The Journey to Becoming 21st Century Educators (Part 4 of 4): Giving Them What They Need

{by Gail Tolbert}

This is my last of four blogs about many of my friends and connections who are educators, educators at different stages in their career, educators wanting to become 21st Century Educators (Read the first one here) This is my 4th and final blog about my friends’ journeys’ to become 21st Century Educators.

As I listen to their different stories, I see a commonality, a dream, a need, a tool……and it makes me think how we are changing to meet the needs of the 21st Century Learner and how we need to change to meet the needs of the 21st Century Educator too. A great philosopher said that if we are teaching today the same way we taught yesterday, then we are not preparing our students for tomorrow. I stretch this thought to our educators…if we are giving our teachers the same tools today that they used yesterday; then we are not providing them the tools they need for tomorrow.

The good news is that we do not need to create these tools; these tools have been developed, are ready for use and can be accessible to teachers. These web based systems are changing the way we gather information and improving the way we manage our work and providing us with real time, up to date information. I know this as a fact because I have seen them, I have used them and I have seen the amazing results that they offer.

Let me be specific, there are tools to help Christy that will allow her to easily and quickly create and manage her own web site including all the social networking tools. She can easily use advanced editing and design and add class pictures, videos, lesson plans, etc. She can communicate with parents and students; assign homework, add class notes and announcements, a class calendar and links to any resources. Lindsay no longer needs to dream; there are curriculum management tools and the most advanced ones provide an intuitive and easy to use way for teachers to have access to edit, update, collaborate, and share the work they do with curriculum on a daily basis. Some districts think they have all these capabilities…when all they really have are some static documents on their website. These static tools are no longer effective in the ever changing educational environment. Curriculum management means aligning to state standards, mapping and pacing guides, scope and sequence, integration of standards right into lessons, providing teachers with a guide to what, when, and how to teach lessons and give assessments so students achieve their maximum potential. Units and lessons become living documents with reports and search capabilities. District and school administrators use unit map reports and curriculum reports to identify gaps or overlaps in curriculum, review units aligned to state standards, review resources for units and obtain user activity information.

Dawn needs access to an on line testing and assessment tool. She can create her assessments and test questions, access questions from a question bank, schedule the test, and have real time access to all the results by class, content, teacher, student, test or question item. This online testing tool can gather test results, align the test and question to state standards and have an incredible amount of information to improve instructional strategies for her class and each student. To expand on this data, Susan can use an analytical tool that “ slices and dices” student information.Need student data from a certain test, year, class, or individual? No problem, she would have it. She can aggregate the data or look at the data from many attributes. She too can have real time access to student performance data. This analytical tool can not only gather student test results, but can store data and create comprehensive reports with custom dashboards for every school in the district.

Today’ s educators are just like today’ s learners; they need accessible technology especially for analyzing and managing what they do in the classroom. They need this revolutionary technology
for their 21st Century journeys.

The Journey to Becoming 21st Century Educators (Part 3 of 4): Dawn and Susan

{by Gail Tolbert}

This is my third of four blogs about many of my friends and connections who are educators, educators at different stages in their career, educators wanting to become 21st Century Educators (Read the first one here)

Dawn has been teaching for 25 years. She is a seasoned teacher and grade-level chair for her building. She mentors new teachers and works with student teachers. Dawn is a good role model and always learns and keeps current in her profession. Dawn has prepared and given many tests and assessments during her tenure. She has spent many hours creating, editing, updating and scoring tests. She would love to have a tool with which she can store, manage, access and edit her test questions. She wants to create her own test bank. Dawn and her team review lots of documentation and test score results and question the issue of accountability. They wonder if they are teaching and testing on all the state standards. They wonder if they are missing any standards or if they are over teaching and spending too much time on any standards.

They dream about all the information to which they would love to have access about the student results. These dreams include not only student scores and percentages but information about outcomes aligned to the standards and outcomes over time. She wants current, real time information to improve classroom instruction and her instructional strategies for the class and for each of her students.

