Future Plans

Below is the Technology Integration Plan for Boys' Latin Charter School. This is our first draft and it will change, but I wanted to elicit feedback if you have done this before. I created this position at our school, drafted a job description, and will be fully implementing a technology driven curriculum next fall. This project has been in the works since November of 2009 and has finally come to a reality.

The plan below is the action plan for the Instructional Technology Specialist, which I will take over this summer. This plan serves as a comprehensive list of duties and responsibilities that my position will require. Again, if you have any experience with this kind of position or action plan, please give me your feedback

Boys’ Latin Technology Integration Plan

I. Integrate

II. Collaborate

III. Connect

IV. Organize

V. Educate

Boys’ Latin Instructional Technology Specialist Vision Statement
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The Instructional Technology Specialist will develop comprehensive technology use plan to implement technology goals; Provide unified integrated technology approach throughout all grade levels; Enhance connection between Administration, Faculty, Students, and Parents; Research and analyze data to improve technology integration in all content areas; Seek ways to restructure and/or refine the role of faculty and staff to enhance the technology integration plan vision at Boys’ Latin.

I. Integration

The role of the instructional technology specialist (ITS) will be to assist and integrate appropriate technology in to the Boys’ Latin curriculum. The ITS will perform the following tasks to integrate technology:

1. The ITS will work with each department during summer planning. This meeting will focus on integrating 21^st Century Literacy Standards into the existing Boys’ Latin Standards.

2. The ITS will meet weekly at each content area department meeting. Content area teachers will showcase student work or ways in which they are integrating technology into their weekly curriculum. The ITS will present new ways to integrate technology and schedule appointments to assist classroom teachers in technology driven lessons or projects.

3. The ITS will provide one professional development session a month to all content area teachers. This professional development may utilize an outside speaker, the ITS, or a collaboration of the ITS and teachers.

4. The ITS will make himself or herself available throughout the week. The ITS will have a shared calendar in which faculty and administration can sign up for ITS assistance for integrating technology.

II. Collaboration

The ITS will maintain communication and collaboration between Administration, Faculty, Students, and Parents. This collaboration will make the classroom transparent and allow for ubiquitous access. The ITS will perform the following tasks to maintain collaboration:

1. The ITS will ensure that Administration and Faculty are collaborating via online resources, email, and web pages.

2. The ITS will collaborate via social networks to acquire new resources for classroom teachers and seek out professional development.

3. The ITS will oversee the content area online resource library created in conjunction with each department head.

4. The ITS will collaborate with local and national schools that wish to link up for an online project.

III. Connect

The ITS will maintain connectivity with the school, community, and the home. Students and Parents will have access to assignments, projects, and online resources at all times. The ITS will perform the following tasks to maintain connectivity:

1. The ITS will communicate with parents to enhance home connectivity and provide consistent connectivity support at the home.

2. The ITS will assist teachers in connecting to resources and establishing an online presence.

3. The ITS will assist students in connecting to various online resources and databases.

4. The ITS will connect with local and national schools that are technology driven schools looking to collaborate with Boys’ Latin.

IV. Organize

The ITS will organize an online resource library and wikispace for Administration, Faculty, and Students. This resource library will constantly be updated and feature web resources that can be easily integrated into the Boys’ Latin Curriculum. The ITS will perform the following tasks to maintain organization:

1. The ITS will introduce the online resource library to Faculty in a brief professional development.

2. The ITS will maintain the online resource library so that all links and websites are current.

3. The ITS will show Administration and Faculty how to add content to the online resource library.

4. The ITS will create a shared calendar for Administration, Faculty, and Students. This calendar will allow all to set up an appointment with the ITS.

V. Educate

The ITS will consistently seek ways to improve the technology integration at Boys’ Latin Charter School. Professional development opportunities and conferences will be proposed throughout the year and integrated into weekly and summer faculty meetings. The ITS will perform the following tasks to promote technology education:

1. The ITS will compile and provide a weekly list of webinars, online professional development sessions, and journal articles on technology integration.

2. The ITS will assist teachers with online professional development sessions.

3. The ITS will recommend professional development opportunities for Administration and Faculty.

4. The ITS will present professional development for teachers during the summer, Wednesday Faculty meetings, and professional development days throughout the school year.

