Friday, November 22, 2013

Week 12: What are you finding as you analyze the data related to your Mentor Project?

The data I have been collecting throughout my project has taken 3 forms:
1. Meeting logs - each time I meet with my mentee, I log a 4 point discussion with her.  First, we talk about what has been working in her classroom based on the goals she has set for edtech.  This is the time we note and celebrate any successes she feels she is having.  Then we focus specifically on challenges she is having as she works toward her goals.  This could have to do with equipment issues, her own personal understandings or skills, classroom management issues, scheduling issues - anything that she feels is creating barriers to meeting her goals. After this we talk about building on the success and overcoming the challenges - she and I brainstorm ideas about some things she can do specifically to overcome a barrier, and agree that she will work specifically on these steps. Then I add a short list of things that I might also do to help her overcome these challenges.  This may mean giving her some resources, making some suggestions, modeling a lesson, or any number of things.

2. Classroom observations.  I have observed tech-specific lessons in my mentee's classroom 2 times, and once while she was in my lab teaching a lesson to her students.  During these times, we agreed that the data I would collect would have to do specifically with classroom management issues related to equipment and time, as well as her instruction to the students.

3. Interview. At the beginning of this project I sat down with my mentee for a pre-project interview.  The questions were centered around her comfort level with technology in the classroom, and her ideas about classroom management with technology (since that aspect was her biggest concern).  I intend to have a similar interview with her again soon - the post-project interview.  The questions will be mostly the same.

Background:

My mentee is a primary/early elementary teacher at my school.  I have known her for many years, and we have a good, friendly, and respectful working relationship with each other.  Her classroom has an iPad cart, which she has had for 2 years.  So far, the cart has mostly been used for free time activities or rewards.  When she approached me this year about building her class blog, I suggested she also think about making a little time to try some other things as well, with my help, and she agreed.

At the outset, my mentee expressed interest in making technology more a part of her classroom, although she only had some general ideas about how to do this.  Her biggest concerns were time, and what she perceived to be her limited skills.  She knew she wanted to create and maintain a blog for her class to build communications and connections with home, as well as to spotlight things that her students were doing.  Beyond that she was not exactly sure where or how to begin.  I see her students once a week for 30 minutes during their technology time in my classroom.  I have been doing things with the students such as building keyboard familiarity, teaching them the vocabulary of technology (desktop, dock, applications, browsers, word processing, etc), teaching them to open browsers and find a URL, and how to open applications such as Pages and PhotoBooth and work within them. Sometimes my mentee stays during this period to observe or talk with me (this is their "specials" period, which is meant to be a planning period for her).

Data Analysis:

Meeting Logs:
Over the course of the project, my mentee and I have been able to meet on 5 different occasions for the purpose of discussion of her goals and assessing her progress by completing the meeting logs. Her first goal, getting a class blog up and running, took a couple of weeks, but she eventually got it the way she liked it and found maintenance to be easy.  For her general integration goal, we had to talk a bit before we landed on an idea she liked - incorporating the iPads into her "centers" rotation during reading time.  Initially her idea was to have the students play with reading, grammar, and spelling apps during this time.  I suggested a few, and she quickly found that apps alone are only good for so long, but most are limited.  Students will become bored with them.  This then has a ripple effect on what she was most worried about in the process - classroom management of technology integration.  The meeting logs show that over the course of our mentor/mentee relationship, she was able to move to a more useful app - iTalk - which gave her and students valuable feedback about reading fluency.  Some of her anxieties about management were allayed by the implementation of checklists for students.  Overall, the meeting logs kept the goals of the project focused, and work was centered around a very specific goal and the issues that arose around that goal.

Observations:
For my classroom observations, I used the OPTIC tool.  I have used this in tech integration-related research before, and found it to be a good general tool for classroom observation of effective technology integration.  Two of the observations took place in the mentee's classroom during language arts center time, when she had planned to utilize the iPads.  One of the observations took place in my classroom, as the teacher led the students through a lesson about editing in word processing.

