Canvas Rolling Out to IMMS Students

It is the second day of school in Castleberry and our 8th grade students are already being introduced to our new Learning Management System (LMS), Canvas! In Mr. Watson's Technology applications classes, students logged in for the first time today. Without any direction, Mr. Gavin asked his students to find his class and open it up. Without any questions asked, every student quickly found his course and were where they needed to be! For the students, the system seems to be very user friendly!

Second, Mr. Watson had created an assignment for the students to complete. The assignment required the students to open a Word document and then type all the ways that they use technology in their everyday lives. One they were finished, they saved the document to their user folder and then uploaded it to Mr. Watson via the upload in the assignment. This time, Mr. Watson walked them through the process to make sure there were no issues.

Once the student's assignments were submitted, Mr. Watson and I looked at what the teacher would see with these submissions. All I can say is that it is incredible!! When the teacher opens the assignment in SpeedGrader, it automatically opens the Word document and allows the teacher to leave comments and enter a grade without having to download anything! With a simple click of an arrow, you are on the next student and ready to grade!

However, if you did find the need to download the individual Word documents, it was very easy to click on the Export link and the files are downloaded to your Downloads folder as a zipped file. When we extracted and opened the zipped file, the students first and last name was already assigned to each file name! Teachers will no longer have to try to depend on the students to name their files correctly!

This is going to be a super year, and Canvas is going to help streamline how lessons are delivered and how assignments are turned in and graded!

My Role as a Technology Coach & the ISTE Standards for Coaches

The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) aligns six key areas for instructional coaches to use as guidelines for integrating technology into curriculum. The following is a summary of how each standard applies to my position as Director of Instructional Technology for Castleberry ISD.

Visionary Leadership – As Castleberry ISD continues to expand the one-to-one initiative, I have had a vital role in planning, communicating and implementing technology infusion in the classrooms. I have worked with leadership teams, instructional rounds teams, and teachers to provide resources that assist in the development of improvement plans, lesson plans, and most of all the district technology plan.

Teaching, Learning, and Assessments – As a technology coach, my main goal is to provide the support that teachers need to develop lesson activities that target the objectives for the unit while instilling 21^st Century Skills so that students are empowered to take control of their own learning. Not only do I provide support, but I model skills and activities in professional development sessions that teachers can use in their own classrooms. 

Digital Age Learning Environments - This year, we will be using Canvas as our LMS. This platform will enable teachers to plan, provide students resources, and assess students within one application. Additionally, applications such as Google Drive and Office 365 can be utilized as collaboration tools.

Professional Development and Program Evaluation - I look forward to expanding teacher learning through Twitter edchats and modeling professional development sessions similar to ed camps. Also, the ability to offer professional development trainings utilizing Canvas LMS not only models the use of the online classroom, but gives teachers a chance to view the LLMS as a student would. Another tool that we will be utilizing this school year is BrightBytes. BrightBytes is a survey that students, staff, and parents complete on the integration of technology. This survey tool will provide data that will guide the type of professional development and support needed to continue to grow in the infusion of technology.

Digital Citizenship – As a technology coach, I will continue to review and update responsible use policies each year. I will also work with assistant principals as they prepare presentations to present to students and parents on responsible use and digital citizenship. We will continue to seek opportunities for students to collaborate with other students outside of Castleberry ISD on class projects. And finally, we are going to pilot a blended learning environment at the high school where students meet in places outside of the classroom to work on project based lessons.

Content Knowledge and Professional Growth – In order to succeed, we must all continue to grow. I will complete my Master’s in Learning Technologies this next May. The skills and strategies that I learn will be shared through professional development sessions that I offer. I will continue to seek trainings and resources so that will enhance my knowledge base in technology integration so that what I learn can be shared with the teachers that I serve.

Reflections on the Outcome of Branding Yourself as a Digital Leader Training

For project B, I worked very closely with Renee Smith-Faulkner as we designed training for the district leadership team on building a digital brand. As new administrators and district leaders are hired in the district, we needed a training that we could offer them to catch them up with where our other administrators are as digital leaders. This was a very large project so it was nice to work with Renee to complete this project. 

In looking at the outcome, all participants were very positive about their experience in the trainings. There were only a couple of issues. First, in the day 2 “Why Brand” activity, using Realtime Board did not work. Even though the participants were invited to use the board, most still had issues accessing it. The instructors quickly changed the means to share the group’s findings by having them add information on a shared Google doc. Next time, I will want to create this activity in Google Slides so that each group will have a slide to share their findings. The other big issue was time. We packed these days full of activities. However, the participants requested that they have more time to fully develop the artifacts for each activity. Other than those two issues, the participants felt that the training was very beneficial and well worth their time to attend.

Peer editing was a constant throughout the design of this training module. Renee and I would look over each other’s work as each part was completed. Through this peer editing process, we were able to find small issues before we presented the design document and job aid to our clients. Also, by constantly editing each other, we were able to stay consistent in our design so that all parts worked effortlessly together. Once we felt comfortable with the design, we would then have our clients look over the design document and job aid to make sure everything needed was included. Because we had used their input to create the training, there were not any issues that had to be corrected from their review of the document other than a minor spelling or grammar change here and there. 

Once the training was over, we sat down with our clients to go over the training. They felt that the training went very well. They too felt that time was an issue so we will add more time when we provide this training if the future. They felt that the atmosphere of the training was very positive and the participants were very grateful for being asked to participate in the training. They also let us know the issues they had with Realtime Board and that they quickly resolved the issue with a shared Google doc. I felt that this training was very well organized and look forward to offering it again as new administrators begin working in our district.

What I Have Learned About Instructional Design

Designing instruction is not completely new to me. As an educator, I designed instruction on a daily basis as I prepared lesson plans each day. Fourteen years ago, I moved from the classroom into the Technology Department as an Instructional Technologist with one of my main focuses on training teachers on technology infusion. However, I never had put a name to the process that I would go through as I designed these lessons/trainings. 

In this instructional design course, I learned that the process is called the ADDIE process. As I looked back over my previous attempts at instructional design, I realized that I did basically go through these steps. From surveys and observations, I was able to see where weaknesses existed. From those findings, I would then begin to design and develop the training. One thing that I did learn in this class is that the more planning that goes into the design, the easier it is to develop the instruction. Taking the analysis, building the goals and objectives, and developing the activities are so closely related to each other that the more you include in the first two areas, the easier the process is in the development stage. Another new idea that was presented in the course was to list the needs of the participants and the instructor. This is something I have never done before. I see how looking at the needs of the participants can help guide the designer in the types of activities to include.

From the evaluation, I learned several things. First, when I had the client look over the job aid, she found a couple of areas that did not make sense to her. Normally I am creating trainings where I am the instructor as well. When creating for someone else, it is so important to be clear in all of the instruction steps. Also, in looking at the feedback provided by the participants, I found that they were all enlightened by the training. The main concern was that they thought they needed more time on the activities in order to fully develop the artifacts for each activity. After looking back over the design, I could see that adding more time would be a good update to this module for future trainings. 

I believe that this process of designing instruction is going to improve the quality of the trainings that I provide in the future. I will pay closer attention to the details up front to ensure that the training runs smoothly. I do not know that I will design instruction for others, but I do know that I will provide numerous trainings each year for teachers as we continue to build our one-to-one program in our district.