Technology Plan

Jamie Maurus' Personal Technology Plan

Vision Statement:

I am currently a Media Specialist within the Dearborn Heights District 7School District and technology is the main element of my classroom curriculum. Technology used to meet the requirements of my curriculum and educate my students, and is also used in combination with and integrated into my student ’s regular classroom.

The various forms of technology that are used in my classroom are not only utilized to instruct my students and meet the Michigan Educational Technology Standards (METS) of my curriculum, but to also bring in various parts of their classroom curriculum’s standards and benchmarks into my curriculum. The various forms of technology that I use in my classroom allows my students to be engaged in inquiry-based, self-directed learning and allows my students to take more of an interactive approach to learning what is required.

The internet is the primary technology tool that I use in my classroom. It allows my students to take more of an active approach to learning. With the internet, I am able to pass on to my students the knowledge and expertise that I have gained. I get very excited to share a new tool, website, and/or idea with my students immediately after it is learned.

With the internet, students are able to engage themselves in various learning experiences. From interactive games to document writing and sharing to communication tools, and research, the learning opportunities are endless and continue to grow! This excites me to a great extent!

One major pitfall that I feel is very important within a school district is the professional development of teachers in the area of technology integration. I feel as if teachers are almost afraid of learning new technologies. Teachers today are happy with their current instruction, but really need to broaden their curriculum with integration of technology on more of a regular basis. Students tend to mirror their teachers excitement in regards to what and how something is being taught in the classroom. Right now in my district, there is very little technology implementation in the classroom. A lot of the weight (if not all) weighs heavily on me to plan ways to bring their curriculum into my classroom, when in retrospect, it should be the other way around. Teachers should be incorporating the technology into their daily lesson plans, increasing the desire to learn what is being taught. I would like to see more professional development, training, and introduction of new technologies offered to classroom teachers. I think that teachers would be more open to it if more time was allowed to learn and play with the newly introduced tools.

Plan For Technology:

As my schools Media Specialist, my staff and administrator depend a great deal on me for technology help, input and integration ideas. I have learned a great deal more than I expected in Michigan State’s Educational Media and Technology Program and feel extremely confident that I have much more to bring into my classroom and my staff’s classrooms next school year.

My school district is slowly implementing more and more technology. A lot of the struggle has to do with the veteran teachers who have been teaching for many years. These teachers began teaching before technology was even introduced. Because of these teachers, the interest in learning new technologies is not there in comparison with other school districts in the state. I plan on changing this.

Prior to becoming a Media Specialist, I was a classroom teacher and the only technologies I used in my clasroom were United Streaming and other teacher’s WebQuests that were posted online. I didn't feel I knew enough about technology to integrate it into my curriculum, nor did I have the time.

My perspective has completely changed since teaching technology full time and beginning this graduate program. Within the Ed Tech program, I learned how to create my own website using Dreamweaver. This is something that I have always wanted to learn how to do and am very impressed with how easy it is, with a little practice. I created a basic website and plan on adding to it and utilizing it in my classroom next year. Along with the creation of a website came the creation of a WebQuest. I have always used web quests in my classroom and they have always intrigued me. I never knew how easy they were to create. The second half of this school year I created two web quests for teachers to utilize in their classrooms. I plan on continuing to create an update my web quests as years go on. My school district will be implementing SharpSchool in the fall which is a new Website program to assist teachers with creating their classroom websites. I have already received permission to create my SharpSchool site as a link off of my Dreamweaver created site that I plan on using next year.

I have recently created a proposal for the use of Quizdom in my school. I learned what it takes to create a proposal and what kinds of questions I need ask and answer when making such a proposal.

Next year, I plan on implementing the use of a classroom blog. I have decided to use Class Chatter. I piloted a classroom blog at the end of this school year with my fifth graders and was impressed with my student’s interests in the blog and the increase in their desire to write. I am hoping to introduce Class Chatter to my second grade students during the second semester of school next year. My goal is to link Class Chatter to the second graders Gaggle email accounts so that they can access my classroom blog and their email on the same page. One way that I have learned to do this is through the use of a wiki, which is another Web 2.0 tool that I plan on implementing next school year. I am hoping that the successes of my implementations will intrigue other teachers to create a classroom wiki of their own, or allow for some professional development time to train teachers how to do this.

My ultimate goal is to communicate with parents, students, teachers, and the community through my classroom wiki. I run The Journalism Club at my school and would ultimately like to have students post articles to the school newspaper, monthly, on my classroom (or even school wide) wiki.

I am very fortunate to have a classroom of thirty student computers. I do, however, still run into some major problems. The biggest drawback is lack of teacher interest and enthusiasm with learning new technologies. I believe there isn’t enough time in the day to implement their curriculum as it is, let alone finding time to learn and then implement something new.

Timeline:

Spring/Summer 2009

Fall 2009

  • MSU EdTech Classes

  • Learn New Web Creation Software Sharp School.

  • Introduce my classroom Wiki and Blog to grades 3-5.

  • Learn New Online Grading System (Zangle).

  • Continue to be active as a technology leader in my building and within my school district.

Winter/Spring 2010

  • MSU EdTech Classes

  • Introduce Classroom Wiki, Email and Blog to Grade 2.

  • Continue Classroom Wiki and Blogging With Grades 3-5.

  • Become More Active in the Professional Development of Teachers (in the area of technology).

  • Begin to Implement a School Wide Wiki in Which The Journalism Club Will Post Articles To.

  • Continue to be active as a technology leader in my building and within my school district.

  • What’s New With MACUL?

  • Write A Technology Grant?

Summer 2010

Future:

My future goals in educational technology is to continue what I am doing, but to integrate more current technologies into my curriculum (i.e. Web 2.0). I would also like to align more of my MET’s to meet each grade level’s standards and benchmarks, while at the same time incorporating a school wide blog that all parents, students, and community members have access to. Within this blog will be interactive games and lessons that could be used and reinforced at home. These interactive games will be organized by grade level, subject and will also include Michigan’s Standards and Benchmarks that they meet. This will be similar to my School Center Web Site, but school centered. I would eventually like to work my way up to the technology administrator and curriculum designer. I want to continue to learn the latest and up to date technologies and be able to pass on the information for teachers to use in a timely manner and develop different lessons or becoming the go-to person when it comes to

technology integration in the classroom.