An example of a Technology Coaching Project I did where I helped a teacher integrate blogging into her classroom

1. Tech Mentoring
Project
Richard Styner, EDEL 590, Spring 2017

2. My Mentee: Mary Murphy
● She has moderate experience in using technology in her class.
● Past tech projects include digital portfolios of coursework and has had the
students prepare simple web pages on WIX (A free webpage hoster).
● Mary is a veteran teacher who switched from high school
to middle school which places more emphasis on
interactive teaching techniques.
● She teaches 7th grade science and has a iPad cart for the
class. She is actively attempting to use the cart in class,
but has not received training from the school

3. My Mentee’s Previous Technology Experience
Regarding SAMR:
● This teacher’s past tech projects were
mostly replacing paper and pencil
assignments with little enhancement.
● This places her at the Substitution Phase,
with a little Augmentation.

4. Tech Experience(Cont.)
In conversations with my mentee we determined:
● Her Pedagogical Knowledge is very good, with 19
years experience, the first 4 in science, the next 14 in
Business and Entrepreneurship, and the most recent
in Science. It is her first year teaching middle school.
● Class control has been more difficult this year, making
individualized instruction challenging
● Her Content Knowledge of her current assignment
good, but “a little rusty”.
● Her Tech Knowledge is good, she has integrated some
tech into classes, but has not successfully done so this
year

5. The Focus: Edublogs
My mentee’s goals were as follows:
● Increase the use of tech in her classroom.
● Encourage collaborative feedback and discussion between students.
● Get students to be reflective of lessons.
● Make it easy for students to keep track of assignments and class announcements
● Keep the environment safe and semi-controlled for students.
Her school does not have a licensed product like Haiku. After some discussion, I advised focusing on
Edublogs. It is a more secured environment than the google tool, yet has many powerful features that
encourage collaboration. It is also affordable and easy to implement.

6. Meetings with Mentee
Feb 23 - Finding my Mentee was difficult, and our first
meeting was not until Feb 23. We discussed needs and
made plans to meet on the 28th to plan.
Feb 28th (via Skype). Introduced Edublog and created
account. Teacher agreed to create a accounts for a class
as a test. Teacher was nervous about student’s posting
inappropriate things to blog. We discussed accountability
and ground rules.
March 10 - Meeting was delayed. Class now had
accounts. Students to named own blogs.
List of class blogs, click to zoom

7. Meetings (Continued)
March 22 - The school’s spring break was from March
13-24 (two weeks!). The unit after break is on bullying.
We agreed to meet over break to discuss topics for
blogs. Students were to take 5 minutes to write blog,
and the next day, respond to two blogs.
March 27-31 - Teacher has students post and respond
to blogs for a week following unit. Students used
iPads to blogsample results are on next page
Blog Topics

8. Sample Blog and Responses
Sample Blog Post Sample Responses to post

9. Reflections
Ms. Murphy was generally happy with the results of this project. There were some
inappropriate posts and usernames (e.g. Jason’s pimp house) , but overall she felt
it increased student buy-in. She intends to pick the blogging back up for the
semester’s last unit, Human Impact.
I felt the project went well. I had initial problems finding a mentee, and was
significantly delayed by the two week spring break, but overall felt that Ms. Murphy
was able to overcome many of her fears of using tech in a middle school
classroom. I felt the one-on-one mentoring greatly contributed to the success she
felt.

10. Reflections on Continuing Mentoring
The mentoring sessions went quite well, and Ms. Murphy would like to continue to
expand her technology bag of tricks. We have discussed continuing to meet to
enhance her use of blogging. As she gains confidence, I believe I can help her
expand beyond blogging, to make her classroom more tech-friendly and better
use differentiated instruction in her diverse classroom. We will meet again a week
before the beginning of her Human Impact unit to discuss future plans.

11. Final Reflections on The Mentoring Process
Mentoring is a valuable form of professional development. It leads to critical thinking and reflection on
practice, not just by the mentee, but also by the mentor. While the primary focus was to assist a fellow
educator learn new techniques in pedagogy, I found that it also required me as the mentor to really assess
and formalize my own technique, in order to present it in a meaningful way.
The one-on-one relationship also provided ample opportunity for me to learn from the practices of Ms.
Murphy. As I helped her, the format allowed her to make suggestions from her own experience that I
found valuable to improving my own practice. In the fast changing world of education, it was invaluable to
be able to reflect with a fellow educator. Too often we get in the “Fortress Classroom” mentality and do not
get to benefit from other professionals.
To be a teacher is to be a lifelong learner. Being a mentor enables a relationship where in helping another
professional, your own professional practice can be improved from the relationship!