"Who am I" Project Brief

Jenny Incelli

Project Brief for "Who am I"

Intro to Project Management

Summer 2013

Project Management Document

1. Why is this project needed?

Students need an opportunity to practice the vocabulary and grammar concepts in Units 1 and 2 of Spanish I.  Students will communicate in an authentic and collaborative manner to master the performance objectives in these units.

2. What is this project about? (a brief description)

8th and 9th grade students will set up Edmodo accounts that they will use to blog about themselves.  As we go through the units, they will add to their personal descriptions (personalities, appearances, interests, and location) and respond to each others materials.  As a final posting students will describe another person (using third person).

3. What is the goal of this project?

Produce and respond to blog posts that communicate personal descriptions.

4. What will be the end results of the project? (the “deliverables” in business terms)

Students will produce blog postings that feature written and spoken Spanish to communicate a variety of personal information.  They will also comment on classmates' postings in the target language.

5. What will this project not do, even if it could be done easily?

Students will not produce work as a team; rather, they will read and comment on their classmates' posts.

6. What type of project is this? (inquiry, design, debate, expression; prescriptive exploratory; or a combination)

Expression, Prescriptive

7. What is the driving question, problem, issue or personal perspective that motivates the work in this project?

I'm still working on this one; if I can develop a suitable driving question I would really like to use one.  The idea behind the first two units of our curriculum is to be able to introduce yourself and talk about your personal characteristics in Spanish, so would a driving question such as "Who am I?" be too vague?  At any rate, teens are generally motivated to socialize and get to know one-another, and that's exactly what they will be doing (but in Spanish!).

8. When will the project need to be completed?

Units 1 and 2 generally takes about 11-12 weeks, and I plan to have students adding to their blogs periodically throughout the units.  Then as Unit 2 is coming to a close and they've been exposed to all of the vocab and grammar, I will have them spend a few "intensive" days composing and publishing their final blog.  The project should be completed around week 12 or 13 of the school year.

9. Where will the project be done?

Most planning and "pre-writing" will be done in the classroom.  Depending on the approval of a "Bring Your Own Device" policy that I would like to pilot this year, some of the Edmodo work might be done in the classroom as well.  But we will definitely have to spend some time in the computer lab.

10. What resources are needed to successfully compete the project? (equipment, tools, materials, funding, technology, online resources, books, etc.)

All students will need access to the Internet for blogging and commenting in Edmodo.  For the final blog post students will need audio/video recording capabilities and/or access to animation programs like GoAnimate and Voki.  Also, we will need all of the materials to introduce and practice the concepts in Units 1 and 2, which includes the curriculum, the textbook, teacher-generated activities, and general classroom supplies (all of which are already in place).

11. How will the project be evaluated? (quality of the project work and end results, the learning outcomes, the effectiveness of the project methods)

Students will be graded on a rubric for their final blog posting (emphasizing the quality of their communicative skills and attention to required details).  The other blog postings will be graded on a completion basis, and incomplete or poorly done posts will be redone if the students want the completion grade.  They will also complete a self-evaluation on how well they participated and how well they managed their time.

12. What risks are involved in the project? (events or conditions that may delay or impact project work)

Students falling behind on their work, so that there is little for the on-pace students to read/comment on?  Failure to adhere to acceptable use policies when using technology (i.e. bullying/visiting inappropriate sites)?  Technology problems, like crashes?

Team Agreement Document

• Who will be involved in the project, and what is each person’s role or roles?  

All students will be posting on Edmodo.  This is an individual task, although they will be allowed to help each other.  They will also be divided into groups of approximately 4-5 members, but only for the purpose of commenting on blogs.  Postings will be done on an individual basis, then I will require students to comment on their group members' posts as a minimum.  I am using the EDTECH classes I've taken this summer as a model here.

• What are each team member’s strengths, expertise and preferences?

I am not sure yet.  I will be leading this team, but I don't know my students yet.

• How and how often will the project team communicate with each other? 

We meet every day, Monday through Friday, for a 47 minute class session.

• How will outside experts, coaches and advisors be used in the project?  N/A

• How will decisions be made?  

I will be handling the decisions in this first project.

• How will project changes be handled?  

I will handle changes.

• How will disagreements be resolved?  

I don't foresee much of a need for this.  Hopefully I'm right!

WorkPlan Document

• A list of project deadlines for each phase of the project work (when each of the Define, Plan, Do and Review phases should be completed)

Define and Plan phases should be completed before school begins on August 27.

