Tech Tips Internship Proposal

Megan Bowie
Seneca Elementary School
Proposal

For my educational technology internship, I will be sharing various

technology tips and tools with my fellow staff members at Seneca Elementary
School in Middle River, Maryland. As a technology leader in my school, I am
currently the back-up technology liaison, as well as a go-to for technology help.
I will work with the STAT teacher, prepare surveys to poll the staff, and
communicate by word of mouth and emails to determine and present tech tips
related to individual and group needs. Twice a month, I will both upload tips
and tricks with visuals and/or screencasts to our school group on Schoology.
There will also be an optional in-person meeting once a month either before or
after school. In addition to meetings outside of school hours, I will also push in to
grade level CIA (data) meetings to present tips, tricks, or information.
Rationale

With all the changes this year including new teacher devices, as well as a
whole new Learning Management System, staff and students are left with a lot
of questions. Many times this year (and last), I’ve seen and heard teachers
frustrated with the new tools. I’m looking to present technology tools and tips
that staff and students can use to help, rather than hinder. Teachers may have
taken a three hour course on Schoology last spring, but there have been many
changes to the interface that has left many feeling unprepared to use it. Some
people, however, did not take any training on Schoology, despite it being new
and expected for everyone to use. Teachers are to use their new devices and
Schoology this year in their classrooms (and out), whether they feel prepared or
not. With my training and tips, staff will be able to receive some tips, tricks, and
tools all while using the Schoology interface and getting more acquainted with
it. Staff will become more comfortable with their technology and can then
begin to use it modify or redefine their teaching, rather than just substitute or
augment it.
Participants

The participants of my internship will include any Seneca staff member.

Specifically, it will include: classroom teachers, instructional aides, additional
adults, school counselors, special educators, STAT teacher, and administrators.
The teachers ranged from being a new, first year teacher, to having almost 30
years of experience. Some staff are very tech savvy and comfortable with
technology, while many others are less tech savvy and often get overwhelmed
with it. Our staff is about forty members that I will focus on: two administrators,
two office workers, one nurse, one school psychologist, one school counselor,
one speech pathologist, one reading specialist, one STAT teacher, twenty
general classroom teachers, seven specials teachers, one instructional aide, one
kindergarten aide, one pre-k aide, and about seven additional adults (this
number changes frequently).
Learning Objectives and Timeline

Session Dates (approx.) Objectives

Teachers will be able to give their students a

Session 1: 8/23/18 visual or audio option for assignments by using
VoiceThread.
Various Dates: Teachers in grades 1-5 will build math fact
Session 2: 9/17, 9/26, 10/3, fluency in their classes by implementing
10/10, and 10/18 XtraMath with their students.

Teachers will be able to share resources with

Session 3: 10/8 their students digitally by uploading them onto
their Schoology courses.

Teachers will be able to provide feedback on

Session 4: 10/15 assignments by leaving comments along with
their grades on Schoology.
Teachers will be able to customize their courses
Session 5: 10/22 in Schoology by creating unique course
pictures.
Teachers will be able to organize their
Session 6: 10/29
coursework in Schoology by creating folders.
Teachers will be able to access and
communicate student progress by retrieving
Session 7: 11/5
and printing progress reports from the new
gateway.

 Beginning: August – End: November

Relevant Models of Change
According to Ely’s Eight Conditions of Change, certain elements must be
met in order to effectively make a change (Ely, 1990). Many staff members
have expressed to me a dissatisfaction with the status quo in regards to the new
technology and Learning Management System (LMS). Together, we will
determine what needs there are to help and change how comfortable and
familiar the staff are with technology and Schoology, which should help with
participation. Having the staff be able to make requests of what they need will
give them an ownership of the changes, as the relatability will exist due to their
input. I will provide people with more understanding and familiarity with both, so
that they have the sufficient knowledge and skills to be more successful with
technology and Schoology, specifically. By providing resources through
Schoology in the form of screencasts, and such, I will be giving the teachers at
my school many more resources so that they can have help whenever to find
success and make positive changes. When I push into the CIA meetings, I will
be teaching tips and my administrator will be providing much needed time for
teachers to experience and learn what I present. For many teachers, the
incentive that I will giving everyone, will be an understanding and
comfortableness with technology that they are expected to use regularly. I’m
demonstrating leadership by continuing to make myself a resource for the
teachers at my school, while opening a new way to provide training and/or
resources on a new platform.
Learning Activities and Instruction

I have specific tools and tips that I will present to the staff at my school,
however, I’m also flexible. I plan on taking input from other teachers to
determine what they need/want. This means that the activities and instruction
that I have planned are a base-line and starting point when outlining instruction.

