Laura Hearnsburger
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What is the school vision for technology?
The technology vision for our school is based on the SAMR model—Substitution, Augmentation, Modification and—don’t laugh at this last one—transformation.
What that means is that over the next four years, we are going to transform the way education is delivered. But we’re smart enough to know that that can’t happen in just one year. This is the first year of the implementation at this school, so what we’re looking for is Substitution. We’d like to see teachers substituting technology for the way they’re used to doing things—a math teacher scanning her worksheets and putting them in iTunes U, a history teacher having students put together a slideshow in Keynotes on the iPad, an English teacher grading in eBackpack. That’s the sort of thing we’re looking for this year.
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If technology were removed, what learning would be impossible/impaired?
I don't know that any would be impossible, but definitely project-based learning would be impaired. You can't do that easily without the convenience that technology offers. Students can create a Google site, email each other and the teacher, and create blogs and wiki-type pages. Without that, that project-based instruction becomes incredibly hard for the students to put together and really hard for the teacher to implement.
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How do you support professional development?
Most of my job at the campus is to plan and deliver professional development in the area of technology. And right now, that’s about all the professional development is about. What I’d like to add to the piece is time for teachers to visit other classes and see how they’re using the iPads, and other types of technology. We’re doing some great things here. Some teachers are already doing flipped classrooms. That’s more than what we expected, and I think if other teachers got to see that in action, and got to sit in to see how teachers are using iPads in the class, they’d be inspired to use them more.
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What is the best “advice” you would give for moving technology/learning forward in a way that will make more impact for all students?
If you’re not already, start working on project-based models and let the students be the drivers. The content has to be meaningful, and when they’re in charge of the learning, they can cater that content to fit their interests. Otherwise they’re just doing whatever the teacher mandates—and sometimes that’s fun, don’t get me wrong, but sometimes that has little interest for the student. I know it’s hard for the teacher to give up that control, to become the facilitator, but once you give up that control you find there’s so much more that you can do with the students—the conversations you have with them, and guiding their learning instead of directing it.
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