Teaching with Technology

           Standard 4: Visionary Leadership requires students to continuously improve their professional practice and model lifelong learning, and exhibit leadership qualities.  This is probably the easiest of the standards for me because I am naturally a reflective person.  I am energized by new technologies and the impact they have on my students.  I am always looking for new tools and sharing things that work with my colleagues.  I have always been one of the teachers that others seek out when they have a question about technology.  The main difference in my leadership now is in the scale of my sharing.  In the past, my technology expertise would extend to my department and a few others that had classrooms nearby.  This graduate program has given me the confidence to share what I have learned about technology to a bigger audience.  I have been asked to provide trainings to my school staff and at conferences. 

           To illustrate visionary leadership, I gave a presentation at the Utah Association of Career and Technical Education (UACTE) on February 7th, 2015.   The abstract for my presentation is provided below.

Improving Student Engagement and Understanding with Nearpod

Nearpod is a website that allows you to embed interactive activities into the PowerPoint presentations you already have set up for your classes. It makes the process of note-taking more enjoyable for students. The activities in Nearpod immediately show you what students understand and what they need more help on. Nearpod works on a variety of devices so students can use their own device if your classroom does not have iPads or computers to use during lessons.

           I have tried a variety of technology tools in the last few years but Nearpod remains one of the tools that I really feel may create a dramatic change in the way students learn.  Throughout this program, I have had discussions with my classmates about reducing lecture and designing instruction so that students can better retain information.  In CI 533: Educational Psychology of Learning, Cognition, and Memory, we discussed how lecture time should be limited and students should be allowed time to think.   Bruning, Schraw, & Norby (2011) explain how using imagery can be an important part of encoding information.  Nearpod helps these to happen seamlessly in the classroom.

           Nearpod allows teachers to import their PowerPoint slide and interject activities like drawing, website exploration, open ended questions, surveys, and matching activities between slides.  Each student views the slides on their own device at the pace regulated by the instructor.  This is only the beginning of the possibilities with Nearpod.  Jerry Blumengarten (n.d.) said it best with his coined phrase, “Technology gives even the quietest student a voice”.   After an activity, the teacher can then instantly see the responses and gauge understanding for every student in the class.  With these activities built between content slides, it ensures that students have time to process the information from the slide, develop an answer, and then respond.  Bruning et al (2011) points out that “the opportunity for individual students to participate always will be limited by group size” and “some students are reluctant to take part in a full-class setting because of perceived lack of knowledge or shyness” (pg. 212).  This is not the case when using Nearpod.  I can share correct or incorrect answers anonymously with all of the screens in the room and discuss what makes them correct or incorrect without embarrassing the student who submitted the answer.

           It was easy to show my excitement for this tool and get other educators excited about using it when informally sharing with my coworkers or presenting at a conference.  I used Nearpod to survey my students’ on their opinions of Nearpod.  I then generated a Nearpod report of their responses and shared the results with the educators in the session.  This allowed the educators to see that my students shared in my enthusiasm as well as what the Nearpod generated reports look like.  

The most difficult part of this presentation was stepping away from all that I know about Nearpod and thinking about what it was like the first time I made it.  What questions did I have?  Nearpod is so easy for me now because I have done it so many times that I had to remind myself to explain every step and slow down.  In CI 503: Designing Effective Learning Environments, we completed an activity where we had to evaluate directions and where we had to evaluate a recipe on a website.  These activities taught me that it really helps to try to forget what you know and think of exactly how to clearly describe what needs to happen.  I chose to make my handout fairly brief and straightforward because I was going to be there to demonstrate and explain each step.  The handout was given to educators at the beginning of the sessions.  I used piktochart.com to create it so that it was more visually appealing.  The handout had pictures of each of the steps for making a Nearpod Presentation.  The purpose of this handout was to provide prompts to someone if they go to make a presentation at home and forget some of the steps that were demonstrated in the session.  The handout would have had to be more detailed if it was a standalone guide.

           Nearpod is a powerful tool that will continue to be used throughout my district.  The upgraded version was just purchased for all teachers in my district so I have been able to share my expertise on this tool more lately.  My session was one hour long and I timed it perfectly with allowing teachers to first view the teacher screen while interacting with Nearpod as students.  I then walked them through the process of creating a Nearpod presentation and adding activities.  I know when I have attended trainings, I am much more likely to use it immediately if I have the opportunity to get started with the tool in the training and ask questions as they come up.  I would have liked to have time to allow the teachers in my session to make their own presentation during the session which I was available to help.  One other change I would make would be to include a link to my website on the handout.  The link could bring them to a video tutorial of the steps in case they forgot what I demonstrated in the session.  This summer, I will be presenting a Nearpod presentation at the Utah Family and Consumer Sciences Conference on June 17-18th.   In response to feedback from my session at the UACTE conference, the presentation will be an hour and forty minutes so attendees with have the opportunity to build their own presentation while I am there to offer guidance.  I have submitted a proposal to present on student made videos at this conference.  

           I also serve in a leadership capacity with technology as a member of our school technology committee.  I participated in the Canvas challenge at my school and was awarded the Black Diamond level.  I am currently working towards the top recognition level, Double Black Diamond.  I attend any conferences that are nearby.  Last year, I attended the Utah Coalition for Educational Technology (UCET) on April 3rd and 4th in Murray, Utah.  The majority of attendees at this conference were middle and secondary teachers and educational technology specialists.   The annual Utah Family and Consumer Sciences Conference was held in Provo, Utah on June 18-19th.  This conference focuses on the needs of Family and Consumer Sciences (FACS) teachers and has numerous sessions on how to incorporate technology into the FACS classroom.  Besides just attending, I make a commitment to implement the things I learn in my classroom and share them with others online and with my colleagues.  In addition to these conferences, I would like to attend InstructureCon and Flippin’ Utah this year.  I keep up with the latest technology trends by following colleagues on twitter and reading blog posts.    

            To be successful in this field, you must have a passion for learning new things and that comes naturally to me.  Technology in education is evolving daily and requires the teacher’s willingness to try new things to be effective educators.  As John Dewey (1944) once said, “If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we are robbing our students of tomorrow” (p.167).