JESSICA SHIPMAN

April 2011

I N T E R N S H I P R E P O R T : W H AT E V E R I T TA K E S
Brief Description:

My internship was a unique situation, as the context for the internship is typically supposed to
be the workplace of the intern. I began this year without a workplace and therefore had to
determine how I was going to be a part of a change process without any place to really change. I
went through several thoughts back in August, and finally landed on changing a classroom based
curriculum for world geography into a completely online curriculum. I spent most of the first
semester avoiding this work and discovered that I am not an intrinsically motivated worker and I
prefer to be a part of a team. I discovered that working from my home on my own schedule was
not going to be productive. I then began to look for places of business, or schools in my area that
would allow me to come in and partner with them to change something about what they are
doing.

I got an opportunity in January, through a volunteer connection, to join the team at Vega
Elementary School. I met with the principal, Wendy, to get permission to do my internship at her
school and she was more than open to me coming in and collaborating with her teachers to
integrate technology into her teachers classrooms and lessons. She introduced me to Laurie Teer,
who is the Library and Media Specialist at Vega which is the position that serves as the technology
integrator for the schools in McKinney ISD. Laurie informed me of a district wide project called
“McKinney Tech Fair Challenge”. The project was introduced to the LMS’s in February and they
were supposed to relay the information to the teachers.

The Problem

As with most teachers in the second semester, teachers at Vega are having a hard time finding
the time to add technologies into their already existing curriculum. Many of them are very
interested in learning these technologies and find it beneficial to their students to include them, but
they just simply can’t find the time to make it happen. It is this problem that I intended on
addressing with the time I had with my internship. Incidentally, helping teachers to integrate
technology into their lessons also lined up with the goal of the Tech Fair Challenge.

The Tech Fair Challenge was a directive from the district technology office to encourage
teachers to integrate different technologies into their classroom. The teachers were supposed to
create lessons that had students create an end product that included some kind of technology, such
as a video, using a Web 2.0 technology etc. When the teachers submit their lesson they will be
judged by a panel of experts and then awarded prizes ranging from subscriptions to Glogster, to
Target gift cards.

Constraints

This “Challenge” provided me with the perfect opportunity to have teachers see value in my
expertise, and allow me to help them integrate technology into their classrooms. Laurie had not
yet found the time to introduce the challenge to the staff, when I started my internship and had
not intended to because of the time constraints of TAKS testing. February, logistically was probably
not the best time to introduce this project to the staff as they are entering their state mandated
testing and they are focused on finishing the curriculum to meet the needs of the TAKS test.

The Challenge was only introduced to a few teachers who would approach either Laurie or
myself about learning a new technology and introducing it to the students. However, the word
spread fairly quickly that I was in the building and I had quite a few projects to work on, and quite a
few teachers to work with on integrating several different technologies into already existing
lessons.

Other than the lack of time to introduce the Challenge to the teachers, there was also an
access problem that we ran into. Most students in elementary school do not have an email
address, and most Web 2.0 applications require the user to register in order to use the tool. This
created a problem that we had to solve creatively, or simply not use that tool. We were able to
find several tools, however that did not require an email address and those tools were used most
prominently in this project at Vega.

Other than those constraints, my time at Vega was wide open to be able to help in anyway I
could.

Goals

This lack of time also provided me with the chance to create a goal for my internship. I wanted
to help at least three teachers submit projects to the Tech Fair Challenge, by not only introducing
tools that they could easily integrate into lessons, but also to help them to learn the tool, and help
them to teach the tool to their students. I also wanted to spend some time helping some teachers
to use their SMART boards more effectively.

My hope is that my short time at Vega will encourage enough teachers in their ability to try
new technologies, that they will not only use those technologies on the same lessons in the future,
but try them also in new lessons. In addition my hope is that some of these teachers will become
leaders in their school and be able to help their fellow colleagues in finding and using some of
these technologies in their lesson plans.

My Role

I am coming in as an outsider, into a school that has a reputation for having great report among
colleagues, and a principal who encourages community. My church is a community partner with
Vega and the teachers are aware that I have volunteered in other aspects around the school
before, but they are not aware of my credentials or why I am coming into their school. In order to
build a report with this group of teachers that do not know me I had to come up with a way to
communicate with all of them and show them what is possible in their own classrooms without
stepping on any toes. I had the confidence of the principal, I just had to build trust among the
teachers.
 I found that my role as a volunteer, and as a specialist in instructional technologies, along with
my willingness to help them achieve their own technology goals was really all I needed to become
a valuable member of their community.

