WPP Part D - Findings and Implications

Let’s start with the problem:

My school is very fortunate to have SMART Boards in every classroom grade K-5; however, due to staff changes and limited professional develop time devoted to SMART Boards, these boards are often only used to project images and worksheets. The “interactive” portion of “interactive whiteboard” is just not there. My goals were to create and implement professional development opportunities to make the staff feel a little more comfortable with the SMART Board technology and provide guidance on using the SMART Board as a interactive tool within the classroom.

The solution and Implementation:

My solution for this problem was to “pre-assess” the staff to determine needs, create and implement one mini-workshop regarding introduction to the SMART Board and related resources, and provide the staff with information to guide their continued learning. My hope was that this mini-workshop would lead to additional sessions at the staff’s interest. So, did my project get implemented as planned. I would have to say yes, the bulk of my project was able to be implemented with positive comments for additional information and sessions from staff.

The implementation of the mini PD session focused the two top “vote” getters from the preassessment survey - Use of the Gallery and Importing media AND using the SMART Board to support  UDL principles. The staff were engaged in the lesson and were asking thoughtful questions. When questions were asked, some staff offered to answered them for me which I felt was a great way to have staff connect and get to know each other’s strengths with using the SMART Board.

TPACK:

Throughout this session, I incorporated TPACK while teaching the staff - simply by modeling the session similar to an interactive lesson I would do with students. The technology portion was obviously the use of the SMART Board as well as providing the staff with some websites for guided research if they chose to pursue that. I structured the lesson to incorporate screenshots, videos of some of the topics, as well as text descriptions. I invited staff to come up to board to follow the steps to “create a slide” by adding photo or video.

To review:

Technology - using the SMART Board as an interactive tool; however, use of Google Forms, PollEverywhere, and You Tube also demonstrated the use of tech tools within a lesson even though they were not the tech focus

Pedagogy - staff were engaged and taught using lesson built within SMART Notebook software that incorporated text, pictures, videos, real classroom examples, hands on time with the SMART Board, and websites provided for guided extension

Content - staff were given some control of the content covered by having the opportunity to fill out the pre-survey. Also by providing the screencast and videos, it provided the staff opportunities to review and explore the content on their own

Knowledge - the session provided time for questions which for some staff was review, it gave staff the opportunity to share and demonstrate skills with the SMART Board that they already have to staff who may no be as comfortable

For the future, I will be working on a bring your Q &A session as well as creating a session that will lend itself to a more authentic learning experience.

If I were to do a similar project, I think I would make surer that the time line was appropriate for the activity and possibly hold leveled sessions so the teacher who need extra help on the 'technical end' can get what they need, while the emebbers and response question makers can learn together. 

Although the Wicked Problem project was not totally sollved, I feel the implementation made some staff start to think about their own practices and helped begin the conversation on how we can increase student interaction with the SMARTBoards. Since the session, I have witnessed a teacher allowing the students up to board to write answers on the worksheet. Although this wasn’t exactly the most ideal interactive activity, the students were getting a chance to get up and touch the board. However, just today, that same teacher went into the gallery, found the dice, imported them into a slide, and had the student coming to board to 'roll' dice, create a number sentence, then create the reversal. Seeing this was evidence of success for me!

The screencast of my Wicked Problem Project. I did the presentation within Keynote, then used Screencast-O-Matic to create the screencast as it was too long for jing. Once the screencast was complete, I published it to You Tube. 

Professional Learning Plan

Reflections and my Professional Learning Plan

Group Leadership Project

For the Group Leadership Project, our group chose to create our project around the ShowMe iPad app. For our project, many tools were used to create the end product. First, Bill, Randy, and myself created our individual ShowMe's using the iPad app and uploaded them to the ShowMe website. As a group we used Google Presentation to storyboard and begging the script for the project. Sarah acted as the director. She took the storyboard and script ideas and created a narrated, powerpoint presentation. From there, I took the presentation and imported into Keynote and embedded the ShowME videos. Next, I imported the Keynote presentation into iMovie to create the final product. So, in short, the final production was done in iMovie and uploaded to You Tube for easy sharing and embedding.

The final product development took a little long than I anticipated mostly because I am new to using a mac, but I wanted to explore and learn about this programs available. I learned that powerpoint imports very well into Keynote with most of the formatting intact. I learned that it isn't always easy to export from Keynote and have the finish product what you are expecting. I learned how to use iMovie and I am now a HUGE fan. I can't even imaging how I could have done a project as easily and with the a similar result on a PC.

If I were to create a similar project, I would begin creating it in iMovie from the beginning. The options for adding pictures, videos, and audios were so much easier (or at least easier to learn) than anything I have ever used. With that being said, I'm to sure that using iMovie or even powerpoint is the best for creating a multimedia, collaborative project. I need to explore other options for multimedia collaborating when working with a group of people.