At the time of my first observation, the teacher had recently added the iPads to the language arts center rotation, and was offering the students a choice of 3 apps to use during this time - Sentence Builder, Question Builder, and Story Builder.  I had recommended these three apps in particular to start with because they could be easily differentiated based on level of the student, and it was easy to get data from them.  The day I observed it was only the students' second day using these apps in the rotation, and their small groups of 4 spent 15 minutes in that part of the rotation with the iPads.  Students were still using the apps improperly, in that they were switching around between them a lot based on what their friends were using.  This was making it difficult if not impossible to collect any useful data from the app.  Also, students would often get confused in setting the levels.  The result of this was numerous interruptions for the teacher while she was trying to work one on one with other students during this time.

For the second observation, the previously mentioned apps were still in use, with somewhat better results.  She had taken time to re-teach how the apps should be used. Eventually though, she reported the students quickly became bored with the apps and interruptions would start again. She and I had discussed this, and so she had also added the iTalk app, and the expectation that the students would spend at least 5 minutes of their center rotation reading and recording a previously assigned piece, then emailing it to their teacher.  The teacher had set up 2 study carrels in the corner for this purpose, and during one rotation (4-5 students per rotation), 2 students used this app in the study carrels.  During the second rotation 3 students used it.  Interruption of the teacher from this group was minimal - only 4 interruptions during a 20 minute period, compared to 15 interruptions during my previous observation.

For the third observation, the teacher agreed to teach a whole class lesson on editing tools within pages to her students while they were in my class (computer lab).  She wanted to have some experience doing whole group instruction in technology with me there, before she attempted this in her own classroom.

Interview:
Before this process began, my mentee and I sat down for a short pre-project interview.  I wanted to get an idea of her goals for the project, and also assess where she was (or felt she was) in her own level of readiness.  The questions were as follows:
1. What are your goals for this year in your classroom with technology?
2. How would you describe yourself as a "user" of technology?
3. What kinds of things do you think you need to learn in order to accomplish your goals?
4. How do you think technology can help your students learn?
5. How do you think technology can help you learn about your students?

During our initial interview, she made her goals clear (as indicated in our meeting logs), that she wanted to build and maintain a class blog, and work technology "meaningfully" into her language arts centers. As a "user" of technology, she seemed to have constructed two different selves to answer this question - herself as a personal consumer and user, and herself as a user of technology in her professional life.  She kept using the phrase "at home" to refer to the differences in how she used and felt about technology.  When "at home" she felt quite capable. She follows many blogs, subscribes to video channels, and vigorously bookmarks items of interest (in her browser).  However, at school, when using technology with students she felt very tentative and unsure, and kept returning to the idea of, "They are so much better at this stuff than I am."  In order to accomplish her goals, she believed that there was a literal laundry list of apps that she would have to learn to use and review, and she worried she would not have the time for this.  She was also worried about classroom management issues that could potentially arise during this time, as it was something new, and she really didn't have time to deal with hit.  Throughout her comments, she maintained that she firmly believed that there was a lot that students could learn by using the computers/iPads.  She connected this to herself, observing that she used technology a lot each day, and students would need to know how to do that.

I plan to conduct our final interview (same questions) early next week.

Overall, I have found that although on the surface, this doesn't look like much in the way of technology integration, if you look at the progress of the discussion over the course of the meeting logs, there were great strides forward in her confidence and her way of thinking about integration.  Keeping the running conversation focused on her goals and strategies to overcome barriers had the effect of greatly increasing her confidence in the process.  I believe that in the future, it is the type of thinking she will use in her approach to more integration.  It involves setting a single goal, taking steps to get started, focusing on challenges that crop up around that specific goal, and taking steps to fix them.  Part of these small successes was due to the fact that she believed that what the students were doing with the technology was worthwhile.  She believed that the data she collected from their work on the apps, and the data and feedback discussions she collected from their iTalk recordings really were great steps in improving fluency and writing. She believed that this technology component in the rotation offered the students something she would not otherwise be able to give them. In this environment, the changes were forcing her and her students to learn differently.

