Blog 6: Technology Training

At our school, I would say that our use of technology is pretty basic. We all use our Interwrite boards and know how to use Easiteach or Interwrite to write or show things on the board. Most of us know the basics of our new email that has one drive on it. As for much more than that, most of us don’t know how to use a lot of technology in our classrooms. We just haven’t been taught how to. This year we have a new member to our technology department who has come in and helped us with one drive and finding resources on our semi new math series and our new reading series. Most of these meetings have been during our PLC time and they were more exploring or showing one or two things that you can do within the series. We only had 2 or 3 meetings on this at the beginning of the year. Personally, it’s not enough time to help someone gain a better understanding or become comfortable using the specific technology. 

I think that good ways to support productive technology staff development is to first, according to our ISTE standards, conduct a needs assessment by teachers. You need to find out what teachers want more information or help on using. For me personally, I get shown 4 or 5 new things and I start getting overwhelmed and confused. I don’t have time to master things before I’m shown another thing. I just end up not using the new things that I’m shown. I would do better to focus on one particular thing and become comfortable using it before being shown something new. 

I think that best way as a librarian that I could provide technology development to my teachers is to collaborate with them by listening to their concerns and needs. That way I can ask questions and gather information to best fit their needs. I could show them how to use, according to ISTE standards, technology to asses student learning, help with differentiating (big need and concern among fellow teachers), and provide relevant learning for all students. There is so much technology out there but teachers don’t know how to access it. I could provide a great wealth of information to them and help them find the resources that they need. I could show them how technology can better assist them in the classroom and make their jobs a lot easier.

Blog 6: Technology training

In my school setting, there are several types of professional developments that pertain to improving academic excellence. The professional development occurs during the school term where days have been set aside for professional learning. Usually the learning is led by the academic coaches.  Unfortunately, there is no professional development set aside for technology training. The media specialist says there is some technology available that is not being used because of the lack of training. Some training has been done with peer teachers who have knowledge of different technology. Most of the technology implementation is done by the Central Office technology staff which rarely visits the school for implementation. Technology development would be a great asset for the staff, since over half are millennia’s teachers who would enjoy technology assisted instruction.

We as present or future media specialists must convince the principal or district of how important implementation of technology is in achieving the ISTE standards to help improve academic excellence for 21^st century learners. We must assume the role as coaches. We must learn how to use the technology efficiently and transform the learning to our colleagues.

By becoming a professional and coach in this field, I would have the vision on how to lead the faculty in becoming technology literate to support student learning. This can be done by learning about the different topics of technology in education by attending professional development programs. Additionally, I would research and gather data about the digital age learner’s expectations and different tools for implementation that are available for learning, become aware of the safety issues and how to be pro active to obtain safety when in use, share this experience by teaching, demonstrating, collaborating, implementing, and coaching teachers to adopt and use in the classroom. I would have a program available so that teachers can express their technology needs for student learning and find information to meet them, develop an evaluation tool to see how the implementations are working in the classroom setting and make adjustments as needed to improve. My main focus is to encourage principal and district to set aside days for ISTE standards professional learning for teachers. I would be an advocate in the school and community on how technology can lead to better preparing 21^st century learners in job performance. Lastly, I would always be open to ideas to help move the staff and students to the next level of success in using technology for educational purposes.

References:

ISTE/Coaching White Paper. (2011, January 1). Retrieved February 24, 2015, from https://www.iste.org/resources/product?ID=2157

ISTE Standards Coaches. (n.d.). Retrieved February 24, 2015, from http://www.iste.org/docs/pdfs/20-14_ISTE_Standards-C_PDF.pdf

Copyright and Fair Use

With the installation of Common Core many teachers have now had to change the way they have been teaching and what they have included in their lesson plans in the past.  Recently, I have seen teachers making copies of entire chapters of workbooks and using them for classwork or homework for the students.  I do realize that this is much easier than coming up with the information themselves however it is copyright infringement.  So it sounds like our school needs to ramp up their efforts to educate the staff on copyright laws and Fair Use.

