What happened?

We had a meeting!  A fine meeting with Karen, Doug, Kelly, and Diane.  We missed Christy's presence.  The meeting began with writing ("What does it mean to be in the company of other people who use technology in various ways to support their lives as teachers and learners?  Provide a brief summary of your most significant experiences with technology as a teacher and learner.") and sharing. 

I provided an overview of the national scope of this project and our particular corner of the national project.  I wanted to emphasize the issue of capacity with these grants, in order to convey how vitally important each of us our to the project.  We had a lengthy discussion that opened up many doors for further investigation (now or later).  These included:

1. How can we connect what teachers are doing in other curricular areas to technology?  Diane suggested we consider organizing our work along the lines of focused learning concepts as Learning Focus models are being introduced to teachers - primarily middle school and elementary at this time - within the county. 
   
   Focused learning lessons are those which are typically organized in this way: 
   
   Essential Question
   Activating Activity
   Teaching Component
   Summary
   
2. How can we educate the administration regarding the needs teachers have for training, access to information and sites, ability to find information, ability to evaluate information?  These administrative issues encompass both school and county wide concerns.
   
   With Diane's guidance, we'll develop a focused learning module to address these concerns with administrators, making a case for increased access, timely and successful support in-school (and strategies for resolving problems when the school-level administrator is unable to resolve them), and other issues. 
   
3. What is the technology context in which our teachers work (access issues including too few machines, low-end machines, poor connectivity) and can we develop a model or organizational system to help teachers describe their technology context as a way to better understand the constraints under which they are working and also to better make the case for improved conditions within their teaching assignment?
   
4. What basic technology skills should teachers possess in order to be able to facilitate the development of digitally literate individuals within their classrooms?  Do we have a right to expect, or is it even reasonable to expect, that teachers who participate with us in this initial phase of the project have a certain basic level of understanding of computers to prevent us from having to teach the most basic of skills?  Diane said that our students have the technical skills necessary to use technology in the classroom.  It is the teacher's responsibility to use their pedagogical expertise to guide the students to appropriate and successful use of their technology expertise.
   
5. How can we facilitate the development of skills in the teachers we will ultimately work with?  Can we use the focused learning ideas to develop modules/units/lessons that might be accessible to teachers?  Can we carefully make sure that we model the very behaviors we want our teachers to acquire?
   
6. How can we build a bridge between the skills we hope teachers will acquire and the outcomes their students must demonstrate?
   

Why did it happen?

Well, I for one, asked them to write, so we wrote.  I think my careful consideration of the prompt was crucial to setting the tone for the rest of the meeting and also kept us grounded in the writing project tradition of writing our way into learning.  I think the discussion happened for a number of reasons.  On a practical level, I planned for discussion.  I am more interested in why the quality of that discussion was so rich.  The people around that table have an impressive record of using technology.  Because we have tried (and sometimes succeeded and sometimes failed) we were capable of having the kind of dicussion that we had.  We talked about our impressions, we formulated theories, we gathered and shared evidence. 

What might it mean?

Well, to me it means that we might actually get something done.  Yesterday I felt a connection, commitment, and synergy I haven't felt in a good long while.  It means that we have a lot of work ahead of us, I think, and I believe it means we've only scratched the surface without looking at some of the loose stones we uncovered all that carefully.  I think we do not know half of the work we will ultimately complete as a part of this project. 

What are the implications for my practice?

I like the notion that the focused learning can be a frame for us as I know it could be a frame for me.  I like planning and organizing courses in very systematic and deliberate ways...but I'm not always that good at it.  Using this focused learning framework I might be able to find the grains of sand I want to be sure my students discover. 

Posted by Karen Leigh McComas on 2/27/05; 3:27:45 PM to the Karen Department
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