The document outlines Simon Fraser University's action plan for teaching with technology, focusing on the integration of web-based tools like Google Docs to enhance student collaboration and accountability. It identifies key challenges such as access to technology at home and aims to address these through research, formative assessment, and engagement with parents. The plan includes a series of activities and assessments designed to facilitate the use of digital tools in the classroom while fostering critical reflection on teaching practices.

1. Simon Fraser University: Learning and Teaching with Technology Action Plan for a Field Study Fall 2010 Scott Smithson

2. 1. Educational Purpose and Rationale 2. Question(s) for Inquiry 3. Capacities 4. Learning Activities 5. Readings 6. Support System 7. Strategies for Documentation 8. Summarizing and Representing Strategies

3. My main goal continues to be preparing my students for the next level, which in the case of the Grade Sevens (and to a lesser extent my Grade Sixes), is high-school. While there are obviously many areas of the curriculum that we focus on, one of those is their use of technology and the need to become more independent and accountable in how they use it. Being able to work collaboratively on projects both during school and outside of classtime is a skill that I strongly feel is necessary to develop. Unfortunately, students can be limited by their own access to compatible technology at home and/or the realities of conflicting schedules with their classmates and fellow group members. Moving towards web-based technologies such as Google Docs would alleviate some of these difficulties. Also, it would allow me, as the teacher, to monitor what they are doing, who is contributing, and even to provide on-going support with projects done on-line. I’ve mentioned on my blog how I find it frustrating how there seems to be such a dramatic drop in technology use in school once our students head off to highschool. Unless they are in a specific Computer course they will have very limited access to technology (meaning computers) during classtime. Much of their computer and on-line usage must, by necessity and availability, take place outside of school hours. This presents a problem that I have faced both as a teacher and a parent. Many times, a student has worked on a project at home on their home computer and then has one of two things happen; they haven’t bothered to save it to a flashdrive and so it remains at home and they’re unable to work on it at school , or if they have saved it, they save it in a format that is unrecognizable by our school computers (the PC-Mac dilemma). These issues could be addressed by saving things to an on-line storage, or even better, students could actually work on-line within Google docs and they would have access to their work regardless of what computer they are working on. 1. Educational Purpose and Rationale

4. 2. Questions for inquiry How can I incorporate the use of web-based technologies (in particular, Google Docs) in my teaching, with the purpose of providing my students with a useful vehicle to be successful in changing environments? How can I address the social/ethical concerns (of parents) with having students working with web-based applications and social networking? What does the current research say about students and web-based collaboration?

5. Access, evaluate, use and participate in new media interactions in education I intend to continue to research new technologies on the internet and become more familiar with useful web-based tools and forums blogs continue to use my class website Draw on educational theories, research and philosophies to inform your use of technologies to support teaching and learning. I intend to explore the ideas & controversies surrounding the teaching of the “Digital Generation” Engage in a critical cycle of action-reflection to understand and develop your practice My intention is to explore new forms of journaling and/or blogging as I have not managed to be as reflective as I want and need to be in the past 3. Capacities

6. 4. Learning Activities Time Activities (S) Student (T) Teacher (P) Parents Between now and September (T) •Continue to explore applications in Google (T)•find relevant readings and/or blog posts (T) •continue working on setting up my new class website (Google site) September (T)•send home letter to parents articulating rationale for using Google Docs with students (T,S,P) •set up Google and/or Gmail accounts for each student (most done at home with families) (T,S,P) •survey (Google) to collect emails/ passwords and other important student info. (S) •as class, watch “Plain English” videos and explore Google Docs (S) •some simple writing assignments using Google Docs (independent) Data Collection: (S,T) •Formative assessment data — assignment(s) done and comments collected (S) •Student perspectives on using web-based technologies – (reflections, quick-writes, survey) (T) •reflective journaling about my own learning October (S) •on-line peer editing of writing assignment (S)•simple collaborative mini project (S) •Math:Geometry Assignment using Draw tools in Google Docs (S,T) •Explore on-line, digital citizenship and responsible and ethical on-line behaviour (T) •continue to explore different uses of website (blogs, embedding videos, linking web-sites) Data Collection: (S) Student perspectives on use of websites – (reflections, additional independent uses) (T,S) Formative assessment data (on line Math activities) (P) Parent on-line surveys and face-to-face interviews (ask questions re: web-based learning) November (T,S) •use Google survey for in-class or at-home test on a particular curriculum area (Science?) (T) •compile data from test and articulate that back to students and parents using Mail Merge December - Complete portfolio

7. 5. Readings

8. School Colleagues: Peter Bramhall: other Grade 7 teacher & former T-Lite mentor Deanna Neustaedter: other Grade 6 teacher and LTT (Abbotsford) student Zoltan Bako: school administrator Other Professional/Educational Colleagues: LTT cohort - classmates LTT moderators/mentors/facilitators Sandra Averill ( Langley School District Technology Resource support) 6. Support system

9. • results of Google surveys of students and parents • teacher reflective journal: • student journaling / “quickwrite” responses • examples of student responses in some sort of on-line forum (wall-wisher?) • development of Google website 7. Strategies for documentation

10. For each of the previous portfolios (Summer — Baseline Portfolio; Fall — Working Portfolio, Spring — Working Portfolio) I chose a program that I was previously and entirely unfamiliar with using in any way. I had never used Powerpoint until I did my Baseline Portfolio last Summer and likewise had not even heard of “Prezi” until I decided to do my Working Portfolio using that online presentation tool. I continued the challenge by using the on-line presentation tool “Zoho” this past Spring As I found it very valuable to have to familiarize myself with something new in order to represent my learning and findings in a way that I found helpful, I will probably take a similar approach with this continued Field Study. If, at the end of this semester, I find some new tool that looks to be valuable as a way of presenting, I will likely use it. I’m thinking that it will be some sort of application associated with Google.docs. 8. Summarizing and representing strategies