PART A - Description of Need or Opportunity

1.   What is the important educational need that you are seeking to address? This element is fundamental in this project. Since we have limited time, energy, and resources, cool technology without a clear sense of why it matters or what we gain by it is of little value in the educational setting.

It was difficult for me to come up with a topic for this project since I am not a full time teacher so many of the problems that can be focused on as a full time teacher aren’t practical for me as a substitute.  What I decided to focus on then instead is something that all teachers, especially substitute teachers, need:  Classroom management.  This is an essential tool for any teacher.  As a new teacher it is also something that I believe would be very beneficial to have a better understand and knowledge of.  The more ammunition I have at my disposal for when I eventually have my own classroom the better off that I’ll be.  This is a very broad topic so I am going to focus on ways to keep students busy to limit downtime when problems usually arise.  This will focus on using technology to fill transitions and if lessons run short.

2.           How you plan to address this educational issue with technology?  You need to make a clear and convincing case that your proposed solution will make a real impact on the issue you identify, and that your proposed approach is a reasonable approach given its costs and possible alternatives.

Issues of classroom management usually arise when students are bored and/or have too much down time.  Students who are consistently engaged in learning are not going to have any time to be disruptive or get into trouble.  Technology can be a great asset in helping keeping students engaged.  One of the places that students have down time and problems can arise is during transitions.  As a full time teacher these transitions are usually smoother since you did the planning for them, however problems can still arise here.  Transitions can be especially challenging for subs since you aren’t always sure how long things will take or exactly how the students are used to things flowing.  Technology can be used to fill these times.  By putting on a short clip or a fun word or logic game up on the screen or smartboard for students to work on when they have their materials out.  There are several options you have when using technology to find small and quick games to fill these times in transition or even at the end of a lesson.  Another way to use technology to help solve students being bored if a lesson runs short or a student finishes work quickly is to have them do research on any question they might have come up with about the work and then possibly report back to the class on their findings.

3.           Logistics of solution: For example…

a.            What is the scope? (e.g., when and where will tool be used and for how long? Who all will use it?)

The scope of this solution is very large.  This is something that can be used anywhere by anyone for as long as needed.  It is a topic that several PHD educators and others have researched in attempts to make more effective teachers and teaching methods.  For my specific part of this project, my solution will be used by myself and the students I am teaching.  This solution will help me improve my classroom management and make learning more effective for the students that I am teaching.  I hope this is something I will be able to implement in any classroom with any set of students.  That would be ideal.

4.           Relevant research and resources (from the Internet and elsewhere) including reports on the closest effort you can find to what you are planning to do as well as ideas and materials you may be able to build upon in your own effort.  Your description should include:

a.             The results of your search (What resources may help guide your project? What resources may help in the implementation of your project?)

2. What you learned from performing this search. For example, which search engines did you use? What strategies did you use? What helped or hindered your search? How would you search again next time?

http://jc-schools.net/tutorials/classroom/management.htm - I found several good ideas here on several ways to use technology as a classroom management tool. Cambourne, B., Labbo, L. D., & Carpenter, M. (2001, November). What do I do with the rest of the class? The nature of teaching-learning activities. Language Arts, 79 (2), 124-136. Teachers need to challenge students by keeping them occupied with appropriate learning activities. - Technology allows more access to these types of activities that will keep them challenged, learning and engaged. http://www.explorelearning.com/index.cfm?method=cResource.dspResourceCatalog - Gizmos is on online catalog of simulations that all relate to teaching standards.  These are all short interactive simulations that come ready with questions to keep the students focused.  It is a great resource for students who have finished quickly.  You can easily find something related to what was taught that day. I used Google to perform my search and found that there are several ideas out there for classroom management techniques however when it comes to technology most of the information out there is about classroom management techniques for implementing technology in the classroom not technology for implementing classroom management techniques.  What I decided to do was take the information that was out there on classroom management techniques (especially for subs) and incorporate technology in to that.

5.           A plan for the portion you will implement during this course and the portion you will implement after this course completes.

During this course I will implement strategies as a substitute.  The ideas to extend a lesson or fill up down time.  This will be the extent of what I’ll be able to accomplish without having my own classroom.  After the course hopefully I’ll have my own classroom that I’ll be able to implement other, long-term strategies in place for classroom management and test their effectiveness.

6.           How would you know you were successful?

The success of the implementation of using technology to assist with classroom management is something that will be hard to know immediately or with 100% certainty.  To measure the success I will have to do things like keep anecdotal records of student behavior.  I will focus on number of outbursts by students, number of times I have to redirect students and other disruptive behavior.  The difficult part of analyzing the data will be trying to account for factors like different students in different classes.  As a substitute it will be difficult to compare from one day to another since I am usually in different classes.  Different students means different types and frequency of behaviors.  I will have to use generalizations to analyze the data.