Reflections

Starting out these two weeks, I found myself preparing for another one-on-one training. Training four and five were very different. Training 4 was with a 3rd grade teacher who is very tech savvy. She was able to catch on very quickly and remembered most steps from my professional development training. We spent most of our time throwing around ideas of how the system could be used. Having never taught 3rd grade, the difference in kids and what they are able to do it very large. It was fun to think of new ways and hear other teacher’s ideas about implementing the SMART response system for their particular students.
 * November 22**

Teacher number 5 was a totally different training experience than I have had in the past. This teacher had trouble remembering passwords for the computer and how to take attendance. I was clearly dealing with a novice technology user, and I was able to identify that right away. The good thing about having this as my final training is that I had been through so many before. I had already gained feedback about what worked and what didn’t from my last training. I was extremely pleased with the progress we made. We were not able to dig into the possibilities of the system quite as much as the others, but I felt I left her with the capability of completing a lesson using the SMART response system. I have not had teacher 5’s follow up meeting yet, as her best time to meet was after Thanksgiving break. I did not feel this was ideal, however, she was not able to meet with me during planning today.

I did meet with trainee 3 and 4 during the past two weeks. The meeting with trainee number 4 went great, but I was surprised to hear that trainee number 3 was not able to complete her lesson. She was very discouraged at this. Come to find out, she had only forgotten one step, so she was willing to give it another try. We planned a new assessment together and worked through the process a couple times. She will be trying her lesson when the students come back from break.

I have been very discouraged with my progress on my resource Wiki. I feel unsure of the effectiveness of the Wiki because a site like this is already available to the teachers. I plan to have the Wiki pages complete by November 25. I will send it out to the teachers on this day as well.

My annotated bibliography is coming along well. I am happy with the progress. I have completed my 7th article, and will finish the rest over Thanksgiving break. Also coming up, I will complete my final follow up meeting with trainee number 5. I am expecting some interesting results. I will also be turning in my final timeline and writing the final internship reflection.

**November 8**
I spent a good deal of time meeting with my project supervisor to discuss how the one-on-one trainings have been progressing, and the organization of my project site. She was, as always, a big help in determining the best areas to focus my time while training individual teachers. She was very interested to learn about the responses from each grade level and their ideas for implementing the SMART Response systems for each student level.

I made it a point to meet back with the two teachers I helped train in a one-on-one setting. Both teachers were able to use the SMART Response system with their classes. One of the teachers had difficulty understanding and implementing the anonymous mode with the clickers. I was able to demonstrate again how to set it up and use. What I found most interesting about these follow-up meeting is that I was really able to gauge how well I trained each teacher to use the system. The teachers were both excited about the results, but were curious on how to best print/view/ save them for later use. They both stated that the students were very excited, and they have been asking to use the clickers again. It felt really good to know that I was able to expose these teachers to this type of technology, which they will have the ability to continue use with the students if they wish.

I am still using the SMART Response system in my own classroom when I have the opportunity. Having only two systems in our school, I am finding that I am working around others who want to implement this technology in their classrooms as well. I am feeling much more comfortable with the whole system. In fact, when our class needed to vote for a classroom representative for Student Council, I quickly passed out the clickers and they were able to vote anonymously. The kids loved it, and we had instant results. After reading articles for the annotated bibliography, I used an idea presented within my classroom. We were reviewing for a social studies test. I asked a question, and the students responded. If several students answered incorrectly, I had them discuss the answer with a neighbor to determine what they believed the correct answer was. Then, I had the students respond a second time to see how many changed their minds. The conversation between the students was awesome. They would not only state their answer, but I also heard discussion of why they chose that as the answer. It was definitely a worthwhile lesson because the results from the assessment the next day were great.

As I continue my research for the annotated bibliography, I have decided to search for articles that focus on the importance of participation from students in the classroom. Almost all of the articles related to student response systems have discussed the increase of student participation when using these systems. So my thinking is that I should probably research to determine how important it is to have this student participation within the classroom. Will increasing the student’s participation have a major effect on the performance of the students?

