EDIT 6320 Information Technologies

Fall, 2004

Course Syllabus and Assignments

Due September 2nd

Individual Assignment.

Read Baule, Steven M. Technology planning for effective teaching and learning (course text). Prepare a 1-2 page reflection around the following questions: 1) How do you envision that a technology plan centered on curriculum needs will impact your school? 2) How would a technology plan based on Baule's suggestions differ from the technology plan that your school currently has? 3)How would you change Baule's design to make it more useable for your school. 4) After checking out the State of Georgia's K-12 Technology Plan website at http://techservices.doe.k12.ga.us/edtech/TechPlan.htm, discuss why knowing how individual teachers use technology within their curriculum is vital to a school's technology plan. Discuss how Baule's suggestions compare with the State's planning ideas.

Post your reflection on the WebCt bulletin board for 6320.

Value of assignment: 10 points out of 100

Grading criteria:

Points awarded according evidence of considerable thinking and reflection, average evidence of thinking and reflection, superficial level of thinking and reflection

Due September 9th

Individual Assignment:

Search the Internet and Galileo for articles on the process of curriculum mapping. Read the pdf file on curriculum mapping in the resources area of our WebCt course. Enter a dialogue on WebCt about your search and what you have found. Discuss how a curriculum map would impact what you know about your school's curriculum. Discuss how a curriculum map could influence either the role of the media specialist or the role of the technology coordinator. Discuss how a curriculum map should influence the technology plan and technology planning.

Post your dialogue to the WebCt bulletin board for 6320 within your forum. Most of you will not know anything about curriculum mapping before you start this course. That's ok. Please be patient in understanding the concept. It will become much clearer as the term proceeds. (Trust me, please). This is what the Bulletin Board is for--adding to our clarity about all sorts of concepts introduced in this course.

Value of assignment: 5 points out of 100

Grading criteria:

3 points discussion of how the map could influence either role of the media specialist or technology coordinator. (Good analysis, average analysis, not much evidence of analysis)

2 points discussion of how the map could influence technology plan and planning. (Good analysis, average analysis, not much evidence of analysis)

Due September 23

Individual Assignment

Locate and read a journal article or book chapter on each of the following subjects: 1) constructivist or instructivist teaching methods, 2) resource-based teaching or learning, and 3) project-based learning. Prepare a 2-3 page reflection on these articles combined that includes your opinion of the impact that each of these educational philosophies has or would have on your school's curriculum. Include the citations to your articles at the top of your pages. Use APA style for the citations.

Post your reflection to the Discussion List on WebCT within your forum.

Value of the assignment: 10 points out of 100

Grading criteria:

Points awarded according to evidence of considerable reflection on the differences among the philosophies and their impact on your school or a school; average evidence . . . ; superficial reflection . . .

Due November 4th

Group or Individual Assignment (I would recommend group). Work ahead on this assignment if possible but please don't start until you thoroughly understand what a curriculum map is and does.

Note: Curriculum maps, when well-done, tell the story of how the curriculum is actually being taught, not how it should be taught. Each teacher contributes his/her substantial and/or thematic units to the map so that, for example, the school faculty knows that Mr. Jones teaches the solar system in October to his fourth graders. The technology specialist and the media specialist also read from the map that Mr. Jones wants his students to prepare a PowerPoint presentation on individual planets. He wants them to learn how to ask questions about their planets that will guide their investigations. The two specialists can see from the curriculum map that Mr. Jones has a student-centered classroom, and likes his students actively exploring print, av, and Internet-based resources. They see from the unit write-up that he relies on non-textbook resources for most of the unit. In addition, they can view his curriculum learning QCC objectives and his student learning expectations. From this information, the two specialists make an appointment with Mr. Jones to plan together to further develop his unit to include the kinds of resources he wants, the technology he wants, and the technology and literacy skills the specialists need to teach the students in order for the students to be successful learners.

The curriculum map consists of this kind of information for each major unit of each teacher in the building. The information could be organized in chart form with a looseleaf notebook available with more detailed planning information on each unit as the media specialist and technology specialist work with the teachers. It could also be organized in a database so that the two specialists (or anyone else in the school) could pull up each month's units for more effective resource planning. It could be laid out in a table form for the technology committee to use to decide on the next year's technology requests in order to help those teachers who need technology assistance for what they would like to accomplish. Their needs are set out in the units they teach. Each specialist uses these plans to discuss with the teachers the kinds of things that the teachers would like to be doing if they had more resources. The specialists then report back to the technology committee concerning teacher needs. These reports are tagged to the technology committee requests as justifications and rationale.

Assignment:

Develop a curriculum mapping worksheet to use when you interview teachers. This worksheet will contain categories of information that you need to collect. You will have a worksheet for each major unit. I will put some examples up on our WebCt homepage. You are free to copy but I would prefer you adapt one to your own school situation.

Those of you not in a school will need to join with a peer working and a school.

