Common Core and Technology Integration

What is Common Core?

The Common Core State Standards is a state led and coordinated initiative from the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA) and the Council of Chief of State SchoolOfficers (CCSSO) that creates benchmarks for learning from kindergarten through 12^th grade. There are two sets of standards for English Language Arts (include History, Science, and technical Studies) and Math. A total of 45 states, District of Columbia, 4 territories, and the Department of Defense have adopted these standards. On April 9, 2013 a companion set of Science Standards, the Next Generation Science Standards, were introduced.  The standards seek to address developing students in the areas of content knowledge, communicating effectively, analyzing and evaluating complex texts, finding and demonstrating the use of evidence from a number of sources with proper citation, and using technology and digital media purposefully and competently.   These were developed with the support of the National Research Council. For those of you like me, the addition of technology into the standards was a welcome and refreshing addition that’s shows its significance within education. The standards also are set up in a Backwards Design way in regards to the fact that they are telling us where students should be by High School graduation. Being a fan of backwards design in the way I plan units, I find the flexibility and high expectations of the Common Core to be positive (and I like to stay positive about changes that occur within the Education sector and try to see how they will make my students better prepared for the future.)

How does the Common Core Integrate Technology?

Technology is a constant in the education sector today which means teachers need to understand how to best utilize the many technological tools, resources, and devices at their disposal. Specific standards within the Common Core call for the use of technology and digital media. For example within the Anchor Standards for College and Career Readiness for Writing students should be able to “use technology, including the Internet to produce and publish writing and to interact and collaborate with others.” (CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.W.6) The standards are written in an open- ended manner that allows teachers to teach using different ways of incorporating technology.

Another key Anchor Standard states that students should be able to “gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, assess the credibility and accuracy of each source, and integrate the information while avoiding plagiarism.” (CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.W.8) Technology and ELA teachers and Library Media Specialist have already been stressing to students (and other teachers) the importance of analyzing different forms of content (print and digital forms) and how to integrate that information properly using proper citation but with the incorporation of this standard within the Common Core all teachers no matter what subject- area should be teaching and reinforcing this valuable technological skill that students need. In the past education technology has had separate standards so many teacher’s didn’t feel the need to integrate technology because it was specially outlines in “their standards.” The integration of technology benchmarks within the Common Core emphasizes the importance of students learning specific technological skills and outlines a cohesive implementation plan that all teachers can see what students should be able to know, understand and do.

Resources on Teaching Common Core:

Below I have listed some resources for implementing technology within specific subject areas.

General Common Core:

• Achieve the Core
• Getting Started Guides and exemplars for Common Core and NewYork
• Standardsfor the 21st Century Learner Lesson Plan Database
• LearnZillion

ELA:

• Libraryof Congress
• TeachingThe Common Core Standards in Language Arts & Literature 
• 11 Tipsof Teaching Common Core Critical Vocabulary  
• Ideas forImplementing Literacy Common Core in the Non-ELA Classroom 
• CommonCore in Action: ELA
• Literacy Design Collaborative 

Social Studies:

• SocialStudies Resources from Common Core Conversation
• SocialStudies Central (Includes lessons, additional sites, and tools)
• Guidesand checklists from Achieve the Core

Science:

• National Science Digital Library
• CommonCore Tips- Literacy in Science
• ScienceStandards 2.0- Thomas B. Fordham Institute
• SupportingScience and the Common Core 

Math:

• IllustrativeMathematics
• Classroomexamples and tools for mathematic instructors
• Research-Based professional development for math Common Core Implementation
• EduCore
• KhanAcademy
• MathematicalAssessment Project
• MathCommon Core Coalition

Reading Intervention Highlight: Read Naturally Live

Do you have struggling readers in your class? Do you want to create an individualized, differentiated reading curriculum that addresses each student at their reading and comprehension level?

What is Read Live?

The strategy of Read Live is “structured intervention programs combine teacher modeling, repeated reading, and progress monitoring — three strategies that research has shown are effective in improving students'  reading proficiency.” (Read Live) This program supports the National Reading Panel’s five essential components of reading (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension). 

How It Works

The basic principle behind Read Naturally is teacher modeling, repeated reading, and progress monitoring.

Teacher Modeling

An aspect of Read live is that students reads along with the recording of a fluent reader. This helps model for students proper pronunciation, expression, and phrasing.

