Educ 638
Jacob H. Cook
Liberty University Online
Why is planning important when implementing a district / school-wide initiative?
When implementing a school/district wide policy, it inherently requires cooperation and collaboration. When people are involved, it requires a plan to make sure that everyone is on the same page and that they are working together rather than against each other while also assuring that duplicate work is avoided. Without that plan, there is no vision for where the initiative should go (Sheninger and Yong, 2014). In order for people to work together, they need a roadmap of sorts to follow, and in order for the initiative to be effective, those same people need to work together towards a common goal. With this many collaborators, it would be utter chaos if there was no plan to follow.
What did you learn by creating a district technology plan?
There are a lot of different aspects to factor in and something like this does not happen overnight. This sort of plan requires buy-in from all of the people involved in order to make this plan effective (Sheninger and Yong, 2014). Anyone one can create a technology plan, but it is people that will need to make the change, therefore, they need to be involved and they need to embrace the plan.
Additionally, even with a solid plan, there are still new things to learn, and it is important to be flexible to incorporate new ideas when appropriate. For example, I did not know what Television white space was prior to the completion of the technology plan (Means, McDowell, Rebmann, and Riedesel, 2019). With that said, it is certainly a very important part of the overall development plan and a great opportunity would be lost if I was not flexible enough to incorporate it into the overall plan.
Is it important to involve a wide range of individuals such as teachers, administrators, and community stakeholders? Why or why not?
It is very important to include a wide range of individuals. As large as an endeavor as incorporating educational technology is, it requires people of various strengths and talents in order to push the plan forward. It cannot be expected that an individual or a group of people with a specific set of skills to carry forward the entire plan. Instead, through collaboration, people can work together on different tasks that all support the same vision, but they can each bring their own strengths and skills in order to support said vision. The sum of each part is greater than the whole and by utilizing the talents of the people instead of shoe horning them into roles that they don’t belong in, the plan is much more likely to take root and be and effective change (Boschee, Jensen, and Whitehead, 2013).
Describe the difference in cooperation and collaboration. Which is more important? Why?
Cooperation is the effort of multiple parties to complete a single task. Collaboration on the other hand is the separation of tasks across multiple domains and handed out to different individuals based on their strengths in order to accomplish a larger plan. Therefore, collaboration is much more effective at completing larger plans because it creates several focused groups each assigned a different task but each one supports the common goal. There is probably a lot of cooperation going on in each collaboration group, but the point is that cooperation is a subset to collaboration.
Did your team cooperate, collaborate, or both. Provide specific examples from your team experience to support your response.
The team cooperated and collaborated. We had developed a list of tasks and gave them out to individuals of the team to work on individually before meeting back up in order to proof read each other’s work. With that said, the individuals of the team did not work in a vacuum. Despite having individual tasks, we were in constant communication with each other. We helped each other on different tasks and proof read each other’s work to ensure it met the over al flow of the technology plan. When I finished my portion of the technology plan I formatted the entire document and also proofread everyone’s work. We cooperated on each task, but collaborated the overall project in order to share the work load.
What are the benefits and challenges of working together? Why is it important to be able to work as a member of a team in education / business / government?
Working together is not without its challenges. Communication is key to any endeavor, but sometimes communication will fall through. Someone would not be available for a phone conference when everyone else is. Someone would not get the group text about the meeting time. Sometimes another member of the team would wait until the last minute to complete their portion of the technology plan which made it difficult to proof read their work. Like any team effort, a certain amount of trust is required and in this situation specifically, the team were relative strangers. Despite these challenges however, the team was united in purpose in developing the technology plan, and it was this common vision, or goal, that helped us overcome the many obstacles this assignment had for us. This is yet another example of why having a solid, concrete vision is important with regards to collaboration (Sheninger and Yong, 2014).
Outside of this project, working as a team member is incredibly important. People do not work in solitary confinement. In fact, it is much more likely that the work they complete will affect another person at some point. Working in a team reduces the overall work load of any individual while also simultaneously involving them in socially with other members. People are social creatures by nature and by working in teams it helps the overall morale of the group. More importantly, people are much more effective when they can be focused on a single task and bring that task completed back to the group and marry the results of that task with the work done by other members of the team. Working together towards a common goal is much more effective than a bunch of individuals working without communicating together. It reduces duplicate work and it focuses people towards that end goal.
Why is it important to establish group norms when teams are formed?
As previously discussed, there are many challenges with working together as a team. Communication is one big part of it, but also determining who works on what and being on the same page with everyone else when working. No one wants duplicate work and certainly not one individual wants to do all of the work. By establishing norms, the team is also establishing expectations for each other. They determine the rules of engagement with the group and it should clearly identify the roles and responsibilities of each member. It ensures that the work load is evenly distributed and it also develops a collaboration plan so everyone on the team understands who is working on what in order to reduce duplicate, and therefore wasted, work.
How does technology (wikis, Google docs, OneNote, Prezi, Twitter, web/video conferencing, etc.) contribute to the development of “21st Century” skills: Collaboration, Communication, Critical Thinking, and Creativity?
