Reflections on Four Years of Teaching With Technology - Plateau and Progress

This is part three of a series on my school's one to one MacBook program.  It can be read on its own, but if you want to know the history, read the other two.

As always happens, the first year of a program is when people are the most excited and, therefore, the most invested in doing new things.  The increase you see from year zero to year one cannot be the level of increase you expect every year.  In order to keep increasing at all, there must be continued cheerleading, support, and training to keep the ideas new.  Most of us were really happy with how the first year went, but we didn't bring that same level of enthusiasm to the second year (maybe because we were just tired).  We also implemented a much needed Learning Management System that year, which was frustrating at first because there were some glitches in it.  Because of these issues, the second year was a plateau for us as far as using the technology as more than a replacement for what we had done previously.

Our wonderful tech team had read articles about schools that gave up on one to one programs after one or two years due to lack of real growth and were determined not to let that happen here.  Around the same time, we also hired a new media specialist, Laura (the wonderful) Warmke.  She is not only highly versed in what seems like every book ever written; she is also super with technology tools and driven to help you find out how to use them in your class.

Laura and Diane developed a great program for teacher to use as professional development.  It is called Level Up, and it is awesome.  Diane and Laura write "missions" for us to accomplish.  Some of them are as simple as watch a TED talk about education and comment on it in our discussion board.  Others are as complex as classroom flipping, instituting a badge system in your class, or having a skype session.  All the missions are counted as done when you have responded on a discussion board. 

Let me tell you some of the reasons this program is awesome:
1.  You can choose your own professional development.   We aren't all sitting in the same room learning the same tool.  We look at the available missions and choose the ones that will work best for our style and our classroom.  It enables people to be developed at their point of comfort with where they currently are.
2.  You are being cheered on rather than put upon.  The tech team gives you a badge in the teacher's lounge for every mission you complete.  They love talking to you about your missions.  You get great ideas from reading other people's uses on the discussion board, which allows you to incorporate the same tools in your class in more than one way.
3.  It is modeling.  They aren't just telling us to use something.  They are using it to deliver the message.  It makes me want to have missions in my own classes (next year perhaps).
4.  There are prizes.  Prizes are always motivating, no matter how old you get.  At the end of the quarter, we have drawing for gift cards.  The more missions you have done, the more times you name is in the hat.
5.  It introduces you to tools you had never heard of before.  One mission we had this year was to use a tool called Canva - a very cool graphic design tool.  I've had kids use it for projects, and I will never make another bulletin board without it.  I would never have heard of it without this program.
6.  It encourages teacher input.  Many times during the year, a teacher will stumble upon a new tool and say, "Hey, you should have a mission for that.

This program has gotten us off our year two flatline graph and put us back on the upward slope.  Another thing Laura does is meet with every teacher every quarter to discuss how she can help you take your tech integration to the next level.  Because of these discussions, my 8th graders have begun creating a website (which future 8th graders will finish), and next year, my 8th graders will be blogging for the world to see.

I've said it before.  I couldn't go back to teaching the old way.  Now that I see what kids are capable of doing with the world of knowledge at their fingertips, I would never again feel like I was doing my job as a teacher if I didn't give them that opportunity.  Every new tool we teach them i just another way they can be academically and spiritually equipped, challenged, and inspired to impact their world for Christ (which is our school's mission statement).

There will be one more post in this series - what I wish I had known when this all started.