Session 8

I think that Data Driven Decision Making is already present at our district. We use the HM reading series so the students have to be tested every 6 weeks. The Theme Skill tests are given and then we take the student answers and scan them through EduSoft. The Edusoft program then scans their answers and grades the test for the teacher. Results are scored on the server. A positive use of the EduSoft program is that it allows you to do many different things with the data that's entered. Once the data is in the system I can pull up different reports so I can analyze the data.I can look at the scores as a whole class or for just one student. The nice thing about Edusoft I can pull off the reports for parent conferences and show the parents how their student scored and the answers they choose and if the answers were incorrect this was the correct answer they should have chosen. Edusoft also have section for interventions, you can choose by student, class, or small group. Once you select the students you can then select the test that you would like interventions for. You can choose to reteach all the standards that were in the test or you can choose only the standards that mastery was not met. Edusoft will then create practice worksheets for the students to use and another test so the students can be re-assessed. A negative use to Data Driven Decision Making is it takes a lot of time to analyze the data as a grade level and decide on a grade level solution. This needs to be done as a grade level every 6 weeks. When you are on a multi-track system you are missing at least one teacher per grade level if not more, so it is hard to pick up where you left off at the last meeting because someone was not there and you kinda need to backtrack to get the m up to speed on what is happening. The leadership at our sites supports Data Driven Decision Making. The leadership feels that if we know the areas where at students are weak and where they are strong we will be able to help the test scores go up. The leadership thinks this is a great idea to gain ideas from our grade level team- if one teacher in showing a weakness in a certain area and other teachers are not, they can provide ideas on how to teach the material differently next time. Also to go back and reteach certain material and then reassess the students is really time consuming with our time constraints that are already in place.


Activity Log- This week I complete my project 2. I will be gathering my materials for project 3.

Project 2

Here is my project 2. I designed 3 podcast for our unit on Time. They will be used as centers through out the week to give the students extra support. I included a lot more visuals that I first had planned because I felt they needed more than 1 example sitting in front of them on the table.

Time- Order Words


first through fifth


analog clock

Session 7

I think that bits and pieces of the Ed Norman Syndrome still exists in the educational realm today. I don't think there is one school district that would give all employees free run with technology. At our site you are able to access the Internet but it allows only access to certain sites that don't have sexual content or violence (there is a short list of words that filters the sites). Teachers have email account through the district but the students do not. In our area though the probability that a majority of parents have the Internet at home is very small. I think that blocking certain sites because of its content is actually good in this era. There is ton of inappropriate material on the Internet that children cold access. I have never had a problem showing certain sites with my lessons and I think it provides the students with extra guidance while they are online. As for email accounts the teachers have them but a majority of us have accounts outside of work so they do not get checked that much as site administrators would help. I try to check mine weekly but sometimes it slips my mind. I could see creating student email accounts for the class if they were going to be used within the classroom maybe for gathering information for papers or for pen pals but teaching kindergarten I can not see email accounts being beneficial to the students because they are so young and learning their basic information.

Weekly Activity: This week I finished my podcast 1 for my project 2. I started creating my materials for my podcast 2 and will finish it whn I return home next week.

Session 6

Looking at the 3 common barriers I can see that we have 2 of the 3 at our site. The barriers that are present are: not enough time in the day to use and not enough training time for the teachers.

Looking first at the not enough time in the day this is mainly because over half of our day has to be dedicated to HM program and math. When you have 2.5 hrs for Language Art and another hour for math this really puts time constraints on them. The way to integrate technology into the classroom would be to use it during the last part of the day for science or social studies. You could use it as a pull out center and then they could return to the group after they are done. Or you could use it as a whole group it you are incorporating streaming media or other activities into the lesson.

The second barrier that I can see at our site in not enough training. A lot of the teachers are uncertain how to use the technology effectively in the classroom. We have had trainings for certain technologies but I think that if we targeted a certain topic each month and a small group worked with that technology after our staff meetings for an hour, teachers would feel more comfortable using the technologies in the classrooms.

Activity Log:

This week I started creating my materials for my project 2.

Project 1

Here is my Project 1: Alphafriends video. I will use this video in my Universal Access time as a center. It will assist my students who need additional help with their letters and the letter sounds. Since I have many ELL learners in my class, I feel that presenting the material in a different way may help them remember their letter sounds and be able to identify the letters.




Project 1: Alphafriends


Lesson Plan

Session 5

A best practice that I use in my classroom last year was media clips from United Streaming. At one of our training days our Curriculum Specialists showed us the technology resources that we had available at our site. I thought United Streaming was a great way to give the students a visual of the topic they were learning about. Having a lot of English Language Learners in our school we need to find different ways of presenting the material to ensure the students have a solid understanding of the material being taught.

United Streaming is a website that has media clips on various topics that can be downloaded and shown to the class on on LCD projector. The school needs to have a licensed in order to access the bank of media clips. With United Streaming search bank you can search by subject, state standards, grade, or keywords. It is a great site to integrate technology into the core curriculum.

Everyone may not be using this best practice for different reasons. Some teachers may not know how to download and burn media to Cd's or the may not be familiar with the LCD projector so they are unable to show it to the class. Also the use of video in the classroom may not meet the needs of their students.


Activity Log:

This week I listen to the topic podcast. I am putting the finishing touches on my project 1.