For the first session, I presented an optional professional development on

VoiceThread. This was based on the requests of team leaders after the Blended
Learning this past summer. I demonstrated how to get to VoiceThread, then
showed some of the basic tools. Afterwards, I provided some examples of when
and how teachers could use VoiceThread to allow students to be more
engaged and to have other formats to present their learning. During the PD,
teachers and staff explored VoiceThread along with the demonstration.

The second session spans over the course of a few weeks, since it is
presented during grade-level CIA meetings. I will push in during my planning
time during each CIA to help the teachers set up their class/students in
XtraMath. I will provide tech help, as well as examples of what the product of
XtraMath looks like by bringing data from my own two classes. Representatives
on the Math Action Team will discuss the outcomes/results during the monthly
Action Team meetings, which I am a part of.
 The third session will be comprised of a screencast uploaded onto
Schoology in the Seneca group that demonstrates how to upload and share
resources with students, as well as how to hide them. It will include how to
upload from the OneDrive, Network drive, and from the county resources.

Session four will be an in-person drop-in session before school that will also
be made into a digit handout for others to view on their own. It will outline an
easier method of creating assignments in the gradebook on Schoology where
comments can be entered at the same time as the grade for the entire class.
The tip will be brief, giving participants time to try themselves and ask questions
while in the session. Comments will also be made optional on the digital
resource.

Sessions five, six, and seven will be presented completely on Schoology

with graphics, discussion boards, and screen recordings. I will demonstrate
changing the pictures to custom pictures in for each course in session five. In
session six I will show how to create folders in order to organize the material and
courses in Schoology. Finally, in session seven, I will show how to go through SIS
(our student information platform) and print student data sheet in time for
progress reports to go home.

After session seven, sessions will be based solely on the feedback,

communicated needs, and observed needs at Seneca. These sessions will
prove to be especially beneficial because they will be built with the input of the
participants.
Online Component

For my online component, I plan on using our new BCPS LMS: Schoology
to store, communicate, and share. Our school has a staff group page on
Schoology that my principal created. After being added as an admin, I will be
able to add members to the group from our staff. This location will be where I
house all of my tech tips. Resources may include, but are not limited to:
Microsoft documents, pdfs, VoiceThread, YouTube videos, and Schoology tools.
Over the years, I have been asked to help people plan with technology, which I
will continue to do in my internship, both in-person and through the Schoology
group. The Schoology group makes it even easier, in fact, since questions can
be asked and answered at any time. Resources too can be uploaded at any
time.
SAMR and TPACK
After surveys from previous years and much communication, I’ve seen
that most of the staff at my school is either in the ”Substitution” or the
“Augmentation” phases of the SAMR model. This was evidenced even more not
long ago when the BCPS network went down for the entire day and many
people were able to adjust easily to the lack of technology. The reasoning for
most of the stagnation in the phases, though is easy: lack of training and
knowledge. They lack the “Technological Knowledge” that is so critical in the
TPACK integration, that it’s not surprising that they aren’t using more technology
in their classrooms. When I teach each session, I not only will present a tool, tip,
or trick, but I will also be providing ideas of use and examples. It’s important that
teachers develop a toolbox to choose from before they can effectively
integrate technology into their classrooms. Simply providing programs through
BCPS One is not enough, as there has not been training in these tools before
and there is an overwhelming amount of tools in one location. Once I provide
the knowledge, it will be much easier to help improve teachers’ use of
technology and get them thinking about elevating their lessons/technology.

Evaluating Participants’ Learning

To evaluate participants’ learning, I will provide self-assessments through

the Schoology test/quiz feature, discussion boards, or other various techniques
after each production of learning. Schoology will allow me to keep all of the
evaluations together in one place with everyone’s names on their submissions. It
also allows people to complete evaluations at their own time.

Ely, D. P. (1990). Conditions that facilitate the implementation of educational

technology innovations. Journal of Research on Computing in Education, 23(2):
298.

Ely, D. P. (1999). New perspectives on the implementation of educational

technology innovations. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED427775)

Rodgers, D. (2018, January 19). The TPACK Framework Explained (With Classroom
Examples). Retrieved September 29, 2018, from
https://www.schoology.com/blog/tpack-framework-explained