In 1995, the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory [NCREL] (then part of the national research and development system administered by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education) released this planning document for schools and school systems to use when evaluating educational tools for student learning.

It's 15 years later, and while technologies have changed, the evaluation framework and recommendations made by NCREL are still an excellent guide. BCPS maintains in the Blueprint for Progress technology-related performance indicators and strategies in Performance Goals 1 (Key Strategies j, u, v); 3 (Key Strategies h, j); and 8 (Performance Indicators 8.1, 8.2).

Review the information in the planning document and comment below with 3 recommendations for a school and/or the Baltimore County Public School district. Each recommendation should aim to use high-performance technology to meet student learning goals, while taking into consideration policy issues and the diverse needs of all stakeholders in a school and/or district.



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Review this definition: What is Web 2.0?

Browse some of the Web 2.0 tools posted on the Baltimore County Public Schools Office of Library and Information Services "Web 2.0 Resource Wiki" here. These should be OK to use in school.

Also check out a few of the Web 2.0 tools posted on this Resource page. There is no guarantee that these will work in school, so it would be necessary to test them before trying them out with students!


Create a new comment below listing three Web 2.0 tools which you feel would be a "good fit" with your students' grade level, your content area, and your pedagogy. Next to each, note whether they are "Webfilter OK" or whether they are "Blocked" and would need to be put through the BCPS Web Resources Approval Process.

Marie Antoinette may or may not have said "Let them eat cake!," but I can almost guarantee that in the past year, you've heard an administrator, department chair, team leader, resource teacher, mentor, colleague, or yourself say "Let them use a computer!". If not, review the Nesbitt video from the first Session 4 discussion, because you missed the subliminal messages!

Technology integration shouldn't be a replacement or supplement, ideally it will be a complement to what you're already doing well in your teaching. Consider the TPACK lesson planning theory as described here.

Pick one of the following three Lesson-planning frameworks (check out the site and/or article if you're tangentially familiar with the framework!), and brainstorm how a handful of the technologies we've discussed, or technologies you have used/heard about might be used with that framework to create a lesson in your grade level/subject area.

1. Project-Based Learning (site, article)
2. Layered Curriculum (site, article)
3. 5 Es (site, article) This framework has been popularized in Science curriculum-writing, but it also works well in other content areas.

Example

In my 11th grade Psychology classroom, if I were using Nunley's Layered Curriculum framework to design an introductory lesson about social norms...

...I might be able to start with a VoiceThread as an A Layer activity. The VoiceThread could show students some images and possibly video clips and ask them to identify individuals behaving "normally" (as expected) and "abnormally" (not expected), and explain what behaviors appeared "normal" and/or "abnormal". With VoiceThread, all the students could get a chance to share their observations, and at the same time, with all comments collected, it would be easier to synthesize observations to post on the wiki page for the B Layer activity.

...for a B Layer activity, on a wiki page with a synthesized list of class-identified "abnormal behaviors," students could design experiments to test whether the class-identified violations of social norms elicited similar reactions from individuals outside of our class in different contexts than those observed in the video (i.e. would individuals at a mall walk in the other direction if they saw someone standing on his/her head? would individuals in a gymnasium also be uncomfortable if they encountered "standing on one's head" behavior?) For extra credit, students might apply to get "Principal-approval" to run their experiments at school, video "reactions, and post video/commentary on their experiment wiki page

...for a C Layer activity, students might use the Audacity software on any BCPS computer, or a Web 2.0 tool like Animoto to create a serious (or satirical) public service announcement to persuade society to cease and desist its condemnation of a specific behavior. Students would have to not only recognize a behavior and the limitations of the social norm context, but also draw conclusions about the motivation for the establishment of the social norm.

I'll be honest, there are some technologies that I'm still not confident enough with to make the focal point of a lesson. At least not without a back-up plan for my back-up plan. Technology integration is risky, and occasionally, even the best laid plans result in "EPIC FAIL!!"s.

Consider Royal Van Horn's article, "The Technology Penalty" posted on our course wiki here.

Have you experienced the Technology Penalty? What happened?
Could you reasonably have anticipated it or planned for it?

Check out B. Nesbitt's video "A Vision of K-12 Students Today" here on YouTube if you're at home, or posted here on our course wiki if you're inside the BCPS Websense firewall.

How closely, from your experience, is Baltimore County Public Schools aligned with this vision?