The Do phase and Review will take place throughout Units 1 and 2 of Spanish I, which comprise the first 12-13 weeks of the school year.  The project should be completed around November 22.

• A list of project tasks in the order they need to be performed

Separate from this project, but central to its success is all the instruction and practice that goes into the content learning for Units 1 and 2.  I will not list these tasks here.  For the project itself:

• ~Week 4 students will create their first blog entry, which will include:
• greeting(s)
• name and spelling (for both "real" name and "Spanish" name)
• birthday
• favorite number
• farewell
• ~Week 5 students will respond to their small group members' posts
• ~Week 6 students will create their second blog entry, including:
• greeting(s)
• the date and time
• description of the day's weather 
• description of the typical weather for each season 
• ~Week 7 students will respond to posts
• ~Week 9 or 10 students will create their third blog entry, including:
• the verb "tener" used to describe their age
• where they are from
• what they like to do and when (days of the week/seasons/months)
• what they don't like to do
• adjectives to describe personality and physical appearance
• the verb "tener" used to describe what hair and eyes they have
• ~Week 10 students will respond to posts
• ~Week 11 students will create their fourth blog entry, identical to the requirements of the third blog, but now describing (in third person) a friend or family member
• ~Week 12 students will respond to posts and create their final post to show their learning from Units 1 and 2.  This final post will describe a new person (real or imaginary) in great detail.  This post will be required to have audio/video/animation recorded by the student along with a visual showing the person being described.  The following details will be discussed:
• name and spelling
• birthday
• favorite number
• age
• description of personality and physical appearance, including hair and eyes
• liked/disliked activities and when they do them
• favorite weather
• ~Week 13 students will respond to posts.  We will also watch and discuss some exemplary final postings in class.
• ~Week 13 students will reflect on their learning and performance in Units 1 and 2.  They will provide feedback on their experience, which will be used to structure future units and projects.

• The project owners for each of the tasks. 

 The teacher (myself) will be the project owner for this first project.

• The resources needed for each task (materials, tools, funding, expert advice, etc.)

All students will need access to the Internet for blogging and commenting in Edmodo.  They can use computers or smartphones.  For the final blog post students will need audio/video recording capabilities and/or access to animation programs like GoAnimate and Voki.  Also, we will need all of the materials to introduce and practice the concepts in Units 1 and 2, which includes the curriculum, the textbook, teacher-generated activities, and general classroom supplies (all of which are already in place).

• Time schedules for each of the tasks (start and finish dates)

• Students will begin learning the vocabulary and grammar in Unit 1 on August 27 (the first day of school). 
• The first blog entry will be written/posted around September 18.
• Students will respond to the first blog posting around September 25.
• The second post will be around October 2.
• Students will respond to the second post around October 9.
• The third post will be around October 25/28.
• Students will respond to the third post around October 30.
• The fourth post will be around November 6.
• Students will respond to the fourth post around November 11.
• The fifth and final post will be worked on November 11-15.
• Students will respond to the final posts and complete their reflections by November 22.

School Evaluation Summary

This activity was tedious at times.  I was grateful that, despite my school and district ranking rather low in terms of technological maturity, at least a lot of their data can be found on the Internet.  It saved me from having to find people in the summer to answer my millions of questions!

I wasn't surprised by much of what I found.  I have been a student and now a teacher in this district for almost my entire life, and I'm pretty familiar with its strengths and weaknesses.  My husband also teaches in this district, and has some limited tech responsibilities in his school, so I was able to discuss my findings with him.  We agree that there are a lot of caring and highly-qualified teachers in our district who would do just about anything to help their students.  But we are definitely behind schedule when it comes to implementation of educational technology.  Resources are spread very thin, and the district has never formalized a comprehensive, proactive plan for technology.  At best, technology is briefly mentioned in strategic plans and budgets, often in an "exploratory" way, with language such as "analyze support for..." and "analyze need for...".  Therefore, we teachers are all scrambling to do what we can in our own classrooms, according to our own means and abilities.  There is a lot of variety in what we do (and what we CAN do) but in the end, my school ranked in the "Islands Stage".  I hope to someday (soon) look back on this evaluation and think "WOW! We've come a long way!"


Click here for the technological maturity benchmarks survey (spreadsheet format).

Click here for the evaluation summary (the spreadsheet information along with demographics and synthesis).

Technology Use Planning Overview

Technology use planning can be explained as having two parts:

     1. It is a document that maps out how we will get to our goals.
     2. It is "the actions, attitudes, and results" that carry out the process.

