SWOT Analysis 6
Running Head: PERSONAL TECHNOLOGY SWOT, GOALS, PLAN
Personal Technology SWOT Analysis, Goals and Plan
Elizabeth Kennedy
University of West Georgia
At the age of thirty, with eight years of teaching experience under my belt, I find myself in an interesting position of being a technology leader among my older colleagues while feeling like a technology rookie when working with some of the fifth-graders in my class. There can be little doubt that students today who have spent their entire lives with computers have a different perspective on the world than people my age. Today’s students see technology as a natural part of their everyday lives which influences who they are as learners. As members of the Net-Generation, the children who populate classrooms today work hard to figure things out for themselves, play around with technology for many different purposes, multitask, collaborate with others both directly and indirectly, and learn through a variety of media (DeGennaro, 2008). Though some of these characteristics also describe me, I see others that cannot be counted among my strengths at this point. The disparity that exists between my students’ skills and my own gives me a good target for future development as a teacher while my current strengths provide a strong foundation for this future growth.
I believe that my greatest strength is a high level of interest in instructional technology mixed with a willingness to experiment with new tools and techniques. Over the last eight years of teaching, I have piloted several programs in my school including the use of student response systems, Promethean Boards, and digital storytelling. Working with new technologies inspires me look at content in a different way so that I can merge what the state standards require that I teach with the modern learning styles my students possess. By acting as a technology leader in my school, I have been able to put another one of my talents to use as a teacher trainer. I feel that I have a strong ability to design adult learning experiences in such a way that my fellow teachers are eager to try something new. I help them to develop the skills they need to succeed and give them evidence from my own experience showing how technology can enhance student learning. In the last two years, I have provided training to teachers and administrators around Cobb County on how to integrate technology into performance tasks and formative assessments.
Another important quality that is necessary for effective technology teachers is a willingness to look beyond what is currently available for new ideas, equipment, and support. One of the ways I demonstrate this quality is my eagerness to expand my own professional knowledge. Aside from enrolling in graduate school, I also try to stay up to date by reading about new developments in the realm of instructional technology and attending local, state, and national conferences to see how other teachers are integrating technology into their classrooms. I also work hard to earn funding for tools I may not otherwise be able to use. In the last few years, I have received grants and awards for several different projects which have enabled me to purchase ten digital cameras, an LCD projector, a document camera, a Promethean Board, ten mp3 players, a digital video camera and many other tools. Not only is it wonderful to see hard work rewarded in this way, it is also exciting to develop unique ideas and see them put into action thanks to the financial support of others. Of course, financial support is only one form of support that is necessary for success as a teacher. I also feel very comfortable asking for help when I run into trouble or asking for advice from someone who is more knowledgeable than I am. For instance, when I first dove into digital storytelling, I worked many late afternoons with a county technology specialist to learn the ins and outs of Windows Movie Maker and to work out the kinks in the project I had planned. This was time well spent because the following summer, I presented this project as a Georgia Success Story at the National Educational Computing Conference.
While my strengths as a technology teacher have provided great learning opportunities for my students and myself, I still see weaknesses that I hope to address in the future. One of my constant worries is that the technology-integrated projects I work on with my students are not the most effective way of using technology. As I read Disrupting Class (Christensen, 2008), I was struck by the story about a young girl who is working on a research project about a scientist. In this anecdote, the girl comes to the realization that the project is just the same as the one her mother did in high school. The only difference is that the research is now done on the Internet rather than with an encyclopedia. I often worry that projects my students do are actually the “same-old-thing” with a few technology tools thrown in the mix. Research has shown that integrating technology into classrooms requires three sequential steps. First, teachers must learn how to use the technology. Then, they begin to use the technology in the teaching and learning process; and finally, they integrate the technology in such a way that it enhances student learning (Dockstader, 1999). I feel very comfortable with the first two steps, but I wonder if the ways in which I integrate technology are truly enhancing student learning or if students could have learned the material just as effectively using another method.
One of the other weaknesses I see in my ability to integrate technology into my teaching stems from a basic work habit of mine: the fact that I am never more than one step ahead of myself. The spark of an idea for a project often comes only a day or two before we actually start the project. This forces me to limit some elements of the project because I have not left enough time to develop the project more fully. I would like my technology projects to include more outside involvement, be it from experts in the field of study, students in another part of the country, or even just another class in our school. Unfortunately, this takes a great deal of advance planning, so the outside collaboration is typically absent from projects in my classroom.
Luckily, I have a multitude of opportunities for growth as a technology educator. Working in a large school district like Cobb gives me access to great tools and strong support personnel. Even during tough financial times, Cobb County has been able to make impressive technology improvements to all schools thanks to funding provided by the most recent Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST). This year alone, our school, along with all other schools in the district, has upgraded to fiber optic wiring, installed ceiling-mounted LCD projectors in every classroom, and we are preparing for the addition of a Promethean Board and student response system in every classroom in just a few weeks. The new technology also comes with fairly intensive and differentiated professional development to support teachers in their use of the equipment. This is all in addition to the existing technology in the school which includes three classroom computers, a desktop computer lab, a partial computer lab in the media center, and several laptop carts. With all of this available to me, I am rarely limited by a lack of equipment.
