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Staff presentation
at Gulf English School.
Artifacts
created November 2001.
Reflection
written November 2001.
Artifacts
Reflection: Integrating
Technology and the Internet
Description
of the technology used and its application within the educational
situation
The
aim of my project was to examine the use of telecommunications as
an educational tool in the classroom. To do this I prepared material
for a workshop with the secondary staff at the Gulf English School
in Kuwait, November 2001.
I wanted to bring together a number of ideas in different areas
that I had been exploring and starting to use in my classes and
present them to the other staff at a professional development day.
Description
of technology application
The professional development session was conducted in two parts.
The first part was a presentation given about technology integration.
The second part was designed as a hands-on session.
Part 1: Strategies
and resources demonstrated
Using
a prepared PowerPoint presentation I outlined some basic ideas as
to what technology integration is and what it can involve in conjunction
with the use of the Internet. I stressed the use of technology as
a tool for communication and the need to focus on pedagogy first.
Being such a large topic I deliberately tried to keep the concepts
manageable and not alienating for any staff member. My intention
was to introduce three ideas, along with examples and resources,
as good examples and places to start to use technology in the curriculum.
The three ideas were: Web Quests, Lesson Plans and Rubrics.
The technology used for the presentation involved:
• An Internet enabled, networked computer laboratory for staff
to investigate material.
• PowerPoint software and datashow for the initial PPT presentation.
• Internet Explorer web browser to view chosen websites.
Given the speed
of the Internet at GES, which can be very slow, I was concerned
about wasting time waiting for sites to download. Therefore I decided
to prepare a mostly off-line set of web sites to show the staff.
These were accessible via hyperlinks in my PowerPoint presentation.
I also prepared a web page (using MSWord and saving as a web page)
which had a more extensive set of links which the staff could use
to access further information about each topic.
Using the school network staff were able to access both the PPT
presentation and the web site for hands on exploration in the second
half of the session. After the PD day the resources as described
were put onto the schools web site for external access. The web
page I created was of course modified then to include all links
to online resources.
Evaluation
of the success of the use of the applied technology
I
wanted the staff development session that I prepared this work for
to be longer and allow for a more extensive hands on period. Unfortunately
mine was the last presentation for the day and I had a tired, ready
to go home room full of people who politely though not enthusiastically
listened to the message I had to give. There are so many issues
to do with professional development that are beyond the scope of
this paper. Basically GES are fortunate to have a computer literate
staff who are interested in technology integration but unfortunately
they are not given access to facilities or time or other incentives
to pursue this interest as part of the everyday school structure.
Educational technology integration is such a large topic with so
many facets and I knew I was being ambitious to try and cover a
number of ideas in the one session. At the same time I wanted to
make the most of the time available and introduce as much as I could
in the hope that there would be ideas to please all and to inspire
all staff to follow through with further planning either independently
or with their respective faculty.
Lessons learned
from the experience
There
were a number of lessons to be learned from this project.
• Essentially
it is not enough to present new ideas to staff and expect them to
show the same amount of enthusiasm as I have for integrating technology.
• A one-off session is almost useless. Follow up sessions need
to be organized and a scheme of incentives should be put into place
to encourage the staff to participate in development.
• The lack of a professional development plan as well as a
technology plan at GES leaves the staff in a position to take it
or leave it at their whim.
• The educational culture at GES is one of exam/test-based
assessment being the norm. The material I presented was focussed
largely on implementing project-based learning into the curriculum
in conjunction with technology. This alienated a number of staff.
• In itself the technology I used for this project was adequate
and easy to manipulate. The short cut I took to creating a web page
by using MSWord worked but when I wanted to edit certain parts by
using HTML within the Word created source document there were some
problems. In future I will use FrontPage or something similar.
Julie Lindsay,
November 2001
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