Working with one grade level in elementary or one discipline in middle school and high school (depending on size of school--you will create the map for the discipline for all the grades or one grade if you have 10 or more teachers for that grade level), use your curriculum worksheet to collect information on each teacher's major thematic (for example: not grammar units) for the first quarter of the school year. The information you collect will be about what has been actually taught, not what the curriculum guide specifies or what the State requires. Each teacher teaches the same subject matter a bit differently, even if the curriculum requires directed teaching (i.e. Saxon math). Thus, you will need to work with each teacher. Please do not give them the worksheet. Use it to prompt yourself when you talk with them about their units. Fill it out yourself so you can make valuable notes on the side. Invite them for coffee or take them a breakfast some morning if you can't find a time to talk with them any other way.

As you talk with your teachers, take the role of the media specialist in your head and think about how you might use the units for integration of information and technology literacy skills or what ideas you might have that you could offer the teacher. Eventually, your curriculum map will be the best collaboration instrument you will have. The worksheet will provide you with the tools for analyzing units, teaching style, technology integration, assignments, and resource requirements.

There is No one best way to organize your map. Rather, you need to spend some time thinking about what layout makes sense to your group and seems most useable to your school.

Your group's units are due in map form on October 28th. Post them as an attachment on the Bulletin Board and email them separately as a group to me, please, one per group sufficient.

Value of the assignment: 40 points out of 100

Grading criteria:

Points awarded according to demonstrated understanding of the role of a curriculum map, completeness of the map for the 9 units, effectiveness of the worksheet for current information and future planning

Due November 12th

Prepare two technology assessment instruments, one for students and staff. The purpose of these assessment instruments is to identify your staff and student technology skill levels and their perceived needs. These instruments will also tell you how technologically literate both groups are.

Use the Johnson book to help you prepare the instruments. Good questionnaires are difficult to create so spend some time thinking about how you will ask the questions and what the content of the questions should be to get at the essential information.

Please be certain to ask teachers to identify how they plan to use technology in the future within their curriculum.

Post your documents as links to your webpage, as attachments to the Bulletin Board and as email to me, one copy per group.

Value of the assignment: 15 points out of 100

Grading criteria:

Effectiveness of questions to obtain technology literacy levels; future technology needs; format for questionnaire that is easy to take

Due December 2nd

A technology plan should start with a Community Profile for your school. The profile information can come from information already prepared in the "boiler plate" or front description of a grant that your district or principal has submitted to an organization, public relations flyers prepared for public consumption, and State Department of Education websites for your school test score results. Its contents would also include a brief description of your community and its main employers, a description of the community population ethnic make-up, a description of the school district with size and different ethnic populations, and a description of your school and student body including test scores, and other identifying characteristics including ethnic and Title 1 data. The purpose of this document is to set the stage for any special concerns the technology plan should cover. Finally, it should include a brief history of the previous technology planning that the school has undertaken.

While you are working on your curriculum map assignment, collect this information and work it into a short 1-3 page essay to start your tech plan document. The profile sets the school environment for the plan.

Value of the assignment: 5 pts out of 100.

Grading criteria:

Contains description of community population ethnicities, school populations and performance, teacher experience and degrees, general businesses and industries description, cultural advantages that schools can use (libraries, museums, etc.), economic strata, GA. Dept of Education data on the school. Written in a professional manner for an audience of educators and parents.

Due December 2nd

Put it all together. If we were actually preparing a technology plan for your school during this term, we would have written a community profile, we would now know the major units our teachers teach (curriculum map). We would know how computer literate our teachers are and also their students (technology assessment instruments). We can now use this information to prepare a technology plan for next year. Putting the above information into a document, we have the beginnings of a technology plan. What remains is for you, the technology specialist, media specialist, or technology committee member, to analyze the individual units for the kinds of technology not present that you think would enhance the teaching and learning for these units. From your analysis and interviews over worksheets with your teachers, evaluate what kinds of technology they need to enhance their teaching and student learning. Complete this analysis for 3 individual units (not courses). These ideas with their explanation and justification will serve as the foundation for technology budget requests and the plan for the next year.

Prepare a paper containing the analysis of the units. Demonstrate the process by which you would analyze the unit, the learning goals, the teaching style of the teacher, the types of student learners, the literacy needs, and the technology available that could improve and enhance all these goals. Explain how your suggested technology uses would improve the teaching and learning happening within the unit. Describe how you would then approach the teacher with your ideas and spark the teacher's enthusiasm.

This process paper will move you from the unit worksheet information through the map to discussion with the teachers about what they want to accomplish to your suggestions on how to help the teachers carry out their goals. It will demonstrate how you think about technology as a curriculum tool that enhances teaching and learning.

Post your document as a link to your webpage, as an attachment to a Bulletin Board message, and as an email to me, one assignment per group.

Value of the assignment: 15 points out of 100

Grading criteria:

Demonstration of thinking process going from curriculum map units to creating ideas for technology enhancement possibilities to approaching teacher for planning together ways to enhance learning and technology literacies.