3.

1 Classroom Management & Collaborative Learning

Candidates model and facilitate effective classroom management and collaborative learning
strategies to maximize teacher and student use of digital tools and resources. (PSC 3.1/ISTE 3a)

Artifact: Engaged Learning Project

Reflection

This Engaged Learning Project was completed during the spring of 2014 in ITEC 7400
21st Century Teaching & Learning. This field experience involved developing an Engaged
Learning Project that had a high level of technology integration in addition to being a multidisciplinary, student-directed, long term learning experience for a sixth grade classroom. Taking
into account the student population of mostly ESOL students from lower socioeconomic
households with equitable access to technology in the classroom, I created an integrated Social
Studies/English Language Arts/Mathematics lesson that focuses on budgeting, career choices,
salary, cost of living, personal saving, investments, and costs of college attendance.
This artifact demonstrates my ability to model and facilitate effective classroom
management and collaborative learning strategies to maximize teacher and student use of digital
tools and resources. My role as a model and facilitator involved training of both students and
teachers in the tools and resources to be used for classroom management and instructional
management. These tools were the free online sites NearPod and ClassDojo. The project was
designed with strategies to increase technology usage by both the students and teacher by
requiring that students engage in collaborative learning by working together in teams to

synthesize their budgeting and saving research to create a multimedia presentation to share
online to help others learn how to budget and save money. The project required that students
support their presentation and online book with their financial research gleaned from
collaborative learning opportunities with members from financial experts from the community.
These strategies for collaborative learning ensured that students would have the opportunity to
learn from each other as well as community experts in order to provide an authentic experience
based on real-world situations. The project also incorporated strategies for classroom
management that included online tools for behavioral management and instructional strategies
such as the free ClassDojo and NearPod sites. These strategies for collaborative learning and
classroom management increased the level of technology integration within the learning process
for both students as well as teachers.
This was a valuable experience in developing an integrated technology learning
experience that incorporated research-based best practices as a technology facilitator. As one of
my first projects in the graduate program, I gained new insight into the role of the technology
coach as a change agent at the school through my collaboration with new stakeholders. In the
future, I would administer a prior knowledge survey before beginning this lesson plan in the
classroom so that the instructional time could be devoted to authentic learning tasks that the
students would benefit from the most. I would also design and distribute a post-survey to assess
the impact of technology on the students experiences in the engaged learning project. These
changes would provide additional insights needed to improve the project for the future.
As one of my first projects in this graduate level program, this project had only a small
impact on the level of technology integration and thus, school improvement. The artifact
generated a modest improvement in stakeholder interest in learning more about technology

integration at the school. The completion of this artifact gave me the foundation I needed to be
able to offer professional development coaching to teachers so that they could begin to take the
steps needed to address the needs of 21st century learners. Educators started to consider how
they could use my assistance to develop new learning opportunities utilizing technology in order
to improve student learning outcomes. Thus, while the impact on student learning, school
improvement, and professional development was modest, this artifact was a valuable first step on
the journey of inspiring greater technology integration within the school.