Description:

Provides technology leaders with background and practice in research, assessment, and use of distributed learning delivery systems, including telecommunications, development of instructional web sites, interactive instructional television, video conferencing, and combinations of systems. Letter grade only.

Competency:

Standard 2: Digital-Age Learning Culture

Technology Directors create, promote, and sustain a dynamic, digital-age learning culture that provides a rigorous, relevant, and engaging education for all students. Upon completion of the program:

Standard 2, Element 2.1. Digital Tools and Resources Candidates assist district and school leaders to identify, evaluate, and select exemplary digital tools and resources that support learning goals, incorporate research-based instructional design principles, and are compatible with the school technology infrastructure.

Standard 3: Excellence in Professional Practice

Technology Directors promote an environment of professional learning and innovation that empowers educators to enhance student learning through the infusion of contemporary technologies and digital resources. Upon completion of the program

Standard 3, Element 3.1. Professional Learning Programs Candidates design, implement, and evaluate professional learning programs (face-to-face, blended, and online) that help educators integrate technology effectively into all instructional and business practices— including assisting program directors in infusing technology into all professional learning initiatives.

Standard 3, Element 3.3. Communication and Collaboration Provide technologies to support effective communication and collaboration and model their use among colleagues, parents, students, and the community.

Standard 3, Element 3.4. Current Research & Emerging Technologies Maintain in-depth knowledge of current educational research and emerging technologies and evaluate potential benefits and implementation requirements (purchase cost, training, human resources, installation, maintenance, compatibility).

Standard 6: Content Knowledge and Professional Growth.

Technology directors demonstrate professional knowledge, skills, and dispositions in content, pedagogical, and technological areas, as well as adult learning, leadership, and management, and are continually deepening their knowledge and expertise. Upon completion of the program:

Standard 6, Element 6.1. Content and Pedagogical Knowledge. Candidates demonstrate content and pedagogical knowledge, skills, and dispositions in technology integration and current and emerging technologies necessary to effectively implement the NETS•S, NETS•T, and NETS•A.

Standard 6, Element 6.4. Continuous Learning. Candidates engage in continuous learning to deepen their content, technical, and leadership and management knowledge, skills, and dispositions.

Standard 6, Element 6.5. Reflection. Candidates regularly evaluate, reflect on, and synthesize their work and research to improve and strengthen their professional practice.

Teaching presence is the leadership of an instructor in providing activities and timely feedback to help the learner meet their goals.

Please respond to the following three items:

1. Please use your own words to describe a model of Community of Practice (CoP) in Digital-Age Learning Culture? Draw a figure to represent the model of digital CoP. The model and the figure should be original. (Be sure to give the instructor the privilege to view your figure.)

An Online Community of Practice is a group sharing a common interest that uses technology to exchange information to help improve each other's knowledge about their interest. These communities practice the expertise in their fields so their shared knowledge is always current, as

opposed to textbooks which are a snapshot of knowledge at a given moment in time.

In many ways, an Online Community of Practice shares the same need for the same types of presence as it's more formal cousin the Community of Inquiry. The major difference is that instead of teachers, a Community of Practice has moderators and doesn't provide formal activities and feedback or scoring.

A Community of Inquiry is what we think of as the web tool model used by most formal education providers to create an educational experience. Three types of presence go into building that experience, social presence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence.

Social Presence is the ability for students to feel connected and willing to communicate with each other and the teacher.

Cognitive Presence is the academic environment that supports serious thinking and developing the skills within the discipline being studied.

Teaching presence is the leadership of an instructor in providing activities and timely feedback to help the learner meet their goals.

2. Provide an example of how you might integrate emerging online technologies (LMS) to develop and disseminate a model of local and global CoP and support implementation through local computing/digital infrastructure and policies?

Most computer software and hardware vendors for example have forums where users can exchange ideas about how to do something using the product. Often support staff from the company might serve as moderators to help make sure the information is accurate and participants abide by community standards.

Such a company may also offer more formalized online training and certification on their products featuring training media and formative assessments to allow learners to practice for certification exams.

As a provider, I would want to pick a standard platform that supports a wide variety of platforms such as Windows, Mac, iPad/iPhone, and Android based devices. I would consider whether to run the platform from within my own company with the network and maintenance obligations versus using a cloud platform with the recurring fees I would incur. I would have to evaluate based on capacity versus expense.

3. List at least three resources that will support you being a leader of Digital CoP. (The resources could be digital tools, design information, websites, models etc. that you may suggest other educators can use to learn and/or create CoP.)

In order to evaluate the effectiveness of online communications, we can utilize social networking analysis. One such tool that is used for examining social networking on Twitter is Mentionmapp. Here you can log in with your Twitter account and agree to give it access to see a SNA of your Twitter connections. The Mention map showing Twitter Accounts and Hashtags that you have mentioned and have mentioned you. For paid accounts, it adds Retweet Maps and Retweet Cloud. If you were using a social media account to promote a business or cause, these could be used to analyze how well your posts reached your target audience.

