Two Different School Districts and Their Experiences with Administering the PARCC

This article and study chronicles two different districts approaches and results of a large scale research project regarding their PARCC testing results.  In the Burlington district all students enrolled in grades 3-8 and 10 participated in PARCC field testing.  In the Revere district, two elementary and one middle school administered the test school wide.  The discussed issues included student experiences taking the computer based test, implementation issues with technology and device adaptability, and scheduling and staffing testing administrators.

In order to conduct this research they used three main modes of research including one-on-one interviews, focus groups, and surveys with the key stake holders in the testing system.  The results are broken down into six key focus areas: technology infrastructure, device use, scheduling, staffing, training educators, and student testing experiences.

The biggest lessons learned are:

• Determining technology infrastructure capacity and the inventory and location of PARCC-ready devices ahead of time is critical;
• School-level management of test administration is challenging;
• Computer-based test administration requires new administration roles for staff and additional support and training; and
• Investments in technology were—and will continue to be—focused on instruction.

Testing the Test: A Study of PARCC Field Trials in Two School Districts 

Study PDF file to view

Global Learning

What is the importance of global learning?  Students must be prepared for the global workplace.  Any job in communications, computer services, technology, and almost any job today involves some type of global interaction.  Cultural understanding, language skills, and the application of new technology are among the keys for success in today's global market economy.  This is why I feel that as a teacher it is my responsibility to push for more social studies and civics based education in the classroom.  Education has become obsessed with "teaching to the test," and we have forgotten that students need to learn life skills about human interaction.  There is more to life than just Math, Reading, and Language arts.  I feel that we can incorporate those skills in a thematic teaching environment that will give students the skills and resources to have an effective positive career in the global world.  For more information check out this article.

GLOBAL-LEARNING

Supporting Practice with Emerging Tech

Is emerging technology meant to supplement classroom teaching, or can it in fact compliment teaching by enhancing engagement and differentiated instruction?


Our focus should not be on technologies, but how and when we use them in the classroom.  Google Suite for Education, Edmodo, and Showbie, have different basic features but have revolutionized the way that students can communicate and share information with each other and their teachers.  Not only do these technologies have the benefit of making the classroom paperless, they also provide a baseline for attempting a flipped classroom approach and allowing students more flexibility to work at their own pace.  This allows them to develop a solid habit of becoming a responsible electronic citizen and independent learner.


All of these emerging technologies provide the educator with the flexibility more than ever before to tailor-make their classroom to the needs of their students.  A solid evaluation of the resource with proper training will help the educator make decision as to whether or not the tool is useful and can be integrated into his or her classroom experience.

These technologies have the ability to enhance all student learning.  With just a little bit of effort and training from the educator these technological improvements have the ability to drastically change, improve, and enhance the "classroom" experience.  It's time to move education out of the traditional classroom in order to better serve our students as both a class and as individuals.  These pieces of technology allow us to not only set up our class for the maximum success as a whole, but also allow us to promote the success of the individual by allowing us the flexibility to better fit ourselves to the needs of the student.

Additional Resources for Teachers

Professional organizations, such as the National Council of Teachers of English, the International Literacy Association, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, the National Science Teachers Association, and the National Council for the Social Studies, offer a variety of resources to foster the current and future development of educational practice.

Supporting Practice with Emerging Technology

The Digital Learning Imperative: How Technology and Teaching Meet Today's Education Demands

8 Emerging Piece of Technology that will Impact your Classroom

Imagine instead of merely talking about the constellations in a science class your students could open their Chromebooks, download an app, and simply by rotating around in their seats with their phone or Chromebook, be able to have a view of the location of the constellation and see it in the "sky."

There are several different pieces of new technology that can have a huge impact on the modern classroom and educational environment.  Augmented reality or  "AR" apps like "Sky Map" now make this possible.

Perhaps resources are limited and as a staff we cannot get a field trip organized to a location of great educational value.  Now we can use virtual reality technology and take our students to the location through cyberspace.  Now instead of just showing our students pictures of the Parthenon or the Pyramids of Giza, we can take them on a virtual walk-around of these amazing structures.

These and other apps like them can help us make history and science real at a minimal expense.  We have a a large group of visual learners and now have the ability to take students all over the globe in ways that were not possible before.

Check out these and other great apps to see how we can incorporate this tech in our classrooms at

8Technologies That Will Shape Future Classrooms

Flipped Classroom

Roman Forestor

2-5-2017

Flipped Classroom Article

Even With Flipped Classrooms, Teachers Still at the Head of the Class

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-swift/even-with-flipped-classro_b_8546074.html

This article centers on the flipped classroom, but not as the primary teaching tool.  The writer, Jane Swift, is the CEO of Middlebury Interactive Languages, and a former Governor of Massachusetts.  She came from a family of educators and understood the trials and tribulations we go through as teachers.  She has worked tirelessly to demonstrate that her company’s product is not based on corporate greed, but on furthering and improving education.  The quote she uses is one that my mom, who was a teacher and administrator for her entire career, and I discuss often.  She is trying to add another tool to the teacher’s toolbox.  By blending the flipped classroom in with other concepts and creating a blended classroom concept the students can fully take advantage of the digital options available to improve student learning.  There are even some educators who believe that the flipped classroom concept applied in home schooling might be the best path to Harvard today.  