While copyright laws can be confusing and daunting, educators cannot just rely on “rules of thumb” to make their decisions on what to include in their lesson plans, they do need to know the regulations.  For instance, they can make multiple copies of parts of documents for their classes (one per student); however they should not make copies of whole workbooks.  When they make copies they must include the citation (copyright information) for the work.  As long as the staff knows the rules they can make more educated decisions and one way to do this is get it in their faces, but do it nicely.  So with this assignment I started thinking that it would be nice to have a single informational poster that could be posted at every copy machine, in the media center and in all computer labs.  I was able to find a couple that I really liked and thought could be used in our school; both of which are legally reproducible.  The one for staff is pictured below along with the link; the link that is referenced on the poster no longer works.  There is also a poster that can be used for students at this link http://www.kleinisd.net/studentnet/index_files/Copyright%20and%20Fair%20Use%20for%20Students.pdf. 

Picture from http://edudemic.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/teachers-copyright.jpg

To remind our teachers at our school about copyright laws one of our LMS’s sends out an email to the staff during pre-planning which goes over copyright laws.  There is no other discussion about it.  Our school district references copyright laws in their Board Policies and Rules which is short and not very descriptive, but it is part of the Media Policy.   

“Copyright Laws:

a. Adherence to fair use guidelines and other relevant copyright stipulations shall be assured. In no instance shall library media materials and/or equipment be used in such a manner as to violate Board Policy, District Administrative Rules or state and federal law.

b. The library media specialist shall be responsible for ensuring the availability of copyright information, dealing with copyright and clearance questions (Administrative Rule GBT-R [Professional Publishing] and Administrative Rule IFBG-R [Internet Acceptable Use]). Provisions for copyright clearance are outlined on Form IFBG-2 (Permission to Use a Third Party Work Copyright Permission Request)”. (Cobb County, 2014)

I think educating our staff and students could be greatly enhanced.  When I become a LMS I will try to be a part of our pre-planning meetings and explain, in person, our copyright policy.  I also want to put together videos, one for staff and one for students, to be performed by our video broadcast students explaining key points of Fair Use.  These can be shown during pre-planning for staff and during the first week of school for students.  Another website that I found interesting was http://beckercopyright.com/.  This site had so much information, including PowerPoint presentations you could use for professional development and a section with Q & A.

Becker, Gary H. (2015). Retrieved from http://beckercopyright.com/

Cobb County School District. (2012). District administrative rule IFBC-R: Media programs.  Retrieved from http://www.cobbk12.org/centraloffice/adminrules/I/IFBC-R.pdf.

KISD Media and Library Service Department.  (n.d.).  Copyright and Fair Use for students. Retrieved from http://www.kleinisd.net/studentnet/index_files/Copyright%20and%20Fair%20Use%20for%20Students.pdf

Media Education Lab University of Rhode Island. (2012). Intro video: Code of best practices in fair use for media literacy education.  Retrieved from http://mediaeducationlab.com/intro-video-code-best-practices-fair-use-media-literacy-education

University of Maryland University College. (2011). Copyright and fiar use in the UMUC online or face-to-face classroom.  Retrieved from http://www.umuc.edu/library/libhow/copyright.cfm#fairuse_notincluded

Video distribution systems, Georgia Public Broadcasting education resources, school TV news

Blog 4 Original Post (team 4) Melissa Gooch

Using the site GPB I was able to explore the educational resources that are available, I wasn’t aware that there was a professional development section available. The weekly planner that is available for use is really handy, and list out for a week’s worth of Georgia History happenings, you can also navigate to last week and the next week from this page. This resource tool would make a great resource for lesson planning needs.   

When viewing particularly the GPB Digital Education area, there are many resources available here as well, Common Core, DEN Network, Discovery Education, GPB Education Newsletter, GPB Family Blog, Passion for Learning, PBS Learning Media, PBS TeacherLine Southeast, Southern Education Desk, and the Ignite Show. The PBS Learning Media does require a login, but seems to hold a wealth of resources, with instant access to numerous classroom standard-aligned content (videos, games, audio clips, lesson plans and more!). From this portal you have the ability to search, save and share content. And this resource is available FREE to educators!

