Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Goals for EDTEC 566

Last spring I was able to complete my Instructional Systems Design Apprenticeship within my school district. I focused on teachers using data to design and differentiate learning experiences. This summer I spent a lot of time analyzing the information I had collected and projects that I had completed. In reflection I felt that my project was very strong in the aspects of gathering and organizing data and making data easily available to teachers, however it lacked information in the area of how to use this information to inform instruction.

The National Educational Technology Standards state that teachers should be able to engage in professional growth and leadership. I would like to be able to use blogging and shared webspace as a means of encouraging teachers to discuss "best practices" for improving lessons to meet specific student needs, as identified through data analysis. Creating a tool for teachers to discuss data, with specific student information remaining anonymous, and share ideas will encourage differentiation and build a sense of community within the school. Teachers must see this community as a way to discuss their own strengths, as well as share classroom struggles in a non-threatening way. Teachers can then learn from one another and build on the wealth of experience they collectively possess.

Creating an electronic tool that can be accessed at the teacher's convenience would be helpful to my co-workers because they are already overwhelmed by the amount of meetings and lack of time. Perpaps the discussion tool could even be organized according to specific data needs (for instance...Strategies for Building Fluency in the primary grades) and I could also provide links to on-line resources that are free and easily accessble within the classroom as part of centers, etc.

Creating a tool such as this would be useful to my co-workers and help them to embrace the new data driven education movement and see how data can help them save time.

3 comments:

megfritzphd said...

There are several tools "out there" that may be helpful to you.
Blogs: Blogger and Edublogs
Wikis: Wikispaces and PBWIKI

Also - you may want to look into www.ning.com!

Susan Martin said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Susan Martin said...

I checked out www.ning.com and am looking forward to exploring it further. Reading chapter one of Jonassen also gave me a wealth of information about why this might be an important tool for teachers to use to develop new instructional tools. I am looking forward to expanding on ideas from my design apprenticeship and INSYS 527, which I took last spring, and using them on this new endeavor.