5. The ITS will offer instructional seminars and webinars for Parents and Students.

6. The ITS will educate Students on laptop responsibility.

7. The ITS will create and integrate an Acceptable Use Policy for Boys’ Latin Charter School.

The Return of 1

In July of 2009, I launched The One Comment A Day Project. My mission was to promote new bloggers and bring comments to existing blogs. Initially, The One Comment A Day Project burst on to the scene with the celerity of a gazelle, however, it soon became another faded project. The members of the ning remained, however, the collaborative dialogue that made the project so amazing, faded.

This decline happened because the project took off so fast that I, as a moderator and organizer, could not keep up with the progress. Couple that with the start at a new school year and a flooded basement and you have the decline of The One Comment A Day Project. However, in my absence, the members of the project remained true and continued the project along with its collaborative heart.

Now is the time for a renaissance. The One Comment A Day Project will no longer be a project, but serve as a forum for promoting new bloggers and illuminating the voices of the education world. This project will continue to be collaborative, but open up an entirely new forum for discussion and educational dialogue. My vision is that every Thursday at noon and 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, The One Comment Project can come together and discuss two different blogs via twitter. These conversations will be filtered through the hash tag #onecom. After the conversation on twitter, members will then provide constructive feedback on each blog post for that day. The goal is to generate discussion from the content of a blog and continue the conversation through comments and feedback.

Each week, members of The One Comment Project will vote on which blogs to discuss that week. I will accept e-mail submissions for blog posts at ontheroad51@gmail.com. The submission deadline will be Sunday night at 9pm. Once the blogs are selected, we will read each post and begin our conversation on Thursday. Each twitter conversation will be archived so that bloggers can read through the tweets and dissect the conversation. The twitter conversations will allow for authors to participate in the dialogue and even lead the conversation. It is my hope that conversations will linger far beyond the hour time slot on twitter and provoke our thinking and generate new ideas for the classroom and beyond.

If you cannot make a Thursday conversation, there will be RSS feeds on The One Comment Project Ning. Members of the Ning will be able to see archives and also read the blogs that are discussed for that week. I have also set up a Diigo group for The One Comment Project that all members can join. This way, we can create an online resource library of blogs that are making progressive strides in education.

I hope that you join me in this venture and help make The One Comment Project a forum that promotes new and existing blogs, expands the educational dialogue, and provokes our thinking.

Please join The One Comment Project Ning at http://onecommentproject.ning.com/#

We will begin our first twitter conversation next Thursday, February 18, 2010 at noon and our second round will commence at 7 p.m. Please submit blog posts at ontheroad51@gmail.com by Sunday at 9 p.m.

Language 2.0

Today I was called out by one of my students.

I teach tenth grade Literature and Composition class back to back for first and second period. I am teaching them through various Web 2.0 and open source venues. Every now and then we tend to digress into a conversation about technology and its role in the 21^st century classroom. I often tell them that technology is changing faster than ever and everyone else is playing catch-up. This is very evident in education and the way in which we use language and communicate. I like to feel that I am on the cutting edge and can see what is around the corner before anyone else, however, today I felt archaic.

During a random tangent in class, we began talking about text messaging and the length. One of my students said, “I bet Marcinek’s text messages are like this five paragragh essay we are writing. He probably uses punctuation as well. “

I paused. Reflected on how cool I thought I was and how quickly I became my father. Standing in front of the next generation of learners and realizing that I was behind. Or was I?

From a distance, I showed my students a text message thread I had going on my iPhone. They all began to laugh and couldn’t believe the length of each individual message.

One student interjected, “How do you spell ‘though’?”

I responded, “Though.”

“What! You mean you don’t spell it tho?”

“No, what’s the point?” I shot back.

“Yo, if I got a text that long I would never read it. I’d be like, delete!”

This conversation, this tangent provoked my thinking and led me to question the relevance of my entire career and what content I was teaching. If this is what kids are currently engaged in, they why am I teaching them to read a novel at length? Why am I teaching them to spell and use grammar if the majority of their day is spent not using it? What is the future of language and grammar and punctuation? Are we on the precipice of a major language shift? And if so, what will it all look like in five to ten years?

