Bill+Henkle

Bill Henkle

Day 1 Reflection Questions

1. List the name of your favorite Web 2.0 tool from today's class. Describe why you liked the tool and how you would use it in your class.

While I saw significant value in all of the tools presented, I was particularly impressed with todaysmeet.com. It's a relatively simple application, but strikes me as something that would be exceptionally useful in the classroom, especially with regard to having students share their points of view. I took a SMART Response class earlier this summer and it seems as if a lot of things you might care to do with such a system could be much more easily implemented with todaysmeet. As for my own use as WFBHS principal, todaysmeet would likely be beneficial to the many meetings I conduct including our building wide and leadership team meetings that both occur on a monthly basis. It would be a great way for me to know what's really on my teachers' minds, and also afford me to gain the perspective of each teacher in the group when we are contemplating particular issues or trying to decide on new directions in which we may care to move as a school.

Great! I am so glad that you can see the possibilities for TodaysMeet! I think it can be a very powerful tool in meetings and in the classroom!

2. Regarding technology in your classroom, school and/or district, do you feel like you are keeping up?

I feel like I'm in a much better position now than I was at the end of this past school year thanks to now eight days of WEI tech workshops. By no means have I reached any sort of expert status, but I have become relatively proficient with Google Apps and SMART Notes/Response, and I'm much more knowledgeable with the broad array of other tech tools available to today's educators.

Is it important?

Without a doubt. We have an obligation to provide our students with the best of learning experiences, and the tech tools available certainly have the potential to improve and enhance those experiences. A leading challenge is to decide which of these myriad tools might best serve our students, and as the instructional leader of our school, I have to have a good sense of what these tools are and what they can do in order to help our faculty determine the tech integration steps that may best serve our students' learning needs. I'm sure that your staff will appreciate the knowledge that you've acquired regarding the technology tools!

What do you think your students are thinking about technology at home/at school? What are your thoughts?

I think our students are natively immersed in the use of the technology that is readily available to the vast majority of them, but don't necessarily see how this technology could better leverage their learning. Consequently, it's on us as the education professionals to discover and implement the tools that our students are surely capable of learning how to use that will enable them to better achieve the learning targets across our entire curriculum. Agreed! It really is important that we, as educators, assist students to see the technology as more than entertainment and, additionally, a tool for learning!

3. Do you have any questions about anything we did today? Please list them and/or bring them up in class.

Just one that I think you've answered it through the todaysmeet input you gathered: How does a listserve compare to a blog, forum, and/or chatroom?

What do you want to be sure to learn during the rest of the course?

Simply what you have planned. I was very pleased with yesterday's experience and felt like it really advanced my tech tool understanding and knowledge base and am looking forward to more of the same today!

Day 2 Reflection Question

1. After taking this class, please reflect on what you, as the teacher, need to do to make sure that you and your students can successfully use the tools that you have chosen to incorporate into your class. Think about hardware, software, network, student skill set, teacher skill set, time, etc.

Not being a teacher, but rather the principal of my school, I need to make sure our teachers have access to end user hardware supported by a sufficiently robust network infrastructure to ensure whatever tech tools they may care to use with their students work as intended. Moreover, I need to provide frequent opportunities for tech tool learning, such as demonstrating a featured tech tool at each of our building wide team meetings, and encourage teachers to similarly share with one another and try using new tools during their department meeting and collaboration time. This professional development will be greatly facilitated if every teacher has his/her own portable internet accessible device. In addition, teachers may be further motivated to learn more about these tech tools if I can provide specific recommendations for improvement in connection with my supervision and evaluation of their instructional practice. (I'll have a lot more recommendations to make now that I've been through this workshop!) Wow!! Your staff is extremely fortunate that they have a principal like yourself! I hope they appreciate your efforts to assist them with the technology integration in their classrooms!

Access to the seemingly endless array of web 2.0 tools must be assured but also appropriately limited for students and staff alike, which will require the support of our district IT staff, and mutual agreement about what sites should and should not be student accessible. If there are costs associated with desired tech resources, necessary funding needs to be secured via department, LMC, school and/or district level budgets. If this funding is insufficient, then our ed foundation and/or parent support groups may be able to provide the dollars needed. Cost factors may be mitigated by allowing students to use their own tech devices, and we have set the stage for officially moving to BYOD this upcoming school year so this should help. We need to be sure, however, that no student is disadvantaged for lack of access to internet accessible devices, and we have just invested in a stock of Chrome books to this essential end.

This concludes my reflection on what I have found to be a very worthwhile two days of tech tool learning. Thanks, Chris, for the significant role you played in this desirable experience!!

P.S. If you haven't already read my Day 2 reflection, I thought of a couple more things I could do to encourage our faculty to make greater use of the tech tools at their disposal for the benefit of our students' learning: (1) Encourage teachers to seek out and participate in instructional tech professional development opportunities both within and outside of our district, such as those offered through WEI, and (2) model the use of these tech tools as practical and appropriate such as using todaysmeet in conjunction with our building wide team meetings.

You really have some great ideas! Good luck for a great school year! Chris