Jing-Huey's Blog on Joan's Class

I have to admit I didn't do much work during this week because the technology coordinator I contacted with just had a baby. I don't want to bother him at this moment, mayme next week will be better. I will read through all the plan and stuff he gave me and have a informal phone interview to discuss the questions I make.

Back to the topic. How much participation could parents involve in technology education? In minimum, parents should be gatekeepers of information resources especially in the elementary and middle school levels. Unfortunately, some parents can't even make it! In the school I taught in Taiwan, a big portion of parents are vendors of a famous night markets near our school. They work from noon till midnight and can't look after their children anyway. Lots students eat take-out dinner everyday and stay alone at home after school. I'm not surprised if those students stick with video game or porno websites.

Indeed, parents also need to educate. If I go back to teach in the future, the first important thing I want to communicate with students' parents will be related to the technology issue. After all, family is the first classroom. We take care of students for eight hours, other 16 hours they stay at home.

Posted by Jing-Huey Lin at 1:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In ShiLin Junior High School, learning will become an interesting and cooperating process. All teachers, students, parents, business, communities, and administrators will engage learning with technology and support each other.

By learning with technology,

l          Teachers could develop their professional development.

l          Students could enhance the abilities of problem solving and decision making.

l          Parents could foster stronger younger generation.

l          Business could discover potential future leader.

l          Community could strengthen educational teamwork.

l          Administrators could enhance working efficiency.

Lifelong learning is our ultimate goal. Technology learning will be a bud of the lifelong learning sunflower. Every petal—every position –will tightly connect with each other for the future continuing learning journey.

Posted by Jing-Huey Lin at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Compared to the three National Plans and the evaluation from other states' plan in Zhao's article, the digital learning plan of Minnesota focused not only on k-12 level but whole school system, includes higher education. I really appreate this because I believe higher education institutes have more resources, they can provide academic and technical support, especially on preservice teachers' trainning and some technology-integrated system. However, it's also a pity that this plan put too much emphasis on higher education level no matter from the statistic this plan cited or some examples this plan raised. It probably because the higher Ed. itself has "research characteristics" so that it's easier to find the data and resources than k-12 environment. In k-12 environment, I believe there are more issues wait to be explored.

The digital learning plan stated its five-year targets and strategies for 21st century learners, knowledgeable skilled educators, and effective business administration. Under each target, there were several strategies and advices in action. Some of the strategies I think its really novel and foresighted. For example, to incorporate information literacy/technology standard into all initial professional licensing and professional licence renewal requirements. It's a big push for educators to learn technology. Nowadays we don't have any technology standard in Minnesota so that the teachers assessment system become very hard to establish.

I also curious about how this plan disseminate and its influences of district level plans. In this plan, I only saw the suggestion but didn't see how it works.

Posted by Jing-Huey Lin at 2:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As a junior high school teacher in Taiwan, what's my vision of the future technology-integrated learning environment?

1. Infrustructure: There are at least 6 desktop computers in every classroom so that my students can use computer doing group work. Overhead projecter has become essential appliance in every classroom, teachers don't need to carry their laptop and borrow a portable projector everytime when they need to show something from the Internet or when they need to do PowerPoint presentation. Wireless environment in the campus building.

2. Student's learning: Students have competency of basic technology literary skills. They may show their opinion in the class blog, download the course podcast if they want to study at home, use email and video conferecing complete their group work.

3. Teacher's instruction: all teachers can fully integrated technology into their instruction. They can form a study group according to their subject matter. They share their experience, design curriculum and learn new technology together. They communicate with the parents in both paper and electronic way.

Posted by Jing-Huey Lin at 2:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This week I called the technology specialist in the school I student teaching. He housband of one of my colleagues in the school I taught. We had a short conversation. I asked him some questions about the technology funding and planning in the k-12 school level and had a more concrete understanding about this issue.

Unsurprisingly, there was no integrated comprehensive plans in the k-12 schools. School committee made some single plans according to the demand of Taipei City Givernment. The Goverment allocated funding to k-12 schools for the infrustructure and teachers' trainning in the year 1999-2002. After the year 2002, the finding only provide for the renewal but no more funding for educational software purchasing.

