New Trier Curricular Technology

Mixing things up at NECC, I decided to attend the presentation of two research papers regarding technology integration. Although the schools described below differ significantly from New Trier (eg., mandating attendance), I still wonder what lessons our institution can take from these successful programs?

Evaluating a K-12 Technology Integration program: IMPACTing Students and Teachers
The IMPACT model includes tech integration, professional development, and "differentiated support" for teachers.

• Professional development had to be exciting, dynamic, "differentiated", and not structured as a "sit-n-get". It also needed to be up front, meaning that it would be provided during the summer. This North Carolina school district trained 215 during the summer.
  
• Vanguard Team: a reliance on teacher-leaders who could help out during the regular school year
• "Naysayers" buy-in: these teachers, often respected but reluctant to use technology, were given advance training so that they could legitimize the program for their respective departments.
• Strong Leadership: all administrators attended a 3-day workshop on how to lead people in a movement for change
• Clear expectations: the technology in the classroom WILL be used, even if it was for 5 minutes a day in order to build confidence.
• A conversation between teachers and administrators regarding what student engagement looks like?
  

The Effectiveness of Technology Integration Professional Development: A Meta-Analysis

Lawless and Pelligrino (2007) reviewed the literature on how effective technology staff development has been, and this paper focused on doing a meta-analysis of these studies. Unfortunately, the number of studies studied ended up at 10 total. And the presenter had little to share in terms of a definitive conclusion. A bit of a waste of time, though I learned what "effect size" means for statisticians.

---

While attending NECC, it's easy to be overwhelmed by all of the vendors trying to sell you their latest wares. Last night, I wandered aimlessly through the din of this corporate carnival.

That's what so refreshing about the World Digital Library (WDL), relatively new site, sponsored by both the Library of Congress and UNESCO, and various private contributors. The WDL is a collection of primary sources, curated by professional scholars and translated into six languages (Arabic, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese), which might be perfect for the cultural units of foreign language teachers. You can browse these items by place, time, topic, type of item (books, journals, manuscripts, maps, motion pictures, photos, sounds), or hosting institution.

Though currently there are no prepackaged teacher resources as you might see at the Library of Congress, the website curators instead want to establish a social network for educators to create and share lesson plans across the globe. Lastly, all of the resources are freely downloadable in high resolution formats to allow for closer analysis.

Related articles by Zemanta

• World Digital Library to launch (guardian.co.uk)
• UN puts global treasures online (news.bbc.co.uk)

Image via Wikipedia

Malcolm Gladwell, author of such books as The Tipping Point, Blink, and, most recently, Outliers, gave the keynote speech at the opening of NECC (National Education Computing Conference). I always enjoy these speakers because they don't tout the latest tools we all hear so much about already.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Book Review: Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (basilandspice.com)
• Spotlight (brilliantmagazine.com)