Cycle Two: Learner Driven One-on-One Technology PD
The purpose of this second cycle was to implement a one-on-one technology professional development plan for each of the three participating teachers. When asked what device or tool each teacher would like to study first, each chose the Edublogs blogging platform that is used for individual blogs for students, classroom blogs for parent communication and digital portfolios for students. This choice was supported by the results of the needs assessments and interviews administered in the first cycle.
Research Question:
How can I personalize instructional technology professional development to support teachers in their creation and attainment of technology integration goals?
Cycle Two Question:
How will weekly one-on-one technology-focused professional development impact teacher use of technology and attitudes toward developing technological skills?
Action Taken:
As we began our work together, one of my goals was to work within their schedules and to be as flexible with scheduling as possible. To accomplish this, the teachers chose the times we met from my unscheduled time during and directly after the school day. DH chose to meet after school on Thursdays while AP and DG chose to meet during a thirty minute portion of their planning times on Fridays. We began working together the week of January 13, and attempted to follow this schedule through the week of March 10.
Our main focus throughout much of this time was the use of the Edublogs blogging platform, though we also worked through other questions that each teacher brought up during our work together. These were often device related questions that dealt with the use of a teacher iPad or Apple TV in the classroom. None of this training dealt with the student use of devices, but instead focused on instances of teacher use.
Evidence Collected:
I collected the following evidence during this cycle: field notes, a calendar of scheduled sessions, listing of all interactions with the participating teachers, action research journal reflections, blog posts (newsletters, images and portfolio items) created by participating teachers, and the TAC (Teachers' Attitudes Toward Computers) Questionnaire. Field notes were dictated or written immediately after scheduled meetings with participants. They focused on the interactions between the participants and me, questions or concerns that arose and plans for the next week's meeting. A Google calendar was used to document meeting times, canceled sessions, and the administering of surveys. The listing of all interactions with participants included scheduled and impromptu sessions as well as conversational and email resolutions. Journal reflections were posted to my action research blog throughout cycle two. The number, frequency and complexity of the teacher blog posts were documented at the beginning of the cycle to then compared to those created throughout cycle two. The TAC (Teachers' Attitudes Toward Computers) Questionnaire was administered at the end of cycle two to gain a more thorough understanding of their attitudes toward technology.
Analysis:
Since our primary focus for training during this period was the use of the Edublog platform to post newsletters, images, and student portfolio materials, I documented the number of posts made by these teachers in the two months prior to our work together. DH posted seven items to her class blog (three images and four newsletters), while AP and DG had made no posts to their blogs during that time.
Number of Blog Posts During Cycle Two
At the completion of the second cycle, I recorded the number of posts that had been made by these teachers during our time working together. DH continued to blog on her classroom blog with a similar frequency as before, though the complexity of her posts increased as she began using images with captions and creating image galleries as posts. I was able to work with DH on an almost weekly basis for at least 45 minutes, much more frequently and for a more substantial amount of time than with the other two teachers. This allowed us to also include work on student portfolios, which are student blog pages that can be accessed from the classroom dashboard. Adding items to the student portfolios follows the same process as adding images to the classroom blog. DH and I were able to work on accessing and posting to her students' portfolio pages,. This is reflected in the thirteen posts she made to the portfolio pages of her students.
Images Uploaded to Blog Posts by DH
As cycle two progressed, it became apparent that scheduling to meet after school led to more consistency in the meeting schedule. I met with DH, who chose to work after school, seven times over the course of cycle two. AP, who originally chose to meet on Fridays from 12:45 to 1:15, during her planning period, decided at the beginning of March that after school on Wednesdays would work better. At that point, the cycle was almost over, and we were only able to meet once on a Wednesday. DG chose to meet on Fridays from 10:15 to 10:45, during her planning period. Of the eight weeks we scheduled to meet, she was able to meet three times, and two of these were for less than the thirty minutes we had planned.
Number of Scheduled Sessions and Total Time of Training (Cycle Two)
Two sessions were missed with each teacher because of school closing due to snow days. All total, we missed eight school days during the cycle two period to inclement weather. This made maintaining a consistent meeting schedule difficult, if not impossible. DH, with whom I met after school, did not miss any additional meetings, but the teachers who were scheduled to work during the school day often canceled at the last minute due to a variety of reasons.
Reasons for Meeting Cancellations (Cycle Two)
Throughout cycle two, I documented all interactions I had with these teachers in which I was able to assist them with learning about technology or solving some technology-related issue. These interactions included:
- 14 scheduled sessions
- 7 impromptu sessions
- 11 conversational resolutions, and
- 6 emailed resolutions.
Scheduled sessions are hands-on sessions that were planned with the teacher ahead of time and occurred according to our weekly schedule. Impromptu sessions are those that began with a conversation, email or question from the teacher which led to an immediate hands-on session. Conversational resolutions are instances where the teacher would approach me with a question about a technology-related issue, that we were able to answer or address at that moment. Emailed resolutions are occasions in which I am able to resolve an issue or answer a question through an emailed response.