In my opinion, using the flipped classroom concept is the most important thing.  My belief is that as an educator, I need to strive to find as many “traditional” and “non-traditional” ways for my students to display their knowledge.  Allowing them to construct games, debates, presentations, or other types of projects, combined with multiple types of formal assessment is the key to accurately assessing my students progress in the classroom.

reading response 3

Reading Response #3 Emerging Technologies Horizon Report 2016

*Please select File/Make a Copy

Select two of the “Development in Technology” concepts presented and complete the following:

 

Development #1: _______________________________________

·        Record two interesting quotations from this section:

1. To address the needs of the future, a growing number of classrooms, libraries, and community centers are being transformed into makerspaces, physical environments that offers tools and opportunities for hands-on learning and creation.
2. Makerspace activities are increasingly serving as gateways to bolster interest in STEM fields.

·        Write a complete paragraph that highlights the insights and implications to your practice.

1. As a person who is a physical hands on learner, I wish they had this when I was a student growing up.  I would definitely have benefitted.  I also have seen the Department of the Navy has converted decommission destroyers to STEM classrooms available for touring and use by middle school through high school students.  I can’t help but be fascinated by the uses that I could have for it in history in conjunction with the chemistry and physics departments.  I have long been a believer in learning by doing and makerspaces are the learn by doing concept coming to fruition.  

Development #2: _______________________________________

·        Record two interesting quotations from this section:

1. Virtual Reality (VR) refers to the computer-generated environments that simulate the physical presence of people and/or objects and realistic sensory experiences.
2. For most students, knowledge about global landmarks and destinations typically comes from images in books and videos on a screen.

·        Write a complete paragraph that highlights the insights and implications to your practice.

As a history teacher, the hardest part of it is making it come alive.  The names and dates in history really don’t change all that much from what we learn early in our education to what we learn later.  The difference is later in education we learn how to interpret it.  What if I can take my kids on a virtual walk around of Gettysburg and show them why the Union had such an advantage, and why Pickett’s charge was so futile based on the grounds the battle was fought on.  What if I can take them to walk arounds of the pyramids of Giza instead of showing them a picture.  I have been to the Sistine Chapel, and nothing I can say, nor nothing a video or book can show will ever do that magnificent ceiling justice.  What if they can see it through a VR system.  That makes history come alive for kids who may otherwise never have the chance to see something like that.

Roman Forestor

Children’s Online Privacy and Protection Act

In your own words, define COPPA:

I would define COPPA as an act the requires companies to seek parental consent before obtaining a child’s personal information online.  Such information includes birthday, location, address, SSN etc, and is designed specifically to protect children under the ages of 13 years of age.  Companies are required to obtain parental consent before obtaining any information from a child and are also required to provide any information obtained about the child to the parents upon request.  They are also required to remove any information obtained at the request of the parents after review.  1 So what is our role as teachers and parents?

2.  I look at digital citizenship as a responsibility that is more on the parent, and teacher than the corporations.  As parents and educators we are responsible for instilling sensible boundaries for our children, and instill the values of anti-bullying etc.  Monitoring our children's electronic usage is a major parental responsibility.  Teacher have a responsibility of not only monitoring student technology usage, but also instructing students on the proper uses of technology for research and discovery.

http://www.coppanow.com/

As a parent of two small children seeing a company being fined $950,000.00 dollars for the repeated collection of varying personal information from children is concerning.  I can remember when I created the email address for my child to keep up with her pen pal who now lives in Italy, Google was very careful to ask me questions while I registered the email address.  The email is in her name, but that, and her birthdate are the only things connected to the email.  I restrict what can be sent to her and the only place she can access the email is on my phone.  She doesn’t know the password and all emails are composed by me based on what she wants to ask her friend about.

3. InMobi was fined for misrepresenting what their advertising software was doing.  While they claimed that the software was only tracking the consumers location in connection with the device’s privacy settings, the software was in fact overriding the settings of the device and tracking the consumer location without the consent of the user.  Where they really got into trouble with COPPA is that many of the apps used to gather this data were specifically designed to target children without obtaining the required consent of the parents.

4. As a result the company will be required to obtain consent from all users before obtaining any of their personal information.  They will be required to delete all information they have obtained up to this point.  They will also be required to honor the consumer’s privacy settings, and will be required to create a comprehensive policy ensuring they will do so that will be audited every two years for the next twenty years.

5. As a parent I can see how easy this can happen.  I have set our devices to require fingerprint ID before purchases can be made and follow what my kids do on our devices very carefully.  I can see how easy it would be for a child to make a mistake and allow information out.  There really is as much responsibility on the parent as their is on the company to make sure they aren’t obtaining information they shouldn’t have.  As a parent, I am responsible for following my kids activities and following up with the companies to ensure they have not taken any information from my child that they are not entitled to.