Jean Pesce EDET 650, Fall 2013 Internship Final Reflection Schofield Middle School New Staff Orientation

n Program December 9, 2013 For my internship project in educational technology using the skills I have learned, I planned to create an orientation program for new teachers at my workplace, Schofield Middle School. I felt that the general orientation and district-assigned mentor for new employees lack the details and social relationship necessary for operating efficiently within my school. Helpful information may be randomly offered but is: not comprehensive; not able to be easily referenced; and not always available in a timely manner. Therefore I felt that an orientation program needed to be conveniently available on the school website for new teachers and perhaps eventually made available to new students and parents. My vision for the SMS Orientation Program was an accessible repository for resources and the historical background (South Carolina State Library) on Schofield Middle School. These resources were to include: an audio-video walk through of the school building and grounds accompanied by historical information; outlined use and diagrams of common areas; video demonstrations on the use of all current copy machines; supplies storage and acquisition; electronic documents of scheduling and availability of electronic equipment; basic information on and/or links to policies; informal backgrounds on personnel and the local community for coordinating teaching or just social connections. Some of the personnel that I felt would be involved, such as the Media Specialist, Steve Smith, Webmaster, Tray Nelson, and Educational Technology Specialist, Terri Hallman, were very helpful. I was fortunate to enlist the additional aid of Technology Specialist, Mark Cota, who formally worked in my building. With these experts I practiced my skills in educational technology as analyzed in the following retrospection of my experiences. Lessons learned Through this process I learned the following lessons. That it might be wise to start backward when creating a product by deciding how it is to be published when complete. This is due to the fact that not all product formats are supported by all the publishing sites. For instance, after creating swf files with Jing they could not be embedded in my wiki or on the Final Report made in VoiceThread. It would be better to choose perhaps the most universally accepted formats and then determine what type of appropriate compatible product to create. I learned not to get caught-up in the details when creating a product either. When developing my tour guide avatar this became an evident lesson as I was using whatever tools I had including Photoshop to make what I had in mind until I returned to the Voki site and found, either a new or previously unnoticed image that met my requirements. I feel this is the type of technology integration Brooks-Young (2002) promoted to help teachers become proficient. Previously researched theories are also useful in creating a new product. It cuts down on the amount of trial and error that must be conducted. For instance, it was helpful to consider Donkors (2011) study of how learners felt about using an instructional video which resulted in delineating several perceived aspects of the experience which I could incorporate: usefulness; ease of use; intention to use; and actual use. Another similar resource used in this way was the Quality Matters Rubric Standards (2013) which provided guidelines for online professional development programs. The essential topics determined here include: introductory information; intended outcomes; means of evaluation; instructional objects; community; technology; support; and accommodations. Finally, the Instructional Video Evaluation Instrument created by Beaudin

and Quick (1996) was easily adapted for my intentions. New to me was Conole, Galley, and Culvers (2011) study on the way that people and technology have evolved synergistically described, from previous research, as the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) which presents each human and non-human interactive node in this connectivism concept. These create shared learning opportunities which I intended to promote through this project but had not realized was already regarded as a concept. Difficulties and conclusions drawn From the technical aspect, one difficulty I found working on this project was that Flash files are difficult to embed because they require the Flash Player which is not always available. I do not know how I was able to finally get the SMS Tour Route screencast, made in Jing, to embed on my wiki page since I could not later do the same thing with one made of my online SurveyMonkey document. If I remember correctly, I believe I copied the code the Tech used to embed it on the school website and inserted it in the code for the wiki page. My thought now is to copy and save that code with the specific target highlighted which could then be swapped for another swf video for use in the future. From the design aspect, I did not experience the findings from Volmer, Spurk, and Niessen (2012) that employees are more creative and satisfied when allowed more autonomy, since very few participated or appeared interested in providing input on what an orientation guide for the school might cover. In conjunction, I feel the results of the Evaluation Survey are not conclusive as they are an insignificant proportion of the staff population. However they are all entered as Good or Exceptional so I know at least some people found my efforts worthy. Successes and insights gleaned Normally a fairly serious person, I thought my products would be more favorably received by other teachers through some more light-hearted means such as an avatar. As discussed by Anderson (2010), avatars provide for improved engagement with instructional material even for adults. This is evident in one evaluators response, Really enjoyed the Ram video snipet. Avatars also improve the learning (Okita, Turkay, Kim, & Murai, 2013) and help alleviate the perception of minority social status to create a more cooperative work environment (Lee, Nass, 2012). To this end it would be wise to consider using this type of animation in future projects as research shows it is a means of addressing the concern of cultural sensitivity in the design of electronic educational items to remove bias in creating more versatile products (Qi & Boyle, 2010). Things to do next time There are several thoughts that come to mind when considering how this project in particular and the process in general could be improved in the subsequent undertakings. First, as Wanous and Reichers (2000) found that orientation programs decrease stress for new employees by clarifying expectations, it would be wise to determine the new-hire expectations of the school and/or district in order to delineate these in some way and post them in the Guide. Since the major recommendation from the Software & Information Industry Associations 2010 Symposium (Software, 2010) was to personalize learning when considering the future of education, some means of providing this might be considered here. Perhaps choosing an avatar for a guide or providing an internal search feature for requested information could be arranged. In keeping with the concept that learning with technology should help create life-long self-