Finally, I conducted training number three this past week. I will be setting up a time for a follow up meeting with the teacher to gain some feedback and answer any questions they may have. I have two more one-on-one trainings coming up next week as well. I am hoping that by conducting these five one-on-one trainings, these teachers will become advocates of the SMART Response system and they will be more likely to show someone else how to use it.

**October 25**
I had a sit down meeting with my project supervisor to discuss what I would be doing for the remainder of my internship. We talked about the importance of follow ups for professional development, and we talked about the responses from the faculty training I conducted. We were able to better judge which teachers really had an interest in incorporating the student response system within their classrooms. We also determined there would be a need for one on one training with interested teachers. In order to gather more information about how to use the SMART Response systems for various age groups we decided it would be a good idea to meet with each grade level. We could discuss their ideas for using the system and what types of activities they would like to try with them.

Based on this feedback I set up meetings with each grade level to talk about ways the SMART Response system could be used within their classroom. Each grade level of teachers had lots of ideas. What I thought was most interesting was the creativity of the teachers to be able to adapt this piece of technology to the level of students they teach. Even the youngest students could use the SMART Response system on a certain level. I was able to meet with each grade level for about 30 minutes to gather ideas and offer my assistance. I think it was important to have a follow up meeting or discussion because so often we sit through faculty training, and then never think about that information again. This gave the teachers an opportunity to ask questions on a more intimate setting and brainstorm ideas together.

I was able to plan and develop a few new lessons for my students using the SMART Response system. Each went smoothly. One way I used the clickers was as a review game before a big social studies test. The students really liked the game, and many did very well on the assessment. I am starting to feel very comfortable using the student response system. In fact, our class even used them to vote for our Student Council representative. They really enjoyed it. I enjoyed it because I didn’t have to sit and count votes. The students instantly knew who the winner was.

Another major task I completed was two one on one trainings. The first was with a fourth grade teacher. She already had the program downloaded, but she needed assistance with how to add her class and actually use the hardware. The second training was a little more involved. This teacher had nothing accomplished, but really wanted to use the SMART Response system. I was able to sit with her as she downloaded the software, set up a class, planned and quiz, and demonstrated its use. Both teachers are planning to use the created lessons within their instruction this week so I am interested to see how it goes.

Finally, I have continued to gather research for the annotated bibliography and resource Wiki. I am finding the resource Wiki a little more challenging because in order to view the files you would need to have the software downloaded. I am thinking I will just include screenshots with the links so there is a small preview of what it looks like.

**September 27**
Creating the schedule and milestones section of the contract have really helped my stay on track with this internship project. I began researching articles for student response systems. There is a lot of useful information out there. I was happy to even be able to narrow down my search to elementary students. I have found several supportive articles for using the response systems and the benefits of using the systems, but I look forward to searching to find articles that not in support of the system. I think it will give me a clearer picture to have read research from both sides before presenting my thoughts and seeing my own results within my classroom.

I spent a great deal of time with my technology coach the past two weeks. The program for using the Senteo clickers that I had downloaded on my computer was not up to date which caused problems. I had to download the new version of the SMART technologies software onto my already slow computer. After downloading the new software, my SMARTboard stopped working for about 3 days. The technology coach returned to my room to help me fix this issue. He also expressed concerns of the clickers actually working on my “dinosaur” computer at all. It has been running at super slow speed, and we he has stated that, “I used them (Senteo Clickers) on a computer like this before and all it did was freeze up.” This made me feel a bit uneasy since my whole project is centered on the Senteo system. Aside from pulling all my hair out, we came up with a couple back up plans should it not actually work on my computer; set up the computer in the computer lab with Senteo, or use a similar, but earlier version, of a student response system called Quizdom.

Setting up the system in the computer lab has its advantages and disadvantages. It would be great not have all the teachers who want to use it have to download a program that may slow down their computer. The training that I would be conducting for the teachers could be held in the computer lab where they would actually be using them as was well. The down side would be that the teachers would not be able to use the system on the fly. They would only be able to go during designated times when the computer labs would be available. This might not fit into, or be very convenient for teachers and deter them from wanting to use the system.