He will email me more detailed documents. I will analyze them in my final reflection.

Posted by Jing-Huey Lin at 1:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Goal 1: All students and teachers will have access to information technology in their classrooms, schools communities and homes.　

1. Focus on infrustructure: Internet acess/ broadband/ wired or wireless/ desktop or hand held.
　2. Lack of difinition of technology: often narrows it into "the Internet"
　3. It matches the EdWeek Technology Count Report. We found out that the critetia od "access to technology" often focus on "internet access" in the school.
　4. Begin to notice the issue of digital devide.

Goal 2: All teachers will use technology effectively to help students achieve high academic standards.

　1. focus on outcomes rather than process of learning.
　2. begin to look at teachers' professional development and technology knowledge. Have initial plans on teachers' trainning, especially pre-service teachers.
　3. View teacher as a "designer" of technology-integrated curriculum.

Goal 3: All Students will have technology and information literacy skills.
　1. favor modern education concepts of students learning (e.g., problem solving skills, higher order thinking strategies, reasoning and teamwork skills).
　2. view technology as a great equalizing tool that can provide access to everyone.
　3. begin to notice the ethnic problems caused by technology. Teachers become gatekeepers of technology, protect students from damaging information on the Internet.
　4. Technology is an inevitable trend.

Goal 4: Research and evaluation will improve the next generation of technology applications for teaching and learning.

　1. match Bannett's 4th process of techplan: review the research on technology and planning.

Goal 5: Digital content and networked applications will transform teaching and learning.　

1. Hughes (2004) RAT framework: technology as a transformative tool
　2. B. F. Skinner's learning machine theory: technology become a transformative solution of educational problems.
　3. View students as active solo inquirer in this goal, focus on fitting students' individual needs.
　4. focus on school staff and administration trainning: Porter's Phase 3?

Posted by Jing-Huey Lin at 1:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Till last week, my knowledge horizon had never reached to a school's techplans. In the former class I took before, I always focused on personal professional development and technology integration in my own instruction.

The article of Zhao & Conway (2001) is really interesting to me because of the views and images of technology, student, teacher, and educational goals be portrayed in the techplans of 15 states. It can be made some connections from the issue we talked in CI 5345. For example, the views of technology in most state techplans shows that using technology is a positive, powerful and inevitable trend that fit one of the assumption we made in the class discussion. The "Views of teachers" section is also interesting, I guess Tomi must met some "Luddites" teachers in her discussion group.

I found some techplans from the website of Taipei City Department of Education this week. There are two "White Books" of technology education in the Taipei City. One was planned in the period of 1999-2001, another was planned in the period of 2002-2004. Although I haven't read them thoroughly, I found they used the E-learning techplans of the United States we read this week as refrences. It must be very fun to compare two different techplans from defferent country in the same period of time. Moreover, I plan to contact the technology person in the school I taught or in another school I was student-teaching. I want to ask them if there are techplans in schools to realize how a broad city plan can be concretized to a school plan. Maybe an interview will be helpful!

Posted by Jing-Huey Lin at 1:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Few years ago, when I was taking TOFEL test in front of computer, the first section of this test was teaching me how to operate the mouse and the keyboard. I felt ridiculous at that time, the first idea flashing in my head was: how come in this world has people who want to take a TOFEL test and don't know how to use computer?

As I studied at the United State, I heard of "DIGITAL DIVIDE" first time in my life and realized how much effort has been made in this country although I don't know how the actual effect is.

Maybe it's because the city I lived in Taiwan, Taipei, is the business center and the wealthiest area of whole country. I never thought that availability to assess the Internet is a issue. As a secondary school teacher, problems confused me probably were how fast can I type, how to use Microsoft Word and Excel, and how can I get a retired computer from school and set it in my classroom.