Teacher Interactions
While weather and scheduling conflicts affected the frequency of our scheduled sessions, especially with AP and DG, the number of technology-related interactions I had with these teachers increased dramatically from before we began working together. Prior to beginning this project, DH would come to me occasionally with technology questions or issues, but neither AP nor DG had done so this school year.
To better assess the current attitudes of these teachers toward technology, I administered the TAC questionnaire at the end of cycle two. This instrument is divided into nine parts, eight of which consist of statements that the participant must indicate their level of agreement from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 5 (Strongly Agree) and one requires they choose a location between two adjectives to indicate how they feel about computers. The sections are constructed to determine the level of interest and comfort with technology, willingness to make accommodations to work with computers, attitudes toward how technology affects interactions with students, concern over the impact of computers on society, feelings concerning the usefulness of technology, how invested and interested they are in computers and learning about them, and how significant they feel the need is for students to be computer literate. The ninth part deals with the participant's perceptions toward technology as determined by asking them to choose a location between two adjectives of opposite meanings.
The results of the questionnaire for DH and AP supported my assumptions of their current attitudes toward computers and technology. DH, who consistently voices her concerns with the skills necessary to use technology and her lack of confidence in using devices, scored low in interest, comfort, interactivity, and absorption. AP, who uses technology often in her life outside of the classroom, but does not feel adequately prepared to incorporate those devices in the classroom, scored high in these same areas. The responses on the questionnaire were did not support my assumptions for DG. The only section in which she scored lower that a 3 (undecided) was in the portion concerning absorption (personal investment and interest in technology).
Teachers' Attitudes Toward Computers Questionnaire Responses
The ninth section of the TAC demonstrated a clearer view of each teacher's attitude toward technology. This portion was a semantics differential scale which required each participant to choose a position on a scale between an adjective pair to indicate how they feel about computers. On this scale, AP consistently chose positions closer to the positive adjectives, while DH and DG responded mainly on the negative side of the scale.
Semantic Perception of Computers
Reflections:
The Actions:
Working one-on-one with these teachers has been an enjoyable experience. As our work together progressed, I found myself consciously stepping back and observing instead of directing the teachers in what they were trying to accomplish. Each session would begin with a short tutorial or demonstration of the tool or task on which we were exploring that day. As they worked through the process, I was available to guide them if needed, but I waited until asked to do so. At the end of each meeting, I asked them what they would like to work on next week, and I encouraged them to continue practicing the skills we had worked on and come to me with any questions along the way. This open communication helped in continuing our progress despite the numerous interruptions to our schedule.
If cycle two had gone as I anticipated, we would have worked together on the Edublogs platform and, iPad apps to use with the Apple TVs in each classroom and software and online tools that were of interest to each participant. Unfortunately, the weather and schedules conspired against us. Cycle two spanned from January 6 to March 18. During that time, we lost eight days to snow closings, one week for the face-to-face in Florida, and a week to our school's winter break. AP and DG had decided to meet during one of their planning times during the school day for thirty minutes. Each had to cancel on three other occasions due to student concerns, scheduling conflicts, and other situations that arose during the school day. This resulted in meeting with AP four times and DG three times. Toward the end, AP decided to change our meeting time to Wednesdays after school, but this was late in the cycle and only resulted in one additional meeting. DH had decided to meet after school on Thursday afternoons, and was able to make all of our meetings. We were able to meet seven times for an average of forty-five minutes each. Despite what would seem like convenience in scheduling to meet during the course of the instructional day, the teachers became too enmeshed in the immediate needs of their classrooms and could easily justify canceling a technology session. In the future, I will encourage scheduling one-on-one training like this outside of the usual school day.
In retrospect, I should have utilized the TAC questionnaire at the end of cycle one to determine a baseline for teacher's attitudes toward technology. When administering the survey again at the end of cycle three, it would have offered an opportunity to more accurately measure the impact of my research. I was relying too heavily on the few components of the survey I generated and my interviews with teachers to determine a baseline with which to determine outcomes. When reflecting on these instruments, I came to realize that they actually functioned as my first cycle since this idea of determining the needs and interests of the teachers in order to inform the content, pace and scheduling of professional development was an unused practice in my workplace. By that time, the work on cycle two had begun, so I decided to wait until its completion.
Early into the action of cycle two, I noticed an increase in technology-related interactions with these teachers outside of our weekly scheduled meetings. Though I had not planned to document these at the beginning of my action research, it became clear that this increase in communication was a product of our work together and should be included in my evidence for this cycle. Reflecting on the new frequency of interactions that had developed, I came to realize that in the process of working together, I have built a mentoring relationship with these teachers. The open communication that has developed with these mentoring relationships has offered more opportunities to personalize technology professional development for these teachers. I was also pleased to see a larger number of non-participant lower school teachers approaching me to learn about technology or for help in solving technology-related problems.