I borrowed heavily from Larry Anderson's definition in "Technology Planning: It's More Than Computers!", because I really liked his analogy to planning and going on a road trip.  Before we can have a successful trip, we need to identify our destination(s), points we will see along the way, the best route, the distance we can realistically travel, and available resources/infrastructure along the way.  Then we execute these plans when we take the trip, monitoring and adjusting in a flexible manner when necessary.  Anderson's explanation was very accessible.

The National Educational Technology Plan 2010, in this analogy, would be a tourist pamphlet with beautiful glossy pictures and tantalizing descriptions, featuring the sites that we want to visit.  We want to see engaged and empowered learning, we want to measure what matters, we want to prepare for effective connected teaching, we want to access and enable our infrastructure, and we want to redesign and transform our productivity.  But each school is starting from a unique location, so the routes and resources will vary widely, necessitating a personalized and thoughtful technology use plan for each individual school. 

When I first read the NETP, I couldn't help but think about my own school and the planning that needs to take place.  I was grateful that someone else had done the visionary goal-setting already, freeing me to think about details and execution.  I also think that the NETP does a good job of explaining the history and justification for each needed reform, which should help with buy-in on a local level. 

Just as we experience personal transformation through travel, the NETP seeks to transform our educational system through use of technology.  It is the "what" and "why" of our technology use plan.  The "how", "who", "when", and "where" are left up to the individual schools as they plan their own trips.  We will know that we are succeeding when we see increased college enrollment and decreased evidence of achievement gaps.

In reading what John See has to say about technology use planning, I understand why he cautions against long term plans.  He argues that technology is changing at an incredibly fast rate (just as true now as it was in 1992!) and that it is very difficult to predict what we will be able to do with technology two, three, four years down the road.  However, this message from See seems to slightly contradict his next one: "Effective technology plans focus on applications, not technology".  So after planning for the next year, split into phases, why not pencil in some longer-term goals?  Even if we don't know what the brands/models/programs/hardware will look like, we can document what we aim to do, nonetheless.  If new capabilities become available, we can always modify longer-term plans, but I am definitely someone who likes to see the big picture.  I have a hard time understanding the small picture without a bigger frame of reference.  I am sure that others feel the same way, and would appreciate an outline of where we are headed.  Especially in a school/district that has so much work to do, longer-range planning might help us prioritize and sequence the steps along the way.  Resources like the Horizon Report, which discuss emerging technologies, would be helpful when developing longer-range plans.  With expert advice and flexibility, I think we can plan for the short term as well as the less immediate future.

To further respond to See's remark that "effective technology plans focus on applications, not technology", I must say that our 501 class has been essential to my understanding of this principle.  Very rarely have we been asked to use a certain program.  Rather, we use technology to synthesize and present our learning.  The learning itself is delivered through technology and, again, is not restricted to a certain type of computer, browser, or program.  I imagine that some of my classmates are using tablets, some (myself included) have done certain things with smartphones, some are probably sitting in front of Windows-driven PC's, and others are using Apple/Mac systems.  In the end, it doesn't really matter.  I didn't understand this before, but after my experience in this class, I clearly see how technology creates and supports a personalized learning environment.  I am grateful for this very practical, hands-on experience.

I am a little nervous about my potential role in technology use planning at my school, because I have never engaged in such planning before.  The closest thing I've done in the past would probably be ordering a few programs/devices with my classroom budget.  Looking back, I didn't always have a good framework for understanding these purchases, because a couple of the things I've bought now sit and gather dust.  I look forward to learning more in the MET program so that I can focus on the applications of technology, rather than gimmicks in catalogs.

As Anderson and See both remind us, a technology use plan is about "more than computers"; it's about people.  A road trip isn't about the car ride or even the sites visited, it's about the people and their experience.  We must focus on experiences that transform lives for the better, that prepare us for the future, and that vision will guide and motivate us through the tedious stages of planning.

Digital Inequality

Wow!  There was a lot of reading this week!  I was gone on a backpacking trip the first few days, and then my husband and daughter fell ill, so it's been rather frantic around here.

Nonetheless, I found the reading to be very interesting.  As an undergrad, I took lots of classes that focused on inequalities in societies/communities around the world.  It's a particular interest of mine.  But the digital divide and digital inequality were newer concepts to me.  The readings linked for us all seemed to agree on the basics, which was reassuring.  This isn't some new-fangled concept; it has been studied for some time, and continues to grow in importance.  More and more, I'm seeing that access to technology is a human right.  When I first heard about the Google balloons a few months ago, I thought it seemed a little silly, to be honest.  What about clean water first?!?  But I have definitely come around, and see how technology is a component of education, and education changes people's lives.