The Tapscott's article pushed me to think deeper. In this era, we not only have material pauper but also knowledge pauper. In other words, knowledge is money and money is knowledge. Because of today's technology, the rapid of knowledge conveyance increase. If we don't have those kinds of resourses, the knowledge we earn probably be geomatrically cut down.

In order to understand the condition of digital devide in Taiwan, I browsed the Internet and try to find some information: according to the Digital Opportunity Index, DOI reported by ITU (International Telecommunication Union) on June 2005, Taiwan ranked #7 in the world. It seems we are not in a very bad condition. Taiwan government has an integral plan for bridging digital devide since 2005. For example, the Environmental Protection Administration brought up Task of reclycling and transtering used computers plan. They wish to collect 18000 second-hand computers in this year and transter them to schools of remote districts. The Ministry of Education also plans to increase the grant of telecommunication and technology infrustructure for rural schools. Let's see if they will complete in two years.

I'm surprised to read how succeeful of Plugged-In project in this article. It's like an utopia for me. However, I know behind this successful story, lots of projects failed because of numerous reasons. If technology can enhance the learning environment and decrease adolesent violence problem as Plugged-In project, it definitly is the most important aspect we should focus on today's education.

Related web pages:
http://investintaiwan.nat.gov.tw/zh-tw/news/200512/2005120902.html
http://www.digitaldivide.nat.gov.tw/default.asp
http://www.istec.iii.org.tw/

Posted by Jing-Huey Lin at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Now the level of our discussion about k12 technology integration has reached to analyze the mental condition of preservice and In-service teachers who want or don't want to emerge technology into their pedagogy. In NETS for teachers, we saw lots of standards, suggestions and demonstrations of tech integration; in Zhou's article, we saw qualitative soft data of sample teachers' situations if they recieve a grant and put it into practice in a period of time; in Hughe's(2004) paper, due to a lacking vision of this issue, she brought up four priciples and discripted how they work and listed the advantages and limitations of them.

The Technology Integration Process of Junior High Schools In Taiwan

When I was reading this article, my memory flashback to the time when I was a student teacher. At that time, the goverment of Taiwan began to push the policy of technology integration in k12 school. I was not sure if there was a structured standards such as NETS to support this command. The faculty of the school I serviced is combined of 3/4 aged 50 or above teachers who are going to retire and 1/4 teachers who just graduated from college and began their teaching career. You may imagine: most practiced teachers in our school even didn't know how to operate a mouse. Some young teachers like me, all we know about teachnology is probably using work processing software to type students' work sheets and test papers.

The so-called "Technology Integration" at that time, unless on my understanding, had two main goals: one was to train teachers use PowerPoint to assist their teaching; the other was to promote teachers establish their personal educational websites. The PowerPoint exercise was successful, because its accessblity, but the websites movement was almost totally failed. The technology person in our school held several workshops for teachers in our school in order to teach them how to edit webpages and how to upload them into school's network. But it's really difficault to explain basic web editing skills in a very short time. Some teachers couldn't follow the instruction so that they forget all the steps when they came back to the second session of workshops. The webpages movement ended up with only teaching teachers how to use a simple signed web pages template and lost focused on how to maintain and manage them. Most teachers' personal websites remained the condition for only few pages and never update for three years.

If you ask me whether this is technology integration in padagogy, I will definately say no. I seldom saw any of my colleage used their websites to facilitate students' learning. Those websites probably only could be called a temporary teacher electronic portfolio. You can see my website for example. So far as PowerPoint, most design and use of it was a technology tool of replacement if teachers just put their handout in electronic way. These kinds of phenomenons had lasted before I went to the United States.

A New Idea of Technology Integration in My School

I was thinking to form a study group of technology integration in the future: I want to gather some volunteer teachers in my subject matter area of my school. We can meet every one or two weeks and share useful technology tools for educators such as tools I've learned from CI 5351. Most of the tools are userfriendly and the most important, they are free. We can discuss how to apply them into ecucational practice and begin to design our own curriculum and share our "products" to each other. We don't need lots of participants and the place such as computer lab which is usually hard to book. All we need are personal laptops and a comfortble places, for example, a wi-fi provided coffee shop. This is the only idea that is practicable I cooked.