directed learners (Sturgis & Patrick, 2012), it might be interesting to provide the professional development sessions, usually attended beyond normal school hours, as online mini-classes at the teachers convenience through the Teacher Resources page. In conjunction with these miniclasses, recognition for individuals who complete or even exceed the lessons could help create a collaborative personal learning environment as witnessed by Fonseca (2011) where the technology experts for specific tools were identified in order to help others. This is in keeping with current developing efforts to create a system of digital badges for knowledge acquisition. As discussed by Foster (2013) these badges are easily verifiable, conveniently managed, identify progress along career paths, and provide open, shared information. This would allow teachers to identify others who might be resources for work-related information. The staff directory which is currently in the process of being up-dated, could post the badges earned by members so educators within the building could use each other as resources. Relation to previous course work As a person who has great creativity but is often lacking in organization, I found following the ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation) components of digital creation very helpful. Although it seemed to be over-emphasized at times, it really did provide a guide as to what must be considered for comprehensive planning. The ADDIE considerations provided a framework that could quickly identify missing knowledge or products, such as research on how to create a useful survey or video. Since I normally jump into projects involving others expecting them to know my thoughts, I had to go back to create an introduction for my project via my tour guide since that was part of the requirements I found in the video evaluation rubric (Beaudin & Quick, 1996). The theories on Cognitive-Load reminded me to keep images with narration simple with little or no text as humans can more easily process concepts with just one language source at a time (Paas, Renkl & Sweller, 2010). Scanning the print or screen view of the school floor map before viewing the tour helped address what Mayer and Moreno (2003) called the split-attention effect. This is when both text and narration are presented with an image (as I had done in the past) which can be taxing in cognitive operations. Another way to reduce cognitive load offered here is pre-training, as with the Tour Route video where the learner is provided with elements of the learning task prior to the presentation which then become part of the working knowledge as opposed to additional new concepts (Mayer & Moreno (2003). Strong emotions experienced Like an expectant parent, this project roused many emotions over the months of its incubation. In working to the best of my ability and not experiencing over-whelming success with some aspects, the natural reactions were those of being frustrated, feeling inept, unprofessional and at times disappointed. This came from not being familiar with tools to be used, learning new ones, and finding the results were often less than desired. This may have come from setting expectations too high, lack of skill, or both. A study by Skaalvik and Skaalvik (2009), found that teachers suffered from lack of collaboration and increased external directives, suggesting creation of supportive easy to use measures. As this was an individual internship, there was much less community interaction which provided more time to devote to my project but less time comparing progress notes giving a much more isolated feeling. However, as mentioned earlier, I was fortunate to have a few people to actually work with on this project which balanced the scale.

With the imminent and final birth of my project I felt triumphant, affirmed, and proud of my accomplishments, tenacity, and creativity. Although my Guide may not set any records by the standards of others, its all my baby. In checking my products against a commercially developed rubric and training program for creating online instruction (Comparison, 2011) I found I really have learned some pertinent information. I must say that as research has shown, I feel since I was allowed more control in this work, from choosing a project to how to conduct it, I was more involved overall (Runhaar, Konermann, & Sanders (2013). I believe I can create useful instructional digital tools whether for my own or other students after having completed this project from inception to roll-out.