I found VoiceStream very easy to use, and I'm working on my anxiety over recording my own voice.  It's like I tell my students: It gets easier with practice!  (Right?)

The multimedia principles helped focus my efforts, and I hope to apply that new-found-knowledge to the presentations I create for students.  I thought the "headline" concept was a good one; why have I never heard of this before now?

In my VoiceStream, I focused on the issue of infrastructure.  I specifically mention the recipients for each school-based recommendation that I make.  I plan to follow through once school resumes in the fall, and I anticipate some interesting conversations on the horizon.  I am not one to seek out leadership positions, but I am gathering my strength because I can see the importance of the National Education Technology Plan.  I do not feel that my school is well-positioned to implement the recommendations of the U.S. Department of Education, but not for a lack of support.  Funding and resources will probably be the biggest stumbling blocks, so I tried to keep that in mind while proposing solutions.   


Here's the link to my VoiceThread presentation: https://voicethread.com/share/4739626/

EDTECH Challenges

After reading the 2012 and 2013 Horizon Reports, I wanted to address the 2013 challenge that "K-12 must address the increased blending of formal and informal learning".  I couldn't agree more.  I have personally used the traditional lecture and test model for some time, although I try to spice it up with fun and useful activities between the lecture and test.  These activities could be drill-and-practice, conversational, reading/writing, listening, kinesthetic, collaborative, etc.  Very rarely, however, do I incorporate informal or project-based learning, and (as a result?) I struggle to challenge the upper end of my class with higher-level thinking skills. 

Technology is a huge component of my lessons, but it's almost always teacher-centered, and is used to SHOW students something.  Rarely do my students get a chance to DO something with technology.  To be fair, my school isn't really set up for this, either!  A few years ago (or at least a few decades ago!) I would have considered myself a creative and effective teacher.  But something has been gnawing on me, telling me that I can do better for myself and for my students.

The material I've read for this MET program so far has struck a chord with me.  I feel like I'm unearthing the answer to my career's missing link.  I pride myself on being a lifelong learner, and am constantly praising the Internet for being the amazing resource it is.  "What did we ever do before the Internet?!?" I say.  "What did I ever do before my iPhone?!?"  Through the miracle of technology and interconnectedness, I have been able to teach myself how to knit, how to play the ukulele, I keep up on current events, I became semi-proficient in Italian (then forgot it all...), I plan vacations, research topics that interest me, practice my Spanish, stay in touch with people half a world away... the list goes on and on!

So if this is the way that I enjoy learning, why not pass that opportunity along to my students?  What could be more "real world"?

A-ha!

With new tools available and a new type of student (that expects to use these tools!), teachers can't ignore the power of educational technology any longer.  We need to integrate informal learning so that students learn how to learn.  They have their whole lives ahead of them, and technology is only going to become more powerful and ever-present.  Therefore, I believe we have a responsibility to empower them in navigating this world!

I don't feel that my school has embraced the possibilities AT ALL.  If there are teachers at my school using technology and informal learning in their classes, then I don't know anything about it.  We have a computer lab (which is always full; you must reserve it weeks in advance if you want a turn) that is mostly used for research.  I think a couple core teachers take their students down for practice tests that supposedly prepare them for one of the many high-stakes standardized tests.  At any rate, there are about 60 computers in the lab (maybe 50 that work on any given day) and nearly 800 students.  Most of my students tell me it's difficult to get on a computer outside of school, so I rarely ask them to do anything computer-based.  (I did when I first got to the school, and it was an epic failure.)

Rather than sitting around and waiting for funding to catch up, I am excited to see so much positive data on the success of "Bring Your Own Device" policies, or BYOD.  I created the video for this week's assignment with BYOD in mind.  If I could convince my administration to allow me to pilot this, I could begin integrating much more technology and informal learning into my classes.  I could start this very fall!  That prospect is extremely exciting, and I've become a little obsessed the last couple days over what I could have my students do on smartphones and other mobile devices.  I'd say the sky's the limit!

In closing, I would say that BYOD isn't an endpoint in my action plan to incorporate more emerging technology.  But I am a realist and I know that my school isn't likely to change overnight.  There are major money and space restrictions working against us.  As such, BYOD seems like a logical first step towards a more blended and modern classroom.  Now just wish me luck in getting permission!  ;-)