Posted by Jing-Huey Lin at 12:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I am not sure whether this topic is the topic Joan assigned or not... In this entry, I want to brianstorm a procedure if I need to integrate technology to a lesson.

2. Examine what kinds of technology tools that can be used in those lessons.
Joan's RAT model may be a useful concept to help me access what kind of tech tools I've already been familiar with and what kind of tools I've never used but want to try in this semester. I will list possible tech tools and match them into lessons I chose and think of possible assistant resources.

3. Focus on a single lesson plan, browse for other resourse on the web or in the library.

4. Start to design a lesson plan, choose the main content or idea I want to focus and develop learning activities.

5. Estimate the portion of tech-integration activities in a whole lesson plan.
Use RAT or other models to access tech tools that I want to apply. What kind of mind tool is? How can I use those tools to facilitate learning?

6. If the lesson plan is huge, try to collaborate with other colleages who teach same subject or seek for interdiciplinary resources.

Posted by Jing-Huey Lin at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This week I spent more time on ZHAO's article than any others. Because I take the Practicle Research class in this semester in the same time, I focused on the research method when I read this paper. The researchers combined both quanlitative and qualitative method to conduct this research and qualitaive method played a main role. When I read some experiences of 10 groups of teacher particated in this project, I felt very familiar. Those dilemmas happen in Taiwan k12 school as well. Although it'd been published in 2002, the condition of technology integration doesn't change a lot today. I found that most obstacles appears because of lacking communication, especially innovators and school administrators. Some teachers who seek to innovate and integrate technology into their teaching overlooked check the technology resource in advance when they applied for grants. Particularly when they plan to use those grants to purchase additional technological infrastructure in school and don't know that buying behavior in school needs a lot of complecated procedures and usaully takes time.

Another assigned reading, NETs for Teachers, provides an explicit guide for helping teachers become a teachnology integrator. It's very interesting because it focuses on teacher preparation a lot. The article made me remember the years in college when I decided to be a teacher. We scarcely put technoology into our consideration when we designed a lesson plan or made teaching materials. Insdead, we made vacabulary cards or posters by hand and used markers and magnets to completed them. I spend a little time to browse the course lists offered by the education program of the college I graduated and suprisely found technology integration classes have become core classes that future k12 teachers must take. The world changes a lot! For first-year teachers, the most important information they want to know probably is what software or application they need to know or can be used in their future teaching. Several tools and models listed in session one such as webquest, multimedia presentation can be a good resource for them.

Posted by Jing-Huey Lin at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Technology Integration means "applying appropriate technology tools to facilitate teachers manage their teaching, improve their instructional skills, enrich their instructional design and helping students learn cognitively and effectively via technology. "

Posted by Jing-Huey Lin at 4:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Hello, everyone! I am the Taiwanese girl JingHuey. It's nice to meet you in class!

The first class is interesting and exciting for me. Although we are a tiny class that only has six members, it has good diversity. I am sure we can run it well. Our first class focused on a "technology exploration" activity. We spent about an hour for dozens of technology tools that can be used in k-12 classrooms. Some of them is familiar to me: I've made a couple of webquest and edit some webpages on Tom's class; I also learned how to use Inspiration as a mind tool in Aaron's class; Blog is definitely my thing because I've blogged for three years. I was also surprise to see more tools and software that I am not familiar with, such as Geometer's Sketchpad, eZediaMX, Fathom......etc. I guess it's because I am a literature art (in Chinese) teacher so that I couldn't know them very well in a short time.

This week I spent lots of time to the reading Joan assigned. Both of Jonassen's and NETS inspired me a lot. I love NETS sample lessons plans for English lit. class, though some of them I think they are overwhelming to prek-2nd graders. In Taiwan, some k-12 teachers use PowerPoint as a tech tool when they are teaching and some of the slides are wordy, boring and hard to read to students. Other teachers even resist to use any because it takes time and classroom facilities are not user friendly.

Posted by Jing-Huey Lin at 6:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)