This will be my final blog for this course. In this final posting, I'm going to talk about my experience using the webiste, 'CITEd.org'. Previously, I had never heard of this website. The premise of this webtool is that it serves as hub for a collection of information that educators will find helpful. The wealth of this information comes in the form of external articles/papers on other websites. CITEd indicates that the following is its purpose:
"Welcome to the Center for Implementing Technology in Education (CITEd)! CITEd identifies evidence-based practices for integrating instructional technology to support the achievement of all students."
Surprisingly, the most helpful thing that I found about this website wasn't its content, but rather it's design. I love that it allows educators to create a "toolkit", which is essentially a collection of the resources on the website. These toolkits can be saved for a later time and even shared with other colleagues. While this capability is outside the scope of my MMP project for this course, it definitely has my wheels turning for growing my MMP project in the future when I actually implement it in my work professionally.
I also learned another important lesson in viewing CITEd. Frustratingly, I found that many of the links ("tools") had dead links to them. This is an inherent problem any time a website links to external sources (and even those that are internal sometimes!). A great goal to aspire to in managing a website is to frequently check all links to internal and external websites to ensure that they are active and pointing to the correct place.
Below I'm going to highlight three articles that I found particularly interesting:
The "tools" above would be a in a tool kit that I would use when looking at managing and implementing technology with a school's infrastructure. Think how wonderful it would be to find even more resources, compile all of these in a tool kit, and share it with all of the administrators and teachers within the school. This would lead to a better understanding of technology from the bottom up. This would be very powerful!
Well, while our time together has come to an end, I've greatly enjoyed this series of blogs. For all of you that have been kind enough to read my ramblings - THANK YOU!
Warmly,
Steve T.
Is this our final blog? Much confusion in my mind since gradebook shows a lit up to Blog 8!! Hmm...intrigue.
ReplyDeleteAs much as the toolkit creation fascinated me, I loved the fact that every possible resource that a teacher or administrator or professional may need in regards to technology is at the tips of their fingers with a few clicks and a few emails! All of the information that is there is very concise and organized, which was a big plus for me!
I think it's a great way for teachers to share ideas with each other, but even for others -as I see your toolkit is not exactly teacher-oriented but instead more on the professional side in regards to administrators and such. "A Shift from Paper to Pixels" is a great article that really went into detail about how a particular city was able to implement as well as track progress in regards to technology.
Do you think you would be able to convince using technology in a school through your toolkit or do you think you would have to edit it?
Nice job!
-Henna T.
Hi Steve!
ReplyDeleteI completely agree that this is a great tool for sharing. I commented in my own blog, that my colleagues and myself are always emailing each other new resources. But, we end up with hundreds of saved emails, that it becomes a little overwhelming so this would definitely help eliminate the clutter.
I did run into a couple of non-working links too. From those that did work for you, I enjoyed the paper to pixels article.
Nice work BUT you didn't include a picture of your adorable daughter this week :(
~Anita