Timeframe

The Tech Fair Challenge had a submission deadline of May 4, but other than that I really was on
a schedule to make sure that I finished my 90 hours of required internship from the time I started
in February, until May 1 which is when I was due to have a baby. I wanted to make sure that I
could do as much as I can for the teachers at Vega before I was no longer able to go into the
school and be a presence. There were no other time constraints, or deadlines that needed to be
met.

Work Processes

My work processes were really informal. I started out by introducing myself to Laurie and
letting her know that I was there to do whatever projects that she needed me to do as long as
they involved integrating more technology into classrooms. I chose to introduce myself to the rest
of the faculty via a newsletter that I created called “Tech Tools”.

Tech Tools was a weekly newsletter that highlighted two Web 2.0 tools. I included what they
did, how they worked, how they could be integrated into a lesson or two, and if I had an example
to include I would include the example. I also included a disclaimer about who I was and my role
and that I would be more than happy to sit down with the teachers on an individual basis and
come up with ways the tools could be integrated into their lessons. I also included information
about the Tech Fair Challenge, and encouraged the teachers that I would be willing to help them
develop and submit any lesson they wanted to the Challenge.

As I became more familiar with the Challenge, I came to find out that all of the lessons needed
to be submitted via learning.com, a subscription lesson planning and collaboration website that
McKinney ISD had paid for. The director of technology integration at the district had organized a
couple of professional development webinars for teachers to attend to get more familiar with
learning.com so that they can then submit their lessons to the Challenge. Since the teachers at
Vega were not even aware of the challenge, the chances of them attending these webinars was slim
to none. I decided, in order to make the information more accessible by creating a Pixton.com
based job aid for the teachers to follow when trying to submit their lessons. I shared this job aid
with the director of technology, for her to post it for the remainder of the district to use.

Laurie’s role over the last couple of years had become the go to person for technology
integration, but she was also responsible for groups of gifted and talented students, running the
library/media center, and during TAKS season administering a number of tests. Because of the
timing of the Challenge and TAKS she felt less able to be able to help teachers submit lessons to
the Challenge and when they would contact her about a certain technology they would like to use
she eventually began to defer them to me. So as a result of the combination of “Tech Tools” and
Laurie begin too busy, I began to have an influx of teachers who wanted to bring their students
down to learn a technology, and then eventually to help the students to use the technology to
complete a task for a certain lesson.
 The first project that I was able to work on with teachers and students was a Prezi
presentation with the fourth graders for their body systems project. The students had been doing
group research on a specific body system and they needed to put together a presentation as the
final product of their research.

The second project I did was introducing Glogster to a group of 4th graders who were going
to be working on creating a visual representation of a math word problem.

The third project I did was working with second graders using Big Huge Labs to create a
magazine cover for their animals and habitats research project.

The last big project was working with the fifth graders on doing internet research. This is a big
project that Laurie needed to do before the fifth graders left for middle school. I put together an
interactive lesson using SMART notebook technologies to teach the students about internet safety
and research. In addition I taught them how to use Museum Box, which is a web 2.0 technology
that allows them to gather multimedia evidence in their box about their person or event.

Finally, I gathered all of the appropriate materials for each of these lessons and put together the
lessons in learning.com and submitted the lessons to the Tech Fair Challenge.

Competencies

Competency 9: Manage a development or related project

Competency 10: Participate in a change process and provide leadership in helping people
adopt new technologies or practices

Project Report and Reflection:

As an unemployed educator, this internship opportunity was an invaluable experience. I was

able to get my nose back to the grindstone and recognize that teaching is still something that I am
passionate about and something that I want to continue to do. In addition I also learned that I have
a passion for professional development and teaching the teachers. I found great pleasure in being
able to help teachers to integrate technology into their classrooms. I also found it very satisfying
that teachers were so proud of their students for doing so well on these final products that
integrated technologies. I know that in the future it was the student successes that will keep the
teachers continuing to find and use new technologies in their classrooms.

This internship was a great opportunity for me to get to know the workings of my local school
district and to network in the event that there is a job opportunity that arises. I have found
through this internship that technology integration, or technology coordination is a profession that I
could easily fit into an would derive a great deal of satisfaction from.

Given all of the circumstances of me finding an internship like this one, I don’t know that I
would change much about the work that I did with Vega. If given a different set of circumstances I
would have like the chance to have integrated some professional development and peer teaching
in a more formal setting through in service days or early release days. It would have been great to
do a series of professional development courses on Web 2.0 tools, SMART boards, and other
available technologies.