of education or in school settings. Teachers are more familiar with terms like:

• lesson plans
• objectives
• aims
• curriculum mapping
• observations
• NCLB
• AYP

Instructional Design is the analysis of learning needs and the systematic development of instruction. One commonly used ID model is ADDIE:

• Analyze
• Design
• Development
• Implementation
• Evaluation
  

In a f2f classroom or an online learning environment, the greatest objective or outcome of instructional design is to serve the learning needs and success of students through the effective presentation of content and the fostering of interaction among the course or classroom participants.

In an online environment instructional design is transparent. You can monitor and track competencies. You can "see" the interaction of participants. In a regular brick and mortar classroom, instructional design is not transparent or may not be there at all. The class participation or collaboration is not seen, outside of the view of the instructor.

Objectives, aims, curriculum mapping, standards,ayp, NCLB or other educational jargon rule the day in regular f2f classrooms. There may not be one design platform used to achieve specific learning outcomes in the f2f classroom in a specific school. Teachers are given guidelines, state standards and information to use to achieve their learning goals for the year. There may not be a trackable system in place in a brick and mortar school to monitor the achievement of these targeted goals for each teacher in that school.

Why am I writing about this now, at this juncture of my life? Good question and one that I'll continue ruminating about in this blog, the UnRetired Teacher.