It's time to get started.

You have the notion . . . no, burning passion to make a difference in your school's educational system. Your research into learning and teaching has led you to believe that an effective learning environment for today's millennial learners must be learner-centric. It must engage the learner in problem-based learning that is both rigorous and relevant to the learner. Universal Design for Learning must be used to provide differentiated learning opportunities. Assessment must be both formative and summative.

This assignment is the beginning of a group-based trek towards creating a final packet that could be the foundation for implementing a 1-to-1 Technology-Rich Learning Environment in the real world.

Throughout the semester-long project, you will:

Creating your plan is the foundation of your success. We will be using the Smart Classrooms Bytes 21 Steps to 21st Century 1-to-1 Success (middle of the page) as the outline for our implementation. You will notice that it is divided into Planning, Preparation, Implementation and Review. We may stray from the four specific steps, but they will be our basis to begin.

Beginning your Planning Process

This section will be where your first step into the planning world for creating a Technology-Rich Learning Environment. You will complete the parts of the planning process as discussed, but you will probably modify it toe perfect it by the end of the semester.

Readings: It is assumed that by now you have read chapters 1- 5 & 7 in the 1-to-1 book and chapters 1-3 in the Fear to Facebook book.

Discussions: You need to begin your discussion with your group to identify the basics of your school. You will need to have discussions. These discussions will be used to clarify the specifics of your population and begin your plan accordingly. It is your decision whether you want to meet synchronously or asynchronously. It is your decisions whether you want to meet through typing, speaking or video conferencing. Your participation will be graded so it is necessary for you to chronicle your interactions somehow. You can record and post video conferences. You can use the BB9 discussion groups because they have built-in documentation. You can use back channel chats and post the transcripts. The important thing is that it must be evident who is attending and who is contributing. Each individual is accountable for this.

Who Are You?
Begin by identifying who you are and who is your school? Work with your team to identify the specifics of your school. (BTW, your project will be a school by default. A school is smaller and more manageable. If you want to work at a district level, please contact Dr. Z so that he can help you come to your senses. =-) This school can be a real school, a combination of real schools, or one that completely fantasy but seems to be relevant to the schools you hope to facilitate in your future.

Do: You will need to answer AT LEAST the following: size, location, student demographics, name (please use a false name), number of teachers, number of students, SES level, level of technological sophistication, size and distribution of other schools/students in the district, administrative technological sophistication (principle, tech coordinator, teachers, students), additional information that is relevant to identifying your needs and readiness for your 1-to-1 project.

Who is Like You?
You must research the web and your books to identify schools (more than 1) that are like you. It is not cheating to find successful schools and model yourself after them. Use our Diigo collection under "case studies" to find some schools. Bookmark case studies that best fit your school. They have already made the mistakes and had their successes so you should profit from them. They don't need to be in Iowa. They don't need to have exactly your demographics.You don't need to use everything about a school as your model. Maybe they have a stupendous professional development program. They just need to be similar enough to your situation so that you can learn from their model.

Do: Identify the schools that you have selected as models. In your Google Doc, you will want to identify each of the schools and then provide a complete description of why you selected this school and what about their situation you want to model while making your plan. You must include the link to the information you are using.

What is Your Vision?
Based upon research, how do you see the 1-to-1 environment as improving your learning opportunities? What is your vision for education in your school in a technology-rich learning environment. This must be a shared vision amongst your group so you must have some way that you are using to the discussion tools to create a consensus of your vision. Remember that it is NOT the 1-to-1 initiative that will drive your vision.

Do: Begin with your ultimate vision for your school's learning environment and describe how infusing a Technology-Rich Learning Environment can make your vision more attainable.

Assess your School for Readiness
It's important to know how ready your school is to make the changes that are necessary to create an effective Technology-Rich Learning Environment. There are many aspects to assessing your school. These include technology, curriculum, infrastructure, policy, administration and on and on and on. The literature says that you need to make this assessment, but we have yet to find a simple checklist.

Do: Your group's job is to review the literature to find what needs to be assessed and begin to create your own system for assessing your school. If we find an instrument that we agree upon as a tool to use for this assessment we can standardize on it, but until then it will be something that your group will create.

Policies
As you ready your school for adopting a Technology-Rich Learning Environment, you will need begin to create the necessary documents. You have been reading about these in your readings. This will include Acceptable Use Policies and Responsibility Agreements and ????

Do: Create documents reflecting your present policies. You don't have to create your own. Look for examples of policies/documents that have been created by other schools. Begin with their work and modify it to fit your specific school. You MUST acknowledge your source of the policy you finalize for your school. The document that you will create for this part of the process is preliminary. It will probably evolve as you progress through the process.

Submission:

Discussions: Post descriptions of your discussions and links to the records of the discussions on your group's wiki page. (Participation grade will be posted separately)

Plan: The plan should be based in a Google Doc that is shared with Dr. Z (zeitz@uni.edu). (Please ensure that the Google Doc is open to the world to review.) This is a plan that will expand throughout the semester as your create your Technology-Rich Learning Environment (1-to-1) package that will be completed at the culmination of the course. You must post the URL of your Google Doc that applies to Module 3 in the Module 3 dropbox. This will allow Dr. Z to provide feedback in one specific spot.

Module 3 Planning Rubric