Repeated Reading

This strategy has been shown to improve fluency so in Read Live students re-read text until they reach a predetermined goal rate. This allows students gain confidence and ultimately master the story before moving on. 

Progress Monitoring

Students become engaged and active within the learning process through daily monitoring in the Read Live program. Students can see in graphs the increase in words correctly read through the process of practicing then re-reading. 

How much does it cost?

Read live cost $149 per student for a 12 month subscription. The cost go down per user the more seats purchased. For instance a 30 seat subscription goes down to $15.38 a student ($1999.00 total). With your 12 month subscription, you also have the following services:

Pros: 

• Lower implementation Costs: Read Live only requires a web browser with Adobe Flash support which means no hardware or software is required to set up, install, maintain or update. 
• Pricing: One price for access to all 13 Sequenced Series Levels and all 6 Phonics Series Levels. The price also decreases when purchasing more than 6 seats so it's an efficient use of funds for struggling readers. 
• Assessment tool included: For each seat purchased, 30 seats of Benchmark Assessor Live is included. This means that for the price of enrolling one student, you can screen an entire class of  30 students. 
• Teacher Management: It has a easy to use teacher management system that can adjust student reading levels, analyze and graph various components of reading, etc. to share with teachers, parents, and administrators. 

Cons: 

• Student's can become frustrated with re-reading text and some students will read faster just to reach their goals (which can influence fluency and expression). With teacher- supervision these can be avoided. 

In summary, for struggling reader Read Live is a helpful interactive program that an be adjusted specifically to the student. This program is also great to improve confidence in reading and comprehension, broadens vocabulary and monitors progress. This program gives insightful information on students to share with teachers, administrators, parents and the student on their reading, fluency and comprehension. It also offers tiered, individualized learning based on the students level.

If your interested Read Live offers a free 60 day trial:  http://www.readnaturally.com/products/readlivetrial.htm#trial

For a video tutorial on Read Live check out: http://www.readnaturally.com/howto/videos_readlive.htm. 

Beginning of Year Technology Integration

The beginning of the school year is a time to get to know your students and establish your classroom environment. As a teacher I always liked to have the students share some information with their classmates and myself and because I’m a technology teacher I love to use technology for meaningful learning outcomes. One tool that is great for creating introductions is creating word clouds of information about the students. One such tool is Wordle, which is a great visualization of text that can create discussion and insight within the classroom. By understanding the patterns in text, students can have meaningful discussions.

How Wordle Works?

After going to the website (Wordle), you copy any text from a Word file, the web, or any other source, and then by pasting the information you can create the word cloud. This site requires no login or membership. The larger words indicate the main and important ideas. This site also allows the user to enhance and change the font, layout, and colors.

                           This is an example of a Wordle of my blog. 

For more information on Wordle, check out the Wordle groups on Diigo, which can be a valuable source of ideas on integrating Wordle into the classroom.

For some other innovative uses of meaningful ways to integrate Wordle into the classroom, check out the following sites/ blogs:

1.     Tech Savvy Educator

2.     The Ultimate Guide to Wordle

3.     The Top 10 Ways to Use Wordle in School

4.     Teaching History + Wordle

5.     Why Wordle?

Why start a Blog?

I have been debating starting a blog for a number of years. Whether it has been a fear of putting my thoughts out digitally or fear of not having a valuable enough opinion, I think it's about time to make my digital footprint. When talking to people about starting this blog, many people gave me positive feedback and the "its about time" responses but there are also others who didn't fully understand why I would want to put so much time and effort "blogging". Creating a digital footprint is as important today as creating a Personal Learning Network (PLN). The key components these two things have in common are (1) they create credibility, (2) they show an engaged, and motivated life-long learner, and (3) they create a community of interactive learners who are interested in the same topic. I think it's about time to become an active part of my own digital footprint. Up to this point I have created valuable and meaningful work for my employers but that doesn't transcend outside of the schools I've worked for to what I've created, who I am and what I believe in. As a K-12 certified educator, I want to share my knowledge as well as connect to other learners who are interested in how technology is integrated within education.

If your apprehensive about starting a blog yourself check out Why Every Teacher Should Blog from the Drape's Take Blog. If you have any blogging experiences you'd like to share, or have any questions, please comment here or email me at andrealynnvollmer@gmail.com.