I have been doing some research as to what types of lessons I can create and what is already available out there to download. I met with my supervisor to talk about some of her experiences using the clickers, and what works best when using them with the students. I began developing a site which will house resources for teachers to use with the Senteo response system. I began using, what I thought was a free site builder, to create the site. It wasn’t until I went to publish the site that they wanted to charge me money. Talk about frustrating! I then went back to the trusty Wiki site to begin again. While not complete, I was able to get a structure of the organization ready.

My first attempt at using the Senteo response system did not go very well. I was able to get the students onto the clickers, but when it came time to answer some questions, my computer was not responding correctly. I met with my technology coach once again. We are going to try once more before switching gears. All I can do is keep my fingers crossed.

**September 13** The first thing I had to do to start this internship was to decide upon a project. I really liked the idea of having the flexibility to choose a project that was interesting and relevant to our everyday lives. I came across the idea for my topic after I was pulled into training for the SMART Response system at our school. There were three other teachers who were attending this training, all of which already had some idea of how to use the system. I was not aware that our school actually had 2 SMART Response systems available for us to use within our classrooms. Upon learning this information, I decided that the teachers at our school were definitely missing out on a valuable formative assessment tool already available here for us to use. I spoke with the technology coach from the prior year about the SMART Response system. She said she didn’t think many, if any were using the system. When I asked why she thought that was, she stated, “The teachers either have not training, do not know what it is ad that we have it, are scared to try something new, or have never even heard of the SMART Response system.” I quickly realized there was a need at my school for the utilization of our available technology. The big question in my mind was whether or not the teachers would want this training. The site of my internship is at North Augusta Elementary. North Augusta Elementary is part of the Aiken County School District. It is a Title 1 school in North Augusta, South Carolina, which serves a diverse population of students. Our school has several beliefs that drive its instructional practices. I found hree of those beliefs to be in direct support of my internship project.
 * 1) Students learn in different ways and should be provided with a variety of instructional approaches to support their learning.
 * 2) Curriculum and instructional practices should incorporate a variety of learning activities to accommodate differences in learning styles.
 * 3) Students learn best when they are actively engaged in the learning process.

All classrooms at North Augusta Elementary are equipped with SMARTboards. There are two computer labs available for student use and two SMART Response systems available to the teachers. There are 14 teachers in which I will focus my internship training to.

I must note that completing my internship contract really helped me focus on the goals and tasks I plan to complete throughout the semester. I am finding the deliverables and schedule sections to be of the most importance to help keep my on task and completing the necessary work on time.

The first thing I wanted to do with my project was to conduct a needs assessment. I created a technology use survey of for the 3rd – 5th grade teachers. The purpose of the survey was to get some background information about the teachers, their ability/feelings about technology, amount of technology used, types of technology used, and SMART Response experience. The teachers were more than willing to complete the survey, and I was surprised to see the results. Below are some of the interesting statistics/information I found out from the survey.
 * 0% of the teachers identified themselves as being beginner technology users
 * 100% of teachers who have been teaching less than 7 years (5 teachers) said they were proficient and willing to try new things.
 * 100% of teachers use some form of technology every week, 79% use it everyday
 * 93% of teachers said they use their SMARTboard everyday
 * 9 of the 14 teachers have received training for the SMART Response system. Of those 9 teachers, only 2 have ever used the system.
 * The 2 teachers who have used the system both recoded a positive experience, continued use, and interest in further training.
 * Reasons recorded for not using the system include, not sure how to use it, no time, forgot how to use, not prepared or confident in use, and no training.
 * 100% of the teachers expressed interest in SMART Response training.

Based on these survey results, I believe it is clear that there is a need for SMART Response training within North Augusta Elementary. I was interested to see the number of teachers who have never been trained as well as the teachers who have taken the time to be trained, but never actually used the system. My goal is to assist these teachers in implementing the SMART Response system within their classrooms.