Susan is a curriculum coach for an elementary school. She meets with and mentors all grade levels on instructional strategies. She knows and talks with Dawn even though they teach in different states. She, too, wants an assessment tool about which Dawn talks. In her building, the discussion on testing and assessments then lead to the bigger picture of student performance data for the school and district. Susan needs to be able to track student progress from kindergarten through 5th grade and then pass that data on to the middle school. She needs one tool with which she can look at the school, the class, the teacher or one child. She needs to track not only how students are performing, but how they are performing on each of the state standards. Parts of her responsibilities include the improvement of student performance through the improvement of teaching strategies. She needs access to detailed, ongoing, current assessment data to give her that information.

The Journey to Becoming 21st Century Educators (Part 2 of 4): Lindsay

{by Gail Tolbert}

This is my second of 4 blogs about many of my friends and connections who are educators, educators at different stages in their career, educators wanting to become 21st Century Educators (Read the first one here). Since I, too, have been a teacher and a principal, they share their stories, their success and their trials with me. As a past educator, I can relate to these stories and have lived similar things. I cherish their journeys and new learning, and hold these educators in high regard. I appreciate and respect that every day they enter their classrooms to educate and teach our children and give 100% of themselves in the process. I want to share some of their stories, their thoughts and lessons and some solutions to their questions with you. Here's Lindsay:

Lindsay has been an elementary teacher for four years. She, too, grew up with technology and is looking for more ways to incorporate technology in managing her work, especially within the curriculum she teaches. Lindsay has learned that having a viable and accessible curriculum is of utmost importance to educators and she has been thinking about her “viable and accessible” district curriculum; it is stored in binders in the principal’s office and the district’s G drive. She can access the curriculum at work through the district network but the curriculum is old and outdated and it is not easy to search or find the information for which she is looking. She has really given up on this useless tool and does not have access to the current district curriculum as she prepares her units and daily lessons.

Lindsay is also on the curriculum writing committee for her grade level. She says the meetings are miserable because there is no process or tools for updating, editing, rewriting and managing the curriculum. Lindsay says the team has discussed how nice it would be to have a curriculum management system. Teachers could edit, update, share and collaborate with others. In addition, they could align their units and their lesson plans to the state standard and the new common core standards and have reporting capabilities about the curriculum and standards. She says they do have a document that is used as a pacing guide; but every time they make a change, they must remember to go in and update that pacing guide, distribute it, and then hope the new version is used. These tasks are all so laborious it is hard to keep up with these committee tasks as well as everything she needs to do for her classroom.

The Journey to Becoming 21st Century Educators (Part 1 of 4)

{by Gail Tolbert}

This is my first of 4 blogs about many of my friends and connections who are educators, educators at different stages in their career, educators wanting to become 21st Century Educators. Since I, too, have been a teacher and a principal, they share their stories, their success and their trials with me. As a past educator, I can relate to these stories and have lived similar things. I cherish their journeys and new learning, and hold these educators in high regard. I appreciate and respect that every day they enter their classrooms to educate and teach our children and give 100% of themselves in the process. I want to share some of their stories, their thoughts and lessons and some solutions to their questions with you. Here is the first story about Christy:

Christy is a teacher in training; she is in college studying to be an elementary teacher. Christy grew up with the web, phone, games, Twitter, YouTube, texting and all the other technology. She attends a large, progressive University in the Midwest and is in the midst of her education internships in local schools. She is preparing for real-world teaching. Christy has had one class on educational technology in which she learned about NETS-T and NETS-S. She also learned about Smart Boards and their benefits to teachers and students.

Since Christy is so tech savvy, she has been thinking about how she can communicate with students, peers and parents over the web. She wants to express herself, her style, and her brand using all the tools with which she is comfortable. Anytime she needs information, she goes directly to the web; so she wants the web to be her primary source of disseminating communication and information. She wants to quickly add weekly notes, class newsletters, lunch menus, spelling words, homework assignments, grading rubrics and class schedules. She is concerned about how she will accomplish these tasks easily and in a short period of time. She is wondering if there is a place or tool that will help her and give her access to blogs, Twitter, YouTube, etc. Christy has not yet learned about the leading edge content management tools that will enable her to reach this technology goal.