1.

Our district is, I believe, very permissive, open and encouraging for teachers to employ
technology in their classrooms. I have not encountered any websites that have been firewalled.
In the past, facebook and twitter have been firewalled. However, after quite a lot of teacher
protests and some staffing changes, they were both unblocked. Most teachers, including
myself, are on Windows operating systems and are assigned laptops. Four years ago, our
community passed a bond levy and the high school was completely remodeled and every room
was equipped with a smartboard. Many teachers (not me) have Elmos for writing lessons and
some teachers (again not me) were given ipads to utilize in their classrooms. No one that I know
of has been assigned a webcam; if they have one, they have privately purchased it. Additionally,
the English department led the charge to have everyone transition to Google docs in their for
student work. All staff are highly encouraged to create and share documents this way. Students
have access to approximately 60 desktops and 20 Macs. We used to have a rolling laptop cart,
but over time it disintegrated to the point that it was eliminated.

I cant really list all the site available to us, because we are fortunate enough that they all are!

2. Our district has a website, of course and each schools individual site is linked through there. I
would say Gunnison High Schools web presence is minimal. The link is there, but rarely is
school or community communications updated. Parents have access to powerschool, forms and
other nuts and bolts type of information, but it is definitely not one of our main communication
platforms for parents. Very few teachers anywhere in the district have teachers pages
connected to the schools website. However, many elementary school teachers have Snapfish
or other photo sharing accounts connected to their classrooms.
However, our science departments entire curriculum is available online and students are
encouraged to visit this page when they are absent. The teacher I co-teach with also recently
developed a Google community for freshmen science where we can both post videos, lecture
notes, Smartboard lessons, etc. I utilize this feature in my classroom for students who are
absent or for pre-teaching.
Our freshmen math teacher, who I also co-teach with, has also developed a website for similar
purposes but has employed it minimally. He is a new teacher, new to our community and
expecting a baby, so I think its understandable!
I do not have a website or a Google community, as most of the students I work with do not have
access to the internet outside of school. However, now my gears are turning. I work as the
ninth grade interventionist (as well as the ELL teacher) and so I can see a re-teaching,
homework, school events site. These are the things the kids come to me for, how great to think
of them able to access me after school via the web and not my cell phone!
3. Currently I employ my Smartboard, as well as Google docs and communities. I also use the
websites of the teachers I collaborate with for sheltered instruction. As the ELL teacher, I am
always looking for non-linguistic representations and so I utilize Google images, Youtube and
Discovery Education streaming.

4. To do this assignment I worked at school on a Saturday to see if any of these sites were
firewalled. As I alluded in question 1, none were. I, too, have the good fortunate of working in a
district and for a principal that if I feel something is educationally worthwhile it usually not an
issue to have it unblocked.

5. I outlined a bit of this in prior questions, but other sites I know are being utilized are wikispaces,
Khan Academy, Youtube, animodo, time capsule websites and Maps101. Additionally, our
school offers several project based technology classes, like animation, film, and digital media
where students are immersed in many different websites. Also, our library recently subscribed
to a digitized library where students have access to thousands of books to download to their
ipods and/or Kindles.

6. I cannot think of a school wide assessment for technology literacy that our school utilizes.
Students are typically instructed on whatever software website media application the teacher is
using at the time. Students are assessed within their classrooms per the assignment.

7. My students were very excited about the idea of video conferencing with other classrooms and
would love to see more videos. They are also very interested in making their own videos for
presentations. My students are typically very low SES students and their knowledge of
technology is often very limited. They also indicated that they very much like the interactive
applications of the Smartboard and would like to continue utilizing those. Interestingly, I had
several students say they hate computers and dont understand why they cant just do the
work, like on paper and turn it in. I assume this highlights the growing income/technology
disparity. Students who do not have access to the internet or computers in their homes tend to
resist the computer projects the most.

8. While our district and each individual site performs well on standardized assessments, we are
seeing a stubborn achievement gap between our different economic student groups,
particularly in writing. I would like to see writing applications and increased student access to
technology. Student issued ipods, ipads,and kindles would go a long ways towards evening the
playing field.

9. Introducing Technology into a globalized lesson reflection:

This week at GHS was our first ever diversity week. We organized it around the
theme More Than One Story, inspired by Chimamanda Adichies TED talk. In addition
to other activities, we had the entire school watch the presentation and our halls are
plastered with pictures of kids holding signs that say I am more than one story. To
supplement this, I taught a mini lesson on bullying in my ELL class and we discussed it
using school and global examples. I used this as a platform to expose the kids to
epals.com, which we will begin implementing in the classroom over the next couple of
weeks. We read an epals article on bullying and are collaboratively composing a blog
post on the topic of preventing bullying.

I learned that epals.com is an awesome resource with seemingly endless
forums, projects, videos, worksheets and opportunities. However, I very quickly learned
that epals is also a very large site and that re-finding something can be daunting.
Employing a website like this is exciting, but can be overwhelming unless you take good
notes on how you found things the night before. I have also been learning that when
connecting to another classroom, you have to be somewhat flexible in your curriculum.
In many ways this is a good thing, as the process, at least for me, encourages backward
design. Finally, I am excited to say that my students were very motivated by the idea of
their work being on the internet, for the world to see.