In a brief vision I could see the future of education. Students walk into class, sit down in complete silence. I give them a copy of Lord of the Flies which has been shortened to 140 characters. They tweet me their thoughts on the 140 character novel they just wrote. They hurl me shortened adjectives over their all in one, do everything but slice bread Smart Phone. This smart phone is ironically titled Brain 2.0.

That vision started to scare me. Kids spend the majority of their day reading and writing, however, none of it is correct. They read more facebook profiles through the week than content from a text book. They write more text messages, e-mails and wall posts than essays or critical analysis responses. And this, THIS is where we, teachers in the 21^st century come in to save the way in which we learn.

*Standing on my soap box* we need to be responsible with the spelling, grammar and mechanics of the English language. Teachers must teach students that when they post on walls, or send emails that they cannot break down language and toss the rules aside. Students must take it upon themselves to know when to type ‘you’ and when it is ok to type ‘u’. When technology is brought into the classroom and students find themselves typing more than writing with a pencil, we, as teachers, as facilitators, must monitor the content to which they present. We cannot sit back and let this slide or we will be disrespecting everything that is good about our language.

However, I still think there is merit to twitter and facebook in the classroom. We should not take this trend and simply ignore its appeal. I have posted before on several lessons which I have built around these two social networking forums. I use concept of twitter to elicit key ideas and focus a student’s thoughts when reading a chapter in a novel. I use the concept of facebook for characterization and reflecting on character arcs throughout a novel. There are plenty more as well. The key factor is that we need to teach our students to not just use technology, but use it with purpose and responsibility. We need to create rubrics that catch students writing when it digresses into text message format on a blog response or a discussion thread. When we combine the two, the technology in the classroom can open up many learning opportunities for our students.

Finally, I asked my students what they thought about the idea of language digression in online and text forums. Here are the two questions I asked them along with some of their responses. NOTE: I did not edit their responses to make my point. This became a teaching moment and a lesson on the responsibility we have when writing online.

Yesterday I was called out by several of you for sending paragraph length texts and it prompted two questions;
1. What are the language requirements or responsibilities when we write online and in text messages?
2. What will become of language if we continue to shorten it in length?

Answer each question in a brief paragraph. I will post these responses on my blog and share the comments and reader responses. Proofread your response for spelling and grammar.

1. i tnink that u can use and make ur own language when we write in txt meassages and in e-mails but when we are doing something professional then we need to use the write way of spelling and talking.

2. i think that sometimes you may forget how to spell a word or two nbut i think we will be fine.

~ OMAR

When you’re online you try to talk proper and try to make sure you spell your words right. But when you text you spell words a different way. If we keep spelling words short i think that it will be hard to write a story..!

~Khalid

The language requirements for certain people when there writing online is just being thrown out the windows when they are online but at the same time it’s still there in ways too. I say this because when we write a text message we do still use things like acronyms in our text messages. If we continue to write like this our language will be way different because most people will want to write the word in a different way than it is properly spelled

~Jaylen

When many people in the world don't always follow the rule of language while they text. They either use lol (laugh out loud ) idk (i don't know ) and for the people who follow the rule of language don't always know what it means. Many people throw out the rules of English because they figure that they don't have to apply it to modern life. The same for online like myspace facebook etc . In other words people now days are too lazy to type a full sentence, and instead write a response to have less to type .the language rules we learn now could be no use if we continue if we don't apply at all times.

~Devaun

My Decade

“Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need Roads”

Twenty years ago a movie came out that changed the way I looked at the future. This movie was Back to the Future II. Back to the Future II was different than any future movie my adolescent eyes had ever seen. My only comparable film was 2001: A Space Odyssey, but at the ripe age of nine, Stanley Kubrick was not really appealing to my audience. I remember watching the previews and hearing about some of the “future” scenes in the movie. It took place in 2015. At the time, that seemed so distant and I could not even imagine the calendar year starting with a 2 and a 0 instead of a 1and a 9. In the scenes where Marty McFly and Doc Brown travel to the future, we get a brief glimpse of what is awaiting us down the road. It all seemed far-fetched, but you still watched, and you still held that thought in the back of your mind that said, “hmmm, maybe this could happen.”

