Work Group Scenario Notes:

INSTRUCTIONS FOR ACTIVITY

The goal of this exercise is to explore possible solutions and for each member of the team to discover the challenges that other team members face in solving a variety of district wide problems.

• The participants in each of the groups will play the role of a member of a School District Team. 
• There are seven scenarios (below). One will be assigned to every group.
• You will select the role you will play and your team will be asked to address a specific scenario in your fictional school district.  Each work group will decide who will play the roles of Principal, Teachers, District/Building Technology Coordinator, School Board Member, or Parent.
• Each work group will assign a notetaker who will document discussion and results in the Wiki.

GROUP DISCUSSION BEGINS.

Each group will have 1 hour to participate in this simulated activity where you will:

·         Explore issues and develop creative solutions to real challenges…

·         Try to reach resolution,

·         Observe characteristics of positive and negative influences, and document what worked and what did not. 

Aspen Grove Go to the Aspen Grove page.

Aspen Grove District: There is a perception among staff that technology resources and support are distributed in an inequitable fashion. What can a shared leadership team to do address these perceptions and solve the problem?

Bear Mountain Go to the Bear Mountain page.

The Bear Mountain School District board has decided to curtail funding for professional development relating to educational technology, and instead direct the PD budget toward advancing the state test. The board made this statement “We don’t see any direct benefit to providing professional development for educational technology. We need to put our money into PD for the subjects where improved student achievement is a priority.”

Desert Springs Go to the Desert Springs page.

Several teachers in one school in the Desert Springs District are “pushing the envelope” in the Web 2.0 arena. They and their students are building blogs and wikis hosted on non-district servers. Their activities address credible learning aims. How do we reconcile these activities –-which are really getting at 21^stcentury skills and important content learning-- with district policy, and technical support?

Mountain View Go to the Mountain View page.

While the Mountain View School District has filtering software in place to block student and employee access to inappropriate Internet content, it generally has not blocked social networking and/or student commentary sites such as MySpace.com or RateMyTeachers.com. Recently, several parents and teachers have complained about these sites, stating that they're disrespectful, inappropriate, and disruptive of the educational process. What might be a reasoned response by the administrative / technology team?

Oceanside Go to the Oceanside page.

The Oceanside School District is considering implementation of a 1:1 laptop initiative for its 488 high school students. As part of the program, every teacher also will be given a laptop. What would an appropriate professional development plan for teachers, designed collaboratively by principals (instructional leaders) and technology coordinators (technology leaders), look like?

Harvest Glenn Go to the Harvest Glenn page.

The Harvest Glenn School District's Acceptable Use Policy strictly prohobits the use of cell phones on campus.  Recently, during a World Languages lesson at one of the high schools, students asked the teacher how to translate a specific word into Spanish. The teacher did not know the Spanish translation, and he then asked the students who had Web-enabled cell phones with them to pull them out. He demonstrated how the students could easily get the translation by texting Google. The class found the answer nearly instantly: a great example of utilizing a 21st Century tool to solve a problem in real-time.  

At the same time, other teachers are complaining about the number of student cell phones in the building and the faculty council is expressing concerns about text cheating in the classroom.  Given both scenarios, what might be a reasonable response both short-term and long-term?

Creekside Go to the Creekside page.

The Creekside District currently has a legally compliant filtering system in place which operates on the "block-first-and-open-later-is-safer" premise.  Teachers who want to have one or more sites unblocked must first make their requests in writing. Then a district committee meets to decide whether or not the site(s) will be unblocked.  Recently a group of music teachers asked that iTunes be unblocked to use the site for downloading music for their music theory and music technology courses. 

The filtering software does not allow for internal site blocking, meaning it's all or nothing for the iTunes site.  The teachers wrote an excellent rationale and made direct connections to the district curriculum.  What responses might the district committee could give for this request?  NOTE:  iTunes requires software be downloaded to make the site useable.

Scenario Handout

These scenarios were developed by Dan Morris and Ryan Imbriale (the Opportunity Group).