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PROFESSIONAL INTERVIEW By Fulwah Bin Sulayyih

Submitted to Dr. Roger Carlsen For the Course Entry Seminar in Educational Technology EDT 700

Wright State University 11-09-2012

I went to a school district on 11- 01- 2012. It has an enrollment over 3800 students. It has several buildings including a preschool, elementary schools, a middle school, and a high school. All teachers and district staff work together to meet each students needs. One of the greatest things that they use to enhance the teaching is technology. In order to explore and discover what they have used of technology in a classroom, I interviewed Mrs. Joann the Instructional Technology Specialist at this district in the State of Ohio.

Work History She started in the district in 1980. First, she was a teacher at the middle school. Also, she worked with three other instructional technology specialists who covered the whole buildings. In general, she has been working in this district for her whole career. This is the thirty third year of working there. Now, she is the only instructional technology specialist who serves seven buildings, several hundred staff members, and 3-4 thousands students. She finds it busy. I do not get out of the buildings as much as I used to because there is so much more administrations stuff to take care of. she said.

Background She got her undergraduate degree in Home Economics of Education at Bowling Green State University. She taught for a couple of years. Then she received her Masters degree in school counseling at Wright State University. While she was doing her masters, she took a few courses in computer science. After four years of that, the district started using a computer program at the middle school, so she moved to the computer lab.

In fact, her father and mother did not play that role in deciding her career. To illustrate, her dad worked with banking machines. Her mother waited until she graduated from college, and she thought that she would be an engineer. However, she believes that she had some impacts from them in a different way. Her son is computer engineering major. She said I might influence him

Job Responsibilities She is responsible for professional development for technology. For example, she is doing all the training. She is also the administrator for the progress book and Google apps for education. In addition, she deals with the most software issues in the district. She loads the Moodle server. Loading all the data from different sources is one of her responsibilities. Furthermore, she creates accounts for faculty and students from different resources. The only major related job field is that she teaches Applications of Technology in the classroom at Wright state University if they need her. When they got a new technology, she uses it first then try to use it with staff and sometimes with students too.

Organization She starts her day with a plan. Because of some problems that people might have, she has to shift. I like that because it is active and interesting. she said. She loves what she is doing now. Additionally, she likes having the flexibility of planning her schedule. Having a quiet place because she is the only person in her building helps her to do what she wants. If she needs to work with others, she has to move to other buildings and work with staff and students. However, that keeps her very busy and gets a lot of people work.

Curriculum and Current Technology They do not have any specific curriculum that they use for technology across the district, but they are hoping that their adoption of Google Apps for Education will begin to unify things over time. Their elementary computer lab coordinators are not certified teachers, and each building uses their lab time differently. They have a new computer lab teacher in 8th grade, and she understands that who is responsible for it is developing a nice curriculum on her own. She thinks the high school business/technology classes have purchased some textbooks, but she is not sure which publisher they are using. Personally she refers to and uses ISTE Standards. She also refers to the Ohio Technology Standards on ODE's site. She said to be honest and say there's not much interest or concern with technology standards at the district level and probably won't be until technology is part of state testing: They are using the White interactive boards with voting devices. Also, they have great online resources. For example, they are using Discovery United Streaming, BrainPop, NetCracker, Infohio, and Symbolo. She is happy that they have quit a few iPads in the classrooms. Kindergarten building has thirty iPads in their lab. The administrators have them too. This year, all the Physical Education teachers got iPads because they are doing an assessment for the Ohio State. They also use iPads for students with special needs. For this year, Chrome books are sort of tools that they are using. She described that students have to log in to use them then teachers can control them by Google apps account.

Future Dreams While the interviewee want to be retired in the next three years, she does not want to lose touch with technology either. She confirms that current things that she is doing keep her challenged and she wishes to keep that when she gets retiring. Each school in this district is going to have its own online page in the future. In addition, they are trying to do more online staff development through Moodle. Also, she is exploring Google Hangouts to do more with staff. Basically, as she explained Google Hangouts does let you have around of ten people in a conferencing room, so you could have members of your family or different parts of the world. They could get together in the internet, meet each other, talk, and share computer screens. By this app, she is looking to use it to present some professional developments that could be recorded and left on Youtube. Then some people can participate and other who cannot be there at that time can watch it later. Moreover, she is trying to convince staff to use as Moodle and Google apps so that students can turn in their homework online. As a result, teachers can grade and give their feedback online, and they never have to print things. They tried using Google apps with an elementary group and a high school group last spring. It is still new for them, but they are looking for expanding more. Parents are able to use Google apps this fall. For instance, the high school parents got the opportunity to sign up for parent teacher conferences online. It was very successful. Encouraging students to use their own mobile devices once they set up Wireless everywhere in the district is one of their plans.

Some Disappointments When a lot of students and teachers use the technology but not the best use, it is frustrated for her. Another point of disappointments is that people do not always plan ahead of time, and they think the it is going to happen magically. At that situation, she has to intervene and help them. For example, one of the teachers who had not logged in to Moodle for 244 days called her to ask how students could log in to Moodle. The teacher wanted to work with her students with materials that they had not looked at for almost a year! It was frustrating because they wanted the interviewee to make things happen magically. Because of doing what she wants in the district, she does not feel that she has any regrets. She is really happy of changing instructions and bringing new pieces of technology. On the other hand, she wishes that she had not used Apple and Mac products in the district. Qwizdom which is kind of response and voting system is also an example of devises that she wishes she had not used because it had a lot of issues. Training She is always been willing to change. She emphasizes that she is very organized and like to plan ahead to keep everything works well for staff and students. She is always going to the training using the internet so that she does not need to go to expensive conferences. She spends about 45 minutes to an hour online. Reading about what other people are doing is another way that she gets new knowledge. She gets help from a talented coordinator at the middle school and others if she needs. For staff, she uses to train them too. Because of so many projects going on the district, she finds it hard to get training time. To solve that, she is trying to do more online training to

catch people that way. Sending a lot of information with videos by emails to the staff and teachers is an example also to get them trained. However, people usually do not want to watch and pay attention because there is so much going on. She considered that students can improve their technology skills by spending an hour a week at a computer lab. There are computer lab coordinators who teach them great technology skills.

Interviewees Reflection She feels that most of the kids when they get the choice to use the technology will choose to do so. She described that students like Chromebooks because they keep the resources that they need very organized and easy to reach. They can control them better than the iPads. When students learned the address of their teachers Symbolo page at home, she sees that makes it easy for them to get what they want.

Interviewees Advises She expresses that it is not necessary to teachers to be in control and charge of everything in front of the classroom. She thinks that they need to plan ahead of time and have a plan for things. In contrast, they need sometimes to let kids go with things then they can be fine. She emphasizes that it is important to keep practicing and training yourself. Trying to keep up with things is a good way that she likes. She advises me to use technology as much as possible and to visit as many schools as I can. Every district will be different, and the more you see, the more implementation ideas you can gather. she said.