Organizations such as Quality Matters provide resources and support for online learning programs. They provide members with rubrics for reviewing the quality of their online learning delivery systems. The thing that I noticed in their presentation was that their focus is on quality assurance and that many of the charts in their slide show were QA models that I recognized from the field of Project Management. Their implementation model in the slides was a Maturity Model like the PMI Maturity Model or the Capability Maturity Model. The fact that they are adapting established methodologies from industry to the field of education I think represents one of the biggest strengths.

Tools such as Poll Everywhere can be used in courses delivered online or face-to-face to ask survey questions of your audience and see feedback in real-time.

Standard 5: Digital Citizenship

Technology directors model and facilitate understanding of social, ethical, and legal issues and responsibilities related to an evolving digital culture. Upon completion of the program:

Standard 5, Element 5.1. Digital Equity Candidates facilitate equitable access to digital tools and resources, including adaptive and assistive technologies, to support the diverse needs of all learners.

Standard 5, Element 5.2. Policies for Safe, Healthy, Legal, and Ethical Use Candidates lead district in the collaborative development, dissemination, and evaluation of district policies and procedures designed to guide, in the least restrictive manner possible, the safe, legal, and ethical use of digital information and technology resources among all stakeholders.

Standard 5, Element 5.3. Programs for Safe, Healthy, Legal, and Ethical Use Candidates develop and implement programs to educate all stakeholders about the safe, legal, and ethical use of information and technology resources, including district policies and procedures regarding filtering, netiquette, cyberbullying, acceptable use, and fair-use guidelines for online resources.

Standard 5, Element 5.4 Diversity, Cultural Understanding, and Global Awareness Candidates model and promote diversity, cultural understanding, and global awareness by providing and supporting digital-age communication and collaboration tools for students and faculty to engage in crosscultural, collaborative projects addressing global issues in the context of curricular goals and objectives.

Please respond to the following three items:

1. Please describe what digital citizenship means to you, as technology directors? (Be sure to cover the elements of Adaptive and Assistive Technology, Policies and Program for Safe, Healthy, Legal, and Ethical technology uses, or Diversity, Cultural Understanding and Global Awareness.)

Digital Citizenship is the way one behaves and treats others while on-line. It is an extension of your moral, ethical, and legal persona, a matter of acting on-line as you would in person. As a technology director, one aspect of my work would be to create training programs targeting students, parents, teachers, and staff.

For teachers and staff, we would include aspects such as Adaptive and Assistive technologies such as screen readers for the visually impaired, or alternative input devices for the physically impaired.

For all computer users, user policies would need to be written to govern appropriate use of computing resources and content filtering and other measures would need to be implemented to block inappropriate and dangerous content. Users would also need to be educated on copyright laws and fair use, preventing cyberbullying, and promoting cultural diversity during interactions online.

2. Provide an example of how you, as a technology director, might model and facilitate digital citizenship in evolving digital culture?

As a former Systems Administrator and Broadcast Engineer turned Technology Coach, my job is to combine my technical background with my teaching education to find new ways to engage students. I do this in two ways, first by modelling the use of technology in my classes. I also actively seek out teachers to partner with where my Digital Media classes can work with their classes to provide enhanced learning opportunities for both. One example of this was our partnership with the drama department to produce a TV series which aired on the local cable system.

The second way I use my technical background in the education environment is by staying up to date in my technical knowledge and serving as a liaison between teaching staff and technical staff. I can talk to technical people about new products and the technical requirements to support them, then I can talk to teaching staff about what they want to accomplish and what tools to use. I can look at tools teachers are interested in and tell them if our technical infrastructure is compatible with it.

3. List at least three resources that will support digital citizenship in evolving digital culture.

Personal Learning Environments such as Netvibes and Symbaloo can be created by users / learners as a place to consolidate input from a variety of resources to allow them to monitor new developments and postings.

PLEs can include content from Learning Management Systems on platforms like Blackboard or Moodle, which are created by businesses and institutions to provide training. LMS content is controlled by the organization.

Online Communities of Practice can also provide informal learning opportunities. These can include social media and web platforms such as Google Sites and may be sponsored by professional organizations or product vendors in some cases.

Reflection:

This course took a deeper dive into the technologies and techniques for teaching classes online. I have experienced online courses from the students perspective for many years both through this program and previous coursework. While teaching as an adjunct professor at Central Ohio Technical College, I used Moodle in the classroom, but this is my first look at teaching a class entirely online.

Our final project in the class was to create a complete professional development program using an online platform from scratch. This required us to evaluate platforms, design the content delivery, and implement our vision on the selected platform. The final project can be seen here.

As I write this, I have one additional course after this one to complete my Master of Education in Educational Technology. This will be my third college degree, the first two being my BS in Broadcasting, and my Master of Information Systems Management. My hope is to use these in combination to qualify for a teaching position at a nearby university that either by salary level or benefit package would allow me to pursue a Ph.D. I feel this would secure my position as a faculty member and allow me to do what I am passionate about.