21st century skills, if utilized properly, requires multiple people. But what if those people are not collocated? Technology makes it possible for people to work with each other regardless of location (Sheninger and Yond, 2014), and allows them to be effective collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and creativity. Google docs allows the team to work on a living document instead of multiple individual documents. This google doc allows the team to see changes made real time and to also suggest edits in order to increase the quality of the work. Web and video conferencing allows the team to talk to each other in real time about the project regardless of location and allows them to be a team and not just isolated individuals submitting their part of the project. Twitter allowed the team to share research and therefore share research backed ideas through that medium, and thereby increase critical thinking in the group and also help generate new ideas.
Which of these skills, if any, did you use to complete the Collaborative Technology Plan Project / the individual screencast assignment? (Think in terms of the total assignment–from researching goals, strategies, etc. and working on the collaborative technology plan and completing the individual screencast to learning to navigate new software, if applicable, or resolving scheduling conflicts, etc.)
The team certainly collaborated on this project. The initial meeting set up group norms and assignments were made. The team members individually researched and completed their portion of the assignment. During this team, the team communicated with each other through text, email, and phone calls in order to cooperate and seek feedback for the work they had done while also providing feedback for other team members. Additionally, the team was able to make editorial suggestions on google docs in order to provide feedback when real time communication was not available. This feedback did not remove anything from the document and made it very easy for team members to see what the edit was and gave that member a chance to accept or reject that edit.
With that said, critical thinking came into play with regards to how the team was going to tackle some of the challenges faced. Just because a portion of the assignment was assigned to one team member did not preclude another team member from offering suggestions or ideas for that portion of the assignment. This ability allowed the team to not only think about their portion of the assignment, but how it fits with the rest of the assignment, increasing critical thinking within the team while also increasing creativity and overall flow of the project. This encouraged critical thinking, but more directly encouraged the free flow of ideas which also increased creativity within the team.
Because the team was not collocated, they were required to utilize the second learning space (Chen, 2019). But when utilized correctly, each of the 21st century skills were enhanced in some way (Chen, 2019) and made it possible to communicate and collaborate without the restriction of physicality.
Why is skilled communication important?
When communication is executed properly, school-community relations will improve (Boschee et al., 2013). This project introduces educational technology to not only the school district but also the community at large via Television white space (Means et al., 2019). Because the community is involved, they also need to embrace the vision that technology plan is pushing (Sheninger and Yong, 2014). Communication helps build consensus among the different parties with relation to the technology plan (Boschee et al., 2013). It makes it possible to collaborate in the first place.
How can you use the information gained in this course 1) in your current position? 2) in a school or district leadership position?
Currently I work as a flight commander and as an instructor pilot in the United States Air Force. It is therefore required that I collaborate with my fellow leaders as well as with my subordinates. Already we use tools such as one noet and google docs in order to standardize mission products and make sure that instruction is consistent between instructors. Experimenting with new technology is encouraged and new ideas emerge every day. Recently I suggested that we purchase Apple TVs in order to modernize the briefing rooms and to streamline the briefing process between student and instructors (briefing being the main form of instruction). The idea was accepted and Apple TVs were installed in all of the briefing rooms, the point being that innovation is encouraged, and that technology is being seen as a solution to many of the challenges that are currently encountered.
Those in school and leadership positions should do the same thing. It is not required that the leader comes up with all of the solutions. Rather, it is the leader’s responsibility to create an environment where experimenting with new ideas is not only tolerated but encouraged. If such experiments fail, then no punishment should be given, but instead make it a learning point of what didn’t go well and then push new ideas with the new knowledge derived from the failed experiment.
Much like my role in the Air Force, leaders must also see to it that teachers and administrators are also professionally developed and trained to use the tools that technology gives us (Sheninger and Yong, 2014). We have to invest in them, and in doing so, we are encouraging innovation and creativity while also creating leaders that embrace the leader’s vision and will continue to carry that vision forward.
What could I have done differently (if anything) to improve my performance with respect to communication, collaboration, creativity, and / or critical thinking?
At the beginning of the course, I wanted to make sure that the other team members had a chance to lead. However, there were some initial communication problems. Looking back, I should have taken a more active role in the initial meeting in order to improve communication. I could have leveraged my experience and helped the team communicate more effectively from the start instead of letting the problem surface. Though the team was able to communicate effectively eventually, I could have stepped in earlier to help and reduce the amount of time wasted.
Additionally,
I could have communicated my feedback a little better. Though google docs is a great tool, it allows
other team members to accept or reject editorial suggestions. As I proof read the document, I made a number
of edits that were ultimately rejected.
Those edits were part of the feedback received from the instructor and
if the edit was approved in the first place the feedback probably would have
been different. I didn’t want to step on
anyone’s toes, but I should have been more clear and honest with some of the
edits that I had made in order for the team as a whole to present the best
possible product.
References
Boschee, F., Jensen, D., & Whitehead, B. (2013). Planning for Technology: A Guide for School
Administrators, Technology Coordinators, and Curriculum Leaders. Thousand Oaks,
CA:Corwin
Chen, Z. (2019). Exploration of building “the second learning space” education mode.
Retrieved from https://doi.org/10/1051/itmconf/20192504002
Means, D., McDowell, R., Rebmann, K., & Riedesel, L. (2019). Addressing the homework gap
with TV white space networking technology. Teacher Librarian, 46(3), 13-16.
Sheninger, E. C., & Yong Z. (2014). Digital Leadership: Changing Paradigms for Changing
Times. Thousand Oaks, CA:Corwin. �B
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