In 1989 we imagined a future where cars fly, hover boards are the must have toy for kids, NIKE shoes glow and your jacket air-dries and talks to you. There are vintage shops that house relics of a time gone by and there is baseball in Miami. Who could have ever imagined all of this? Robert Zemeckis did. Did it all come true? (Baseball in Miami happened and the Marlins managed to win two World Series titles since Back to the Future made this bold prediction) we don’t know yet, we are only approaching 2010.

I see this vision of the future and think about what has come in the past ten years and look forward to what will be greeting us in the next ten. This image in the New York Times today really struck a cord with me as to how fast things have progressed over the last ten years. Since 2000 the way we communicate and collaborate has changed so fast that it is hard to keep up with it all. Think about this, ten years ago we did not tweet, check facebook or use an iPhone. The web was still lingering in 1.0 and we used lots of bullets on MS PowerPoint and thought flying text and toasters were progressing us forward.

Today, the average person wakes up, checks their phone, sends a few texts, checks e-mail, brushes his or her teeth, sends a tweet about it, updates facebook status (blah Monday morning), sends a reply to previous text, eats cereal, sends a tweet about an article you are reading via an RSS feed on your iPhone, check e-mail again, grab your iPod and update it with your favorite podcasts to listen on the way to work and finally, you are out the door. Think about what just happened…THINK ABOUT IT!!!!

So my question is, “What is next?” Where does all this lead? We can connect to copious amounts of information and communicate faster than ever before. We have even started condensing our language in order to express how we feel in 140 characters or simply to show laughter. Have you ever thought about what it means to write LOL? I once asked someone if they actually laugh when they reply back to a text or an IM conversation with LOL. This person said, “Well when I write LOL that means I really laughed out loud, when I write “haha” that means I’m not really laughing hard, but you received some funny points and when I type “hehe” that is just a giggle.” Yes, this is where we are! This is our future.

When Doc Brown said, “Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads” he was sending a message to all of us here in 2010. We still need roads, however, maybe by 2015 we might not need them. While we might not need roads anymore we still have become reliant on so many tools that govern our daily lives. Imagine your day without your smart phone, e-mail, facebook, ATM card, Google, and your standard Internet connection. Imagine this world, because at one time this was reality and all the terms I just mentioned were not even invented yet. And someday my grandchildren will probably wonder how we lived without teleporters, “Wow Grandpa, you mean you actually had to drive places!? Weird.” Don’t laugh. It will happen.


And here are five things that I predict will happen in the next ten years.

1. Everything will merge and condense further

In a few years, we will all carry one device that can do everything. It will be an iPhone on steroids. One will be able to perform every daily function aside from eating and breathing on this device. It will control the lights in our house; it will start our cars, pay our bills, give us every bit of news, connect us with everyone and house every document we need. It will simply be called “Awesome”.

2. Print media will fade

I still like the smell of an old book and enjoy walking out on Sunday morning to get my newspaper, however, this medium of spreading news and information will soon fade into the past. With the advent of the kindle, the RSS feed, the podcast and the constant stream of news there will be no need for print media and the cost of producing it.

3. Google will prove George Orwell right

Google has grown and expanded faster than any company over the past ten years (save for Apple, so I may be wrong on this one). In the next few years Google will be releasing its own operating system along with its own smart phone. Google will think for us and take care of all our daily connectivity needs. Eventually Apple will revive its 1984 Super Bowl add and this time market it at Google, not IBM.

4. Text to Speech

As we continue to condense our language via twitter and text messaging, our speech and usage of words will continue to denigrate as well. People will communicate less through verbal means and more through cryptic texts and tweets. Eventually language will be obsolete as we condense every word into one character that has yet to be invented.

5. The Ubiquitous Classroom

School will change greatly over the next few years as technology becomes fully integrated and a necessary means for learning and teaching. Teachers will have to demonstrate the knowledge of content along with technology skills in order to get hired. This will go far beyond understanding MS Office Suite and blogging. Skype and the advancement of video conferencing will tear down the classroom walls and allow students to see the world and learn globally and locally. Standardized assessments will be taken out back and shot. Yes! The age of standardized tests will fade along with the failed No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Education will finally differentiate for all, students will learn in forums that suit their learning styles best and they will be assessed in a way that is authentic, rigorous and diverse.