Throughout this cycle, we were able to focus on technology for teacher use, but we were never able to incorporate applications and strategies for student use in the classroom. A device these teachers were most interested in learning about in connection with student engagement was the iPad. This year, first and second grade each have one device in their classrooms while kindergarten has two iPad minis, but next year, each grade, kindergarten through third will have a set of at least five iPads with which to work. This device generated the most questions from the participating teachers, and they all wanted to focus on its use in the third cycle of our work together. When talking about the iPad, I saw the most genuine interest from these teachers. The use of the Edublogs platform is required at our school for parent communication and student portfolios, so they wanted/needed to learn how to use it to fully perform the tasks of their positions. This desire to learn did not stem from a true interest in its function and use. Continuing to follow a personalized approach, we will concentrate on the iPad and ideas for integrating it into student learning activities.
The Researcher:
As my work on cycle two advanced, I began to realize my role in my workplace was changing. Last year, my position changed when I transitioned from a fourth grade classroom teacher to a newly created position that was titled Lower School Technology Coordinator. Prior to this, our school had a computer teacher who instructed students in our computer lab once a week; this direct instruction of students being the sole task of the post. In lobbying to create the new position, I created a job description to highlight the changes and new responsibilities I would undertake.
The position of Lower School Technology Coordinator needs to be rewritten for the current and future technology use needs in our program. It needs to be multi-faceted:
o Technology instructor to students (at least for the time being while integration in to the classrooms is developing)
o Technology resource for teachers for both hardware and software concerns
o Technology Program Developer (planning for the future)
o Facilitator for Tech Professional Development for Lower School teachers
o Technology resource for teachers to support technology integration
At the end of last year, I was disappointed to realize that only the first component had been fully realized, and the second was true when a teacher had an issue with a hardware or software product not working properly. Teachers were not seeing me as a technology steward, but as a "specials" teacher to take their students once a week to allow for their planning time. Now I realize I was not doing what needed to be done to facilitate this change in perceptions. I was attempting to be a technology steward for my colleagues without taking initiative and acting as a leader in the process. I was apologetic for my lack of academic qualifications for such a position, and assumed everyone else questioned my abilities. My confidence was low, and it directly impacted my influence over my colleagues since I waited to be asked for assistance instead of seeking to create learning opportunities. With the actions of this second cycle, I was taking steps to change perceptions of my role in the school by taking a leadership role in technology matters, and by proving to everyone, including myself, that I have expertise in this area that is valuable.
Cycle two began with the idea of building a weekly technology training program with my participant teachers, and it ended with my realization that the mentoring relationship that is being built with each of these teachers is the most valuable product of our work together. As I reflected on the end of cycle two, I took some time to look over my action research blog. This process proved to be an enlightening endeavor, as I found revelations from earlier in the process that I had lost sight of in the work of conducting the actions of my cycles. I now realize that my recent understandings concerning the importance of my relationships with these teachers was something I came to grasp earlier in this undertaking, and I wrote about it in this post from October:
Instead of focusing on empowering teachers to integrate technology into the classroom, I need to nurture a partnership with teachers to develop ways to integrate the devices that are available into the classrooms in a meaningful way. I need to become a stronger leader within my school. I need to work directly with teachers to take what they are doing and introduce a technology element to hopefully continue to develop student engagement. I need to be the focus in my action research, myself and what I bring to the table. I need to explore how making me available to teachers in various capacities impacts the overall use of technology by teachers in and out of the classroom. I need to provide "just in time" learning opportunities to teachers to encourage them to continue exploring the possibilities that technology opens in instruction and in their daily lives. If teachers can see the value of technology on their daily lives, it is more realistic that they will be able to see its value in the classroom.
I have come to the realization that it is the relationship between the individual supporting teachers in their integration of technology and the teachers themselves that is most important. While the topics, materials and techniques facilitate the process, it is trust and an ability to be open that motivates and moves the process forward into the classroom.
Going Forward:
My analysis of the evidence and reflections from cycle two, led me to my question and plan for cycle three. In the third cycle, I will attempt to continue to provide personalized technology professional development by encouraging the teachers to choose the topics. Since they currently are very interested in the use of the iPad, we will work on apps and activities to allow it to be integrated into the classroom. By increasing my communication with these teachers, I will work to continue building the mentoring relationships I have initiated with them. To bring the small group of teachers together to experience the advantages of a face-to-face learning circle, I will develop and carry out a full day of professional development with all three teachers.
While we will continue to try to meet on a weekly schedule, as the school year winds down, time is at a premium. I will utilize increased communication with these teachers to find ways of encouraging and initiating instances for just in time learning opportunities.