3-5368+Week+5+Assignment-Reflection

 Assume a school leadership role as an educational technology campus facilitator, as the district educational technology director, or from the principal’s view. From that vantage point, compose a 150-word response to each of the guiding questions.
 * What benefits do you see in educators knowing how to design and implement online learning?
 * How will you professionally use your course that you designed?
 * Will you integrate online learning in your role as a teacher/staff developer?
 * What questions do you still have about online learning?
 * What will you do with this new learning?

Educators who design and implement online learning will engage their learners as well as meet the technology TEKS for their students. This is a desired outcome as the state and local education agencies push for more technology integration. “Despite technology’s potential to augment and transform instruction, teachers generally have not implemented technology as frequently as hoped.” (Williamson & Redish, 2009). As the digital revolution catches education in its tidal wave, educators must adapt or be left behind. Students in the future will expect to participate in learning online and teachers who do not have the skills necessary to design or implement that online learning will find themselves facing retirement along with the typewriter, analog television, and home telephones. Teachers are expected to begin incorporating technology in their curriculum as explained in the Technology Facilitation Standards III and V (Williamson & Redish, 2009).

A secondary, but extremely important benefit to designing and implementing online learning is that it forces the educator to plan thoroughly and carefully reflect on possible misunderstandings or points of confusion. "To think like an assessor prior to designing lessons - what backward design demands - does not come naturally or easily to many teachers." (Wiggins & McTighe, 1998, p.150). Planning an online course may provide clarity for course objectives and expected outcomes. The use of backward design is standard practice in Spring Branch ISD. Using the same processes that teachers have been trained to use to plan their lessons for online courses would not be a difficult transition for SBISD teachers. The assessment piece however bears closer investigation. Wiggins and McTighe (1998), state that the question that should be asked for assessment is “What would count as evidence of successful teaching?” (p.146). The backward design process currently used in the district has not focused as heavily on the assessment questions and many teachers pick an objective rather than a desired outcome to analyze through a backward design process. This is an area that will need thought and practice personally and throughout the district to effectively create designs for online learning with meaningful learning outcomes. “An alternative to simply progressing through a series of exercises that derive from a scope and sequence chart is to expose students to the major features of a subject domain as they arise naturally in problem situations. Activities can be structured so that students are able to explore, explain, extend, and evaluate their progress.” (Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, 2000 p.139).

The course designed for the Instructional Design course will be presented to the faculty at Northbrook Middle School during the fall in-service days. It will provide basic training for teachers who received new classroom equipment. The intent of the course it to provide a non-threatening format for the faculty to use the equipment both to practice and ultimately to produce video clips for their teacher web pages on the school web site. Because many of the teachers are not familiar with the Apple computer products and platforms, some training is necessary. The online course will allow them to earn professional development hours at their own pace. As with any non-obligatory course, several who agreed to participate in the trial did not. Several others heard the course mentioned and asked to be included. This is reflective of the divide on the campus between staff members who are comfortable trying and using technology and those who are not. Feedback on the course has been positive from the teachers who participated in the trial run. Procrastination in planning and incorporating online courses is a concern with faculty members who have multiple responsibilities and little time.

As a technology facilitator, I will introduce the staff at my campus to the possibilities of online learning through having them participate in the online course I developed. I will model a method of teaching integrating the online component with small group instruction. In order to facilitate the faculty incorporating online learning into their classrooms, several open help sessions will be held at the beginning of the year offering professional development hours for individuals or teams to come and work on an online course in a lab-like setting so they will be free to ask questions and get assistance as they have questions or hit stumbling blocks. Given adequate support and the student email accounts that the district is providing to every student next year, the actual incorporation of online learning should be a relatively easy move for many of the staff. Using online courses will improve student engagement while fulfilling Texas Technology TEKS (1998)found in subchapter 126 of the Texas Education Knowledge and Skills for Technology Applications, subchapter B for Middle School including: (b)(2) which calls in part for students to use a variety of technologies; (c)(1) Foundations subsections A-G which deal with a student’s ability to use technology tools; (c)(4-6) Information acquisition; (c)(8) Solving problems subsections (A-D); and (c)(11) Communication subsection (C) which includes distance learning.

There are still some issues to be resolved regarding online learning, such as the inability of a large number of the NMS student population to log on to a course from home due to the lack of home computers. The access issue will need to be addressed. District bandwidth is another issue. A large number of computers in the district, or even in one school, accessing the Internet at the same time causes substantial delays in logging onto the network. District plans call for improvement in the infrastructure, but the timeline for that to occur will need to be investigated in order to prevent teachers having negative experiences with their classes. The school district also has a restrictive filter on the Internet that will need to be set appropriately to allow access to the online sites.

In addition, as more companies develop teacher tools for online learning, investigation will need to be done to determine which tool is the most appropriate for the school to avoid each teacher using different platforms and causing confusion for students. Questions remain as to the number of different providers and their products. How to ensure students are accessing the online course and not off task while the teacher works with others is a question that will need to be resolved. There are also parental concerns about student online safety and personal information that will need to be answered satisfactorily before large-scale implementation could begin. None of these questions appear insurmountable, but should be clarified before a campus-wide implementation. Online learning can and should be implemented into courses at the middle school level in order to increase student engagement and develop improved 21st century skills in both students and teachers. As a technology facilitator, it will be my job to share the possibilities with the faculty at my school while helping to overcome any problems that arise as the faculty begins to experiment with incorporating the online learning process into their own curriculum. As a facilitator, I will use my own classes to model this technology for other faculty members.

Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (1998). //Understanding by Design.// Alexandria, VA. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Williamson, J. & Redish, T. (2009). //Technology Facilitation and Leadership Standards What Every K-12// //Leader Should Know and Be Able to Do.// Eugene, OR. International Society for Technology in Education.

Bransford, J., Brown, A., & Cocking, R. (Ed.). (2002). //How People Learn: Brain,Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition.// Chapter 6. Washington DC: National Academy Press. Retrieved March 18, 2010 from http://www.nap.edu/openbook/php?record_id=131#p2000495f9970131001.

Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Technology Applications, Subchapter B. Middle School. (1998). Retrieved May 12, 2010 from Texas Education Agency website: []