I am not familiar with the Discovery Education’s streaming videos, but I looked into them from the site. Looks like the discovery education offers professional development as well as another standards-aligned content of digital library media for educators available via an online portal.  I was able to click around without having to sign up or provide any log in credentials. I really liked this post on Lively Lessons: http://blog.discoveryeducation.com/blog/2015/02/22/lively-lessons-lyrical-genius/

I sent out four personal email messages to different school media specialist, below I have pasted the answers to the questions and answer session with one person that responded to my request. If I receive any other feedback, I will post it out in a reply to my original post, that way we have more than one school and level of answers on video distribution systems and Georgia Public Broadcasting resources.

Does your school have one (Video distribution system, some schools call this the closed circuit cable system), and is it working? 

Yes. We have a closed circuit cable system that was installed when the school was built 15 years ago. Unfortunately, as new classrooms have been added, the original system doesn't have a strong enough signal to reach 100% of classrooms clearly. I've had several work repairs done to try to amp up the system, but the signal is still kind of blurry in some wings. Still negotiating on this.

What gets sent out over the video distribution system? School news? Cable and/or broadcast programs? Channel One? 

We do school news in the morning. It's a pretty quick newscast since our school doesn't have very much time in the morning. The kids go over announcements, sports, and future activities. I've begun to have a couple "sports anchors" pre-film interviews, and we've done sports "specials" before announcements. The kids have enjoyed that. :)

What else is it used for? 

We also use distribution for movies for entire grade levels, multiple classrooms, and/or whole school reward videos. We subscribe to movlic.com licensing so that we can show certain movie studios for entertainment.

Do teachers have any input or control into the distribution system and if so what (for instance, some video distribution systems let teachers control what is sent over the distribution system through the number pad of their telephone!). 

I wish our system was this sophisticated! It may be time for an overhaul, but funding is *extremely* limited. As of now, teachers just make requests, and we play whatever they need within our license and fair use.

Does your school use a digital system, transmitting TV content over the data network? 

No. I've been interested in getting this set up though...it would be SO much easier (if you are collecting info from other schools, I'd love to know what other schools around are using)! 

How does your school and district use Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB) Resources? 

Teachers search and use GPB for various curriculum needs. GA Studies, for example, uses tons of different GA resources.

Have any of you ever used this resource for school movies movlic.com? What about using a digital system to transmit TV content via your network? Do any school systems currently utilize this? Since the SLMS was so gracious to allow me her time for questions, I’d love to be able to provide her some feedback from other professionals out there.

Resources

DEN Blog Network. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://blog.discoveryeducation.com/

Education Help | Georgia Public Broadcasting. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.gpb.org/education

Pals/Jefferson City Schools, L. Interview by M. Gooch/Student.


----------------------------Updates received from additional feedback: 

Does your school have one (Video distribution system, some schools call this the closed circuit cable system), and is it working?  Yes it does work, we use it every day for our newscast but we hardly ever use it to show videos.

What gets sent out over the video distribution system? School news? Cable and/or broadcast programs? Channel One? School news is mostly the only thing we show on our closed circuit.

What else is it used for?  Nothing

Do teachers have any input or control into the distribution system and if so what (for instance, some video distribution systems let teachers control what is sent over the distribution system through the number pad of their telephone!). No teacher control.  However we are mostly using mediacast to show videos that go along with content.

Does your school use a digital system, transmitting TV content over the data network? MediaCast

How does your school and district use Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB) Resources? We use discovery education through GPB a lot.

-------------------------------

Does your school have one (Video distribution system, some schools call this the closed circuit cable system), and is it working? yes

What gets sent out over the video distribution system? School news? Cable and/or broadcast programs? Channel One? DVD movies, VHS movies, Morning news

What else is it used for? nothing 

Do teachers have any input or control into the distribution system and if so what (for instance, some video distribution systems let teachers control what is sent over the distribution system through the number pad of their telephone!). no. They can request a video to be shown but they have to fill out a form and have it signed by an admin.

Does your school use a digital system, transmitting TV content over the data network? no

How does your school and district use Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB) Resources? We don't have a satellite anymore.

  

References

Barber/Jackson County School System, M. Interview by M. Gooch/Student.

Lancaster/Jackson County School System, C. Interview by M. Gooch/Student.

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