Jenny Siegfried, IACEA Vice President for Divisions

Hello! Below, you can find links to the notes taken during our fall Division Meetings.

Administration

Support Services

ESL

Adult Basic & Secondary

To learn more about IACEA Divisions, visit www.iacea.net/regionsdivisions.html.

Michael Matos, Technology Project Manager at Chicago Citywide Literacy Coalition, IACEA Region 1 Director, and COABE Region 3 Representative

Editor's note: This is Part 2 of a two-part article on innovative technology integration. Read Part 1 here.

A new learning environment for educators
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How can we encourage discussions around “tech pain points” that arise when technology is introduced in education? In the Illinois Digital Learning Lab (IDLL), we focused on curating a collaborative, peer-to-peer learning environment for sharing strategies that encourage educators to take charge of their technology professional development. Core elements of the IDLL include:

1. Support for adult educators in effectively incorporating learning technology into the classroom using subject-matter experts (SMEs) and curated resources.
2. A facilitated learning community for educators and administrators to support, advise, and learn from each other and from the resources they find valuable.
3. Capturing insights about the most effective digital tools, delivery models, support strategies, which can then be shared across the state of Illinois.
   
   

Participating educators act as entrepreneurs, research digital tools, and experiment with a range of technologies in the classroom. Our intent is for educators to also reimagine their roles as innovators and technology advocates. 

Program design from this first cohort included:

- 25 educators from 22 organizations throughout Illinois.
- Five subject-matter experts (SMEs) supporting five cohorts that included a diverse set of participants (type of organization, role, curriculum, geographic location, student demographics).
- Participants committed at least 15 hours to the project including monthly virtual check-ins and bi-monthly reporting.
- The full community gathered for three peer-to-peer events (launch, mid-point, closing event)

The IDLL included a variety of traditional and innovative PD methods, including:

- Lectures by experts to launch the project.
- Peer-to-peer sharing on monthly Zoom meetings and mid-year gatherings.
- Continuous learning through social media (IDLL Facebook group).

In the first year, the IDLL successfully:

- Developed technology integration leaders who could support future professional development at the local level.
- Established the importance of assessing digital literacy skills and instruction.
- Supported educators and learners in reaching curricular and individual goals.
- Helped adult learners become more confident in using technology both within and beyond the classroom.

Ultimately, our community of adult educators in Illinois learned several valuable lessons that we are looking to build upon as we expand the IDLL into its second year. To increase the likelihood of technology adoption success, we found it’s important to:

- Adopt an always-learning culture so students, teachers, and administrators continuously build new skills together.
- Offer a variety of training methods and supports, including  lecturing, modeling, and exploratory (hands-on) learning.
- Lead with learning, not with the technology. The stories we tell should focus on how our learners are better served through technology integration. 
- Provide many avenues for key stakeholders to be involved, co-create, and share feedback. Giving everyone a voice ensures the conversation will be equitable and aligned with the needs of students and staff.
- Communicate regularly and keep the vision at the forefront. There are bound to be unique challenges that the team encounters; it’s much easier to stay motivated and focused if the vision for learning remains central to each conversation.

Ultimately, our goal is to help students and teachers develop the 21st century skills needed for professional and personal success. Technology can play a pivotal role in connecting us all as co-learners as we learn to navigate the increasingly complex future of work. Technology adoption can be challenging, but as long as we root ourselves in a collaborative environment and seek to reflect in an always-learning culture, we can increase the likelihood of technology success precisely because we are listening to each other and evolving based on the needs and goals we continuously refine as a learning community.

Michael Matos, Technology Project Manager at Chicago Citywide Literacy Coalition, IACEA Region 1 Director, and COABE Region 3 Representative

Editor's note: This is Part 1 of a two-part article on innovative technology integration. Look for Part 2 on Friday, September 25.

In my 25 years as an educator and educational administrator, I have always looked at teaching and learning as dynamic and interactive. Simply put, I place an emphasis on innovating education and educating to innovate. Most recently, I’ve had the opportunity to lead the Illinois Digital Learning Lab (IDLL), a cohort-based professional development model supported by the Grand Victoria Foundation that helps adult educators build digital literacy skills while creating technology-rich learning environments for adult learners. As an extension, the IDLL helps educators differentiate instruction while supporting the development of 21st century digital problem-solving skills. 

Because educational technology can be customizable and motivating to students, the effective use of edtech can provide some extraordinary and empowering opportunities for students and instructors. Introducing new tools, however, can be a challenging process for organizations. The barriers to using new technology have become increasingly visible in the rapid response to COVID-19 as teams quickly move to online instruction. 

