I’ve mentioned that I have had a lot going on lately that has kept me from blogging very consistently. One of the diversions has been an online class about Marzano’s research based strategies implemented with technology support.
The class is being taught by Elizabeth Hubbell from Mcrel (Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning). There are about six schools in my school district that are participating in the class. Elizabeth doesn’t fly out every two weeks from Denver to deliver her lesson, instead she comes to us via Marratech, an online meeting place. Each of the six school sites participating in the class has a web cam and we can see and talk to each other and text each other if necessary.
There has been a certain amount of unintended comic relief in the occasional dropped camera or mic left open mistake. My school site was only able to marginally participate in the first two meetings because the person onsite that installed the software was only marginally competent, so we had some connection issues. However this week I … I mean the person, used my Mac and an iSight camera and it worked flawlessly.
The class is really supposed to be about using Marzano’s strategies (and it is), but one of the intended consequences of the class is that it forces teachers and administrators to use technology in meaningful ways that they are not familiar or comfortable with (hence the unintended comic relief – see above). We’ve only met 3 times so far, but each time participants seem to gain a bit more confidence in logging-on, getting the web cam to work and use the other features of the software. To me just that is reason enough to embrace this use of technology, I’ll wait until the end of the class in March or April to decide if it is a truly effective use.
Learning is messy!
Yep… that’s what happened when we used Moodle to plan last year. We used the tool to plan the school, but an intended side benefit was that we all saw how powerful it was to use that tool. That made making it part of SLA’s everyday existence much easier.
Hi there. I’m not sure if you are still updating your blog, but I am interested to hear what you learned from this class. I’m both interested in how Marzano’s strategies were “worked out” in the classroom and definitely how that worked with technology. If your willing to share, I’d be glad to listen…er read 🙂
Hi Sharon – Yes my blog is still going strong. I did try a number of the strategies, however my use of them has been muddied quite a bit by all the other trainings and programs we are being required to attend and incorporate into our day. I did have some success teaching my students analogies, but to get the most out of that experience we would have had to consistently spend time on them, and that just didn’t happen. I have tried to keep some of them in mind when I teach lessons with only spotty success. Hope that helps!
Brian
It does. It gives me the picture that I too often see, that we are usually spread too thin to do all that we want effectively. I was encouraged the other day to have a tech teacher tell me that he simply works on integrating one concept per year. He focuses on it and tries to look at what he’s already doing with that in mind. I know I’ve been studying Marzano’s setting objectives and providing feedback. I have collected enough ideas already to last a year and there is NO way I could put them all into play. But, I hope I can integrate some and retain them next year while I focus on integrating the next concept. Keep up the good fight 🙂