Outside of my work for the school system, I also have the opportunity to develop my skills in technology integration as a student in the Education Specialist program at the University of West Georgia. After just one semester, I have learned a great deal about effective technology integration, new tools, and useful software and Internet sites. By connecting with other teachers around the state, I have gotten new ideas that I can implement in my classroom, and I have learned lessons from the experiences of others. I feel that this form of collaboration with peers outside of my immediate work environment will be powerful in helping me to grow in new ways as a teacher.
Even with great opportunities, there are numerous threats to any teacher’s success in integrating technology into the learning environment. The primary threat that I see as an impediment to effective technology integration is the growing emphasis on state standardized testing. As a fifth grade teacher in the state of Georgia, my students must pass the reading and math portions of the state’s Criterion Referenced Competency Test (CRCT) in order to be promoted to middle school. Additionally, class placements in sixth grade are made based on student performance in all subject areas on this end-of-year test. This places a great deal of pressure on me to “cover” all the standards. Unfortunately, with so many standards, coverage is often the best a teacher can do. Any attempt to teach content in depth is done at the expense of getting to everything by the end of the year; therefore, long-term technology-integrated projects are often pushed aside because they are too time consuming. Even if students learn a great deal and meet the requirements of many standards across several disciplines, there is still a long list of standards to teach and learn that lay ahead. In most schools, nothing matters more than passing the CRCT, and quality teaching often suffers as a result.
While time to teach is one obstacle that lies in the way of effective technology integration, time to prepare is another threat I face as a teacher. Each day is much the same for me. I wake up in the morning, head off to school, teach a class of 29 fifth graders for six hours, attend meetings, and head home to grade papers, write lesson plans, respond to emails, and fill out endless amounts of paperwork. Before I know it, it is time for bed so that I can follow the same schedule the next day. With so much to do, I rarely have time to think ahead to future teaching plans which prevents me from developing technology-integrated projects that are the best they could be. As I mentioned earlier, I would love to build in more collaboration with groups outside of the school, but time to prepare for this is extremely limited.
Based on the strengths and weaknesses I described above, I have identified two primary goals for myself over the coming year along with a plan to successfully meet each of these goals. The first goal is to bring a larger outside audience into the technology projects I work on with my class. This will provide a more authentic purpose for their work, but will also help them to connect to other people who can offer new insights into their learning. To accomplish this goal, I have a two step plan. The first step is one that I would like to implement right away which is to create a Moodle-based book club for my students to participate in at home. This will provide a safe environment in which students can discuss books they have been reading with the purpose of encouraging thoughtful reflection and helping students to connect socially based on shared reading experiences. In a study of online book clubs used in public libraries, Scharber (2009) found that students increased the amount of time they spent reading for pleasure because they were eager to use this technology tool. I feel that this is a good starting place for meeting my first goal, because it only requires a small initial time investment to set up the book club platform and then occasional monitoring to make sure students are using it properly.
The second step in this plan is a bit more involved. I would like to set up a project with another class (or classes) somewhere in the United States to work on a collaborative study of the Civil War. I teach in a school just a few miles away from Kennesaw Mountain Battlefield and the site of the “Great Locomotive Chase.” This location puts us in the heart of Civil War history. I would like to connect with a school in another area that also has a strong connection to the Civil War, Gettysburg perhaps, so that students can learn directly from one another as they explore the time period. Students would communicate with one another via blogging. They would share knowledge, photographs, stories, etc. I would like to involve experts in Civil War history in this project as well. Since this is a far more complicated undertaking than the online book club, I plan to develop this project over the summer and implement it in the Fall of 2010.
An additional goal of mine, is to better evaluate the effectiveness of the technology-based projects I use in class. As I mentioned, I sometimes worry that these projects consume a great deal of time, but that the results are no better than if I had used a different, and perhaps faster method, for teaching students the content and skills. At the end of each project, I would like to include a brief, informal survey asking students simple questions such as “What do you think you will remember about this project when you are in 8th grade?” or “What did you learn from this project that will help you when you get a job?” This will help me to judge whether students are making connections beyond the primary content they are studying at the time. I would also like to look at content knowledge at the end of the school year to see what students retained from earlier in the year. This will allow me to see if the technology integration led to greater content retention than studies that did not involve such high levels of technology use. Though this goal and the related plan may sound like an intense action research project, I really intend for it to be far more informal than that. I simply want to pay more attention to the value of the learning experiences I provide in my classroom, so that I can evaluate what could needs improvement and what is leading to success.
As you can clearly see, I am like every other teacher in the country in that I have some talents and some weaker areas, that I worry whether what I am doing is best for my students, that I am constantly pressed for time, and that I am always looking for ways to improve. I hope that when I look back to this analysis in a few semesters, I will find that I have answers to some of my lingering questions and that I will have met my current goals and will have moved onto new ones.