Future+Goals+and+Directions

=Part 2: Future Goals and Directions=

Overall Goals
//We do not need to prepare our students to succeed in tomorrow’s world. We need to prepare them to participate in today’s world, a global society in a digital age. Students at IST already receive a high quality international education through the school’s Primary Years Program, Middle Years Program, and IB Diploma Program. Technology plays a strong role in supporting the teaching and learning in each of these programs. How can IST ensure technology continues to support teaching and learning in each of these programs? And how can IST ensure the programs remain relevant in our ever-changing society? The answer is twofold. We focus on building an educational technology professional development (ETPD) program in conjunction with implementing a laptop program. By the 2012-2013 school year, IST should offer 1) an ETPD program designed around the circumstances and learning needs of our school community and 2) a 1-to-1 laptop program for grades 6-12. The four-year implementation of these programs will be discussed in part 3.//

Desired Changes in Teaching and Learning Practices
//We want to ensure teachers use laptops in meaningful ways to improve teaching and learning. Teaching with technology, especially in a laptop program, requires a shift in our approach to teaching and learning. Simply increasing our access to technology will not change the way we teach and learn. An ETPD program will give teachers and students the skills and knowledge they need to work effectively and productively with laptops. It will teach us how to make laptops an ongoing and usual part of our teaching and learning. It will teach us how to use them for more than information searching and word processing. In their latest National Educational Technology Standards (NETS•S) and Performance Indicators for Students, the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) argues that students need to use technology to facilitate:

1. Creativity and innovation 2. Communication and collaboration 3. Research and information fluency 4. Critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making 5. Digital citizenship 6. Technology operations and concepts

This represents a shift away from using technology for personal productivity and more towards collaborative learning inside media-rich, authentic learning experiences. This kind of a shift takes time to develop. According to the National Staff Development Council’s report “Professional learning in the learning profession: A status report on teacher development in the United States and abroad”, teachers need about 50 hours of professional development to improve their skills and their students’ learning. With a well-articulated and supported ETPD program, teachers will have enough time to learn how to teach well in a laptop program. Eventually, this will lead to our ultimate goal – improved student achievement.//

Desired Changes in the Use of Technology to Support Teaching and Learning
//Laptops can influence student achievement, increase inquiry-based teaching practices, and positively impact the digital divide. The authors of Florida’s EETT Leveraging Laptops Initiative and Its Impact on Teaching Practices (Winter 2008-2009), conclude that a laptop program in conjuction with professional development influences student achievement by increasing student-centered teaching, tool-based teaching, and the “amounts of meaningful uses of technology across a wide range of educational contexts.” They caution that more research is needed to verify this claim. However, such influences would fit well with our educational philosophy and approach to teaching and learning. A laptop program could also increase more inquiry-based teaching and learning. A quick look at the iEARN (International Education and Research Network) website at www.iearn.org shows students in Kenya, Pakistan, Israel, and Morocco collaborating to make a difference in a variety of projects both close to home and far away. These globally collaborative projects are rich environments for inquiry-based teaching and learning. A laptop program would remove the barriers to participation in such activities. We also need laptops in the hands of every student to decrease the digital divide. We need to provide all of our students equal access to the kinds of technology that will influence their achievement. Currently, all teachers and some students have laptops. We need to ensure that all students have access so that we can move ahead together. It is worth noting that other schools in the area and in other parts of the world are implmenting laptop programs. Tianjin International School is in the process of rolling out their laptop program. And more than 54% of the schools in the United States have instructional laptops (Market Data Retrieval, 2005). To stay competitive, our students need the experiences that other students in a laptop program receive.

The administration, Information Literacy Committee, subject level coordinators, and department chairs will play a key role in establishing the essential conditions necessary to shift our school. Their optimism can build a shared vision for educational technology at IST that will gain the support of key stakeholders including the school board, teachers, staff, students, and parents. Their strategic planning can help infuse information technology and resources in our IB programs –PYP, MYP, and IB Diploma. Coming from administration, financial planning can help secure a strong technology infrastructure, personnel, and staff development. Subject level coordinators and department chairs can help ensure their teachers move ahead as a community of learners. The Information Literacy Committee can create learning activities, resources, and workshops to develop technology-related skills. Most importantly, administration will need to provide time for teachers to learn these skills together. Without time, all of the above efforts will have a minimal effect on student achievement.//

Major Challenges to Overcome
//There will be many challenges to overcome to attain a laptop initiative in conjuction with a professional development program. We will need to select a platform but given that teachers already use MacBooks, selecting Apple laptops for our platform should not become a major challenge. The demands on our infrastructure and network will increase with a laptop program, but they will be able to handle the workload. Our technical support team, although new to an Apple platform, continually strives to improve their expertise with Apple servers and computers. The major challenges to overcome will most likely be funding and professional development.

Funding will not be a one-time expense but rather a continuous and long-term capital expense. The funding option we choose will need to be one that is sustainable for three or more years. [More research needs to be done in this area.]

Professional development represents the other major challenge to overcome. In 1-to-1 Learning: Laptop Programs that Work, Pamela Livingston recommends the following critical questions to consider:

• How can you encourage teachers and administrators to buy into the need for continuous and intensive professional development in technology? • When, how, and how often will this profressional development occur? • Who will lead these professional development sessions: the early adopters among your staff and faculty, outside consultants and trainers, or a combination of the two? • Who will follow through and evaluate the effectiveness of this professional development, and who will assess how well teachers are transferring it to the classroom? How will you respond to teacher feedback and customize the training to particular needs and project interests? • How much will this professional development cost, and how will you pay for it? Will faculty be compensated for the training, will substitute teachers need to be hired, and will salary increases and incentives be tied to its successful implementation in the classroom? • How and when will follow-up and reach-out to teachers occur after training sessions?

All of these questions are relevant to our situation. Regarding the need for continuous and intensive professional development in technology, this year teachers have strongly expressed their desire for professional development and training to help them teach with technology more efficiently and productively. In response to this, we have surveyed teachers about their strengths and begun to design a professional development program around the teachers’ needs. Currently, we are looking at a professional development program that leads cohorts (formed by subject areas and facilitated by subject chairs and coordinators) through a three-year program. It covers both the key technology skills for IST teachers and the technology standards which we adapted from the National Educational Technology Standards•Teachers (NETS*T). When the cohorts will meet still needs to be worked out. It could turn out to be during Wednesday planning sessions or during school hours. When they do meet they will be joined by a combination of our own experts among our faculty and, possible, outside experts. It should be the IT Coordinator’s responsibility to follow up on the professional development sessions and respond to the feedback. We should allocate money in our professional development to pay for this expenses incurred by this program. Currently, our performance pay is linked to our professional goals. Linking technology-related professional goals to performance pay could provide the right incentives to achieve our goals.//

Summary of Benefits
//Attaining a laptop program in conjunction with a professional development program will generate a handful of benefits for teachers and students. Teachers will teach with laptops effectively and productively. Teaching and learning with laptops will become an ongoing, usual part of teaching and learning. Laptops will influence student achievement, improve inquiry-based learning, and diminish the digital divide. More than tools used for information searching and word processing, laptops will give students an ubiquituous access to technology that will transform their learning experiences. Students will turn to computers to connect, create, and collaborate with their peers at school to solve real-world problems in authentic learning experiences. Teachers and students will move ahead as co-learners in this laptop program developing their own skills and knowledge and helping others to learn as well.//