Introduction to "Developing a Classroom Plan for Device Management"

Video Transcription

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you are having a wonderful day today. And welcome to our unit on developing a classroom plan for device management. I'm really excited to have you for this unit. And what we're going to do today is take you through a number of the areas that you'll experience and the objectives that you will meet by the time that you're done.

You'll notice that with all of the videos that I do, we begin each tutorial with a quote. And so today's introductory quote is by William Throsby Bridges, which states, "Genuine beginnings begin with us, even when they are brought to our attention by external opportunities." That's exactly what's happening to you today. You have the external opportunity brought to you. But all of this knowledge that you are going to gain really begins with you, how you take it in and how you apply it to the work you do in your classroom.

By the end of this unit, you will be able to meet a number of objectives. First and foremost, you're going to be able to survey the available resources within a teaching environment, looking at the hardware and software that's available and how you can use those elements within your teaching. You'll be able to understand and explain student acceptable use policies, responsible use agreements, and the preexisting policies and procedures within various different districts. You're going to get a chance to really dive deep into what all of those mean, what they look, like and how they apply to you.

You're also going to get to create a set of classroom expectations based on the available tools and policies. This will give you an opportunity to see how various classroom layouts can help establish a good learning environment. And finally, you're going to get the opportunity to really focus in on reflecting, specifically on the usefulness and effectiveness of those classroom expectations.

Now let's dive in a little bit deeper to each of these objectives and give you a bit of a preview of what you will see as you work your way through this unit. The first objective looks at surveying the available resources within the teaching environment. When you work through this objective, you will get an opportunity to see some of those available resources, like the Project Red planning tools that are available. You'll get an opportunity to really focus in on what's available to you in terms of open source resources, looking at not just what you're going to have to pay for, but also things that are already out there and available to you that you don't need to pay for.

Finally, you are going to get an opportunity to really focus in on what questions you should be asking yourself as you begin making choices on the hardware and the software that are going to be implemented into your teaching environment. This has some very real examples for you to use within the classroom, and has real applications for what stuff you're going to implement in your specific classes. But it also really gives you tools and information that you can use to help work on your professional development as well, getting engaged in those conversations with your principal and with your department head, and with maybe even some district members, to say here's what I know about things that are available when choosing a hardware and software.

The next major objective focuses in on looking at AUPs and RUPs and other policies that are used within school districts. What we're going to do throughout this objective is first really focus in on the definitions of acceptable use policies and responsible use policies, so that you feel like you are 100% knowledgeable on what each of those means. Then you get an opportunity to look at various resources that are available to you for creating sample acceptable use agreements and policies, as well as responsible use agreements.

This is incredibly helpful if your school doesn't already have one. You can help be a part of implementing this, which is really important as you begin to use technology in the classroom. Finally, you're going to get a chance then to compare the benefits of acceptable use policies as opposed to responsible use policies, and start to really understand which one you would prefer to use in your classroom, or for those of you that are involved in these decisions, in your school and even in your district.

The third major objective that you're going to focus on is the ability to really create those classroom expectations, especially using the available tools and building policies to really make your classroom work well for you. As a part of this, you're going to relook back at those acceptable use policies, but this time from a vantage point of how can I use these elements in my classroom to set up the expectation for my students? You'll get an opportunity to look at possible rule creation processes. What are all of the various elements that you want to bring together as you create those classroom expectations?

What I think is so great about this is, there really is a focus put on engaging the students in the creation of these rules. Once they feel that buy in the creation process, you're going to have so much more acceptance when it comes time to actually enforce those rules.

Finally, you are going to get to really look at not just creating those rules, but a process for implementing those rules. It's not enough just to have them. You have to feel like you are confident in how you're going to use them. And we spend quite a bit of time on how you can do that effectively, both with your students, any questions that may come up with other teachers, and also how to engage in those conversations about your classroom expectations with parents.

The final objective that you're going to meet as you work your way through this unit is reflecting on the usefulness and effectiveness of those classroom expectations. We come back time and time again to the benefits of reflection. So throughout the achievement of this objective, you'll get to look again at the definitions that you've had of those acceptable use policies and responsible use policies, but this time from a reflection vantage point. I'm going to reflect on my personal teaching and say what is going to benefit me more? And how well am I using that and? Actually implementing it in my classroom? It's taking it from more of the ethereal and mental state and really putting it, then, into practice. How am I doing when I need to use this in my classroom?

You're going to get the opportunity to really look at Marzano's framework, in terms of reflecting that, then, on those expectations. But even more importantly, you are going to dive into various elements of Marzano's framework to really focused on how you can demonstrate those elements as a teacher in your classroom. Reflection is such an important part of our process. And it's so often forgotten in the hectic day to day of just getting the classroom going that we spend extra time talking about it, so that you really feel like you have that tool to continually make you a better educator.

Now that we're at the end of this introduction, I want to take just a moment as we review all of those objectives that you will meet, and kind of show you how they all apply and connect to each other. The wonderful thing about these tutorials is that there is a method to the madness. You get to see how each and every one of these objectives builds upon the previous one. So within this unit, you can see that first you need to know what the available resources are, as you begin looking at what hardware and software you want to implement into your teaching environment, before you can understand how then the acceptable use policies and the responsible use policies are affected or implemented within those various hardware elements. Then, once you know the specific resources you will be using and the policies that have already been put in place in your school, you can begin to create your classroom expectations based on all of those tools and policies that you now have and understand.

And then finally, once we have all of those elements in place, we cannot forget the usefulness, of reflection and reflecting upon how well these various expectations, based on the resources and agreements that you have in your school, are working for you in your classroom.

That's all we have for right now. I am so excited that you are joining me for this unit, and I can't wait to see you for the first lesson. Welcome.