In the 2014 research report, Adopting New Technologies for Student Success, the Community College Research Center in the Teachers College at Columbia University identified four key areas to consider when attempting to adopt new technology:

- Technological readiness focuses on current IT systems and technology usage.
- Organizational readiness focuses on how decisions are made and communicated.
- Project readiness focuses on the training and support available to staff and students.
- Motivational readiness focuses on if key stakeholders are aligned in the vision for technology usage and the need for change.
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As the report notes, the purpose of technology usage in education is not to “increase administrative efficiency or information technology (IT) compatibility, though this may occur. Rather it is to help colleagues in restructuring the student experience to encourage improved learning, persistence, and completion” (p. 1). In other words, technology isn’t used for the sake of technology, but rather to support a more accessible, equitable, and meaningful learning environment. When adopting new technology, like adding online learning programming, organizations can therefore increase the likelihood of success by considering and properly planning for each of the four areas outlined in the report. 

In Part 2, learn more about the Illinois Digital Learning Lab and how the Lab experience addressed these "tech pain points" in a practical, practitioner-to-practitioner way. Look for Part 2 on September 25!

Bill Swiderski, Joliet Junior College

This is the second in a series of posts featuring Stanford University's free Reading Like a Historian resource page. Part 1 can be read here.

In this blog, I would like to give an example of how to organize the choice of lessons to present to students.  I look for themes that span across different lessons.  It will take a little time to discover what might be found in the content of the lessons, but I am sure that there are many possibilities.  The first one that I found was on the issue of slavery.

The lesson on the Declaration of Independence gave the information about the main document itself, as well as the grievances listed by Jefferson against the King of England.  It points out that in the original list, one of the grievances was the use of slavery by the King and the strong condemnation of the practice. However, in the final document, that item was not included and thus began the approval of the practice by omission.  My student activity was to match main ideas with the grievances and to discuss the dangers in leaving that out.

The theme continued in the writing of the Constitution lesson where different arguments for not abolishing slavery in the constitution were delivered during the debate. I match main ideas in these arguments for the students to identify. We discuss how these excuses, though inappropriate for today, were the prevailing way of thinking at that time.

I also continue the theme in the Abraham Lincoln lesson, which goes into the politics of the Emancipation Proclamation. They read some of the comments of Lincoln during the debate with Stephen Douglas for the Senate position and letters that Lincoln wrote which show his inner thoughts about the subject, which would be considered bigoted by today’s standards.

I constantly remind the students about the previous lessons. We try to draw conclusions about what effect the delay in dealing with the problem had and how attitudes today have and have not changed.

With the large number of lessons available for free on Stanford's Reading Like a Historian website, there are many other themes that can be found.  If you're using this resource, what other themes have you found? What themes would you like to build lessons around? Share your ideas in the comments!

Bill Swiderski, Joliet Junior College

My name is Bill Swiderski and I teach an HSE reading and social studies class for Joliet Junior College.  The goal of the majority of students is to pass either the GED or Hi-Set test.  A few are in the class to improve their basic skills in reading before taking classes for obtaining a certification in a field or another degree. The students have multi-level TABE reading scores from two up to five with the majority in the 3-4 range.

In the social studies portion of the curriculum, because Illinois requires proof of passing the Constitution Test (which many of the students have not done), I have preparation materials for them to do before taking the Constitution Test and almost all pass this on the first attempt.  I also do some short lessons on map reading, geography and economics, since a few question on the HSE tests will cover those topics.  The challenge for me was to find suitable materials for the history and government areas.  The students have to read actual documents and answer question on those readings.  My goal was to find resources for that area.

I found a free online program from Stanford University called Reading like a Historian, which offers detailed lessons to present to students that use historical documents as the primary source of material. In future blog posts, I hope to share some of the lessons I have used (their list continues to grow each year) and to show how I use and adapt these lessons for the students. Since my curriculum also requires the language arts reading, language, and the essay, I do not have the class time to make elaborate plans, so I have streamlined many of their lessons to cover them in a short amount of time.

To teach these lessons, I give them in a sort of chronological order to show the progression of the historical periods and highlight how one has affected another. During the course of each lesson, I try to give the necessary background information on the topic so that the documents will make more sense, include some visual presentation (pictures or short video), the reading of the document, multiple choice questions to answer (which I adapt from their lessons since that is the format for the tests), and discussion that may relate to today’s circumstances and their lives.  I do not avoid political discussions but insist that they be done in a respectful manner.

One lesson I've used is titled Examining Passenger Lists.  When colonists came to the New World, these lists may have contained the only record of who was aboard.  After discussing why the passengers might have wanted to come here, I chose the smaller of the lists presented in the lesson in order to streamline the time needed.  The goal was for the student to sort and organize the information into categories of gender, age, and marital status. After completing this, we discussed the genealogy of our own families and what some may have found out from using sites like ancestry.com.  The lesson took about 30 minutes and seemed to be well-received.

Have you used Stanford University's Reading Like a Historian resource? Or have you used another resource for teaching social studies that was well-received by students? Leave a comment on this post and tell us about it!