Resources:

Thomas, D., & Brown, J. S. (2011). A new culture of learning: cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change. Lexington, Ky.: CreateSpace?].

TIM: The Technology Integration Matrix | A video resource supporting the full integration of technology in Florida schools. (2011). Technology Integration Matrix. Retrieved November 22, 2013, from http://fcit.usf.edu/matrix/matrix.php

NETC | Assessing Technology Integration. (2005). NETC | Assessing Technology Integration. Retrieved November 22, 2013, from http://www.netc.org/assessing/home/integration.php

Formative Assessment and Support System. (n.d.). Formative Assessment and Support. Retrieved November 22, 2013, from http://www.newteachercenter.org/services/fas

7 comments:

  1. Are you going to begin your paper about this project with a research question? If so, what is your research question? It would help me to know what you are specifically looking at in your data. It is evident that you are looking at her growth in competence in using technology in the classroom,

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    1. I am, but I am still kind of grappling with this. As this is coming to an end, the one thing I keep coming back to is the momentum and sustained support. I think once I'm done, there won't be any of either. I also keep thinking about the mindsets different teachers approach this with. Some are very open - like your mentee, and are willing to try out a lot of different things - it's just overcoming the fear of risk that's the challenge, and experience takes care of a lot of that. Some are very fearful/anxious, and setting them up with several different things and asking them to find ideas is just too overwhelming. They need much more hand holding, a much smaller focus, and much sustained support. Another reason why one size fits all PD doesn't work for edtech. So for my mentee, I was mainly looking to build confidence. I believe that happened, but I also believe that it was not enough. I think that on her own she will find that there are other easier (for her) ways to run her reading centers without having to learn about new apps. So...if you have ideas for a question - I'm open!

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    2. You have her students regularly? One strategy I am testing out in my school is tech leaders. I am training students to run certain technologies for the teacher. For example, Type to Learn was run by one of the 5th graders in the 4/5 split. I think this could be done with a 3rd grader. In the 2nd grade class, I did a small group instruction with five girls on Garage Band. The teacher is very tech-nervous. The girls got the hang of it quickly and then showed the teacher how to retrieve the podcasts -- where they were recording their fluency reads. Your mentee might be less fearful if the students were taking the lead. It may give her confidence - especially if she can walk around and brag that her students are doing (name it) in her class. When I trained the students in the 4/5 split, I modeled a lot of classroom management for the teacher at the same time. It is sticking, so far.

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  2. Tracie- Did you and your mentee set weekly goals? I really like that idea. I also liked the 3 apps you included in your blog (sentence, question, and story builder). After looking at these apps, I think they will be very useful and beneficial in my classroom. Thank you.

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  3. I wouldn't necessarily say they were weekly goals (we weren't guaranteed to be able to meet weekly), but goals that she wanted to accomplish by the next time we met - usually every two weeks. They were the smaller, stepping stone goals on the way to the bigger goal. Regarding the apps - I like those too, because if you have all three, you can differentiate a little better for ability levels in the elementary grades. I also like the quick data they give - once students learn to read this data, they like it too.

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  4. After reading this I feel better. I was struggling with the amount of technology that I was actually able to help with. I felt that it was very little. I was not thinking about the confidence level. This can lead to her own exploration and use. I personally have taken on a large project with my third graders just because I had a bit more confidence. I hope that she will maintain that confidence. The person I mentored and I work well together so she is comfortable enough asking questions even after this project is over.

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  5. It's interesting to see how people "feel" about technology plays such a huge role in their choice to use it. If they aren't using it constantly, it seems like such a big thing and people get hesitant to add it in. The good thing about the mentoring project is that it encourages constant use, even if it is just on one thing - it can make a big difference in people's comfort levels.

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