Mrs. B's Design Document- Importance of this Website

The creation of this website is important to me and those in the education field because of the ever growing presence of technology in the classroom. With the wide variety of tech tools available I wanted to make a website that could categorize the different tech tools by the different levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Many professionals in the education sector are given little training on how to use tech tools, let alone what you could use them for. To help alleviate some of that stress, this website would provide educators a way to simply look at the level of DOK and choose a tech tool that they could use for students to produce a product.

Mrs. B's Design Document - Style, Color, and Design

The design of my website is going to be clean and simple. I think often, many websites can get very distracting and can confuse the user. This would go against exactly what I am trying to accomplish with my site. Educators should have a hub that they can go to and find tech tools that line up with the different levels of Bloom's Taxonomy. The color pallet

I have chosen is in the triadic color wheel. This means the colors that I have chosen are equally spaced on the wheel. The main color of my site will be a light blue, with the accent colors, dark purple, golden yellow, teal, and magenta like colors.

Color Scheme class="center"

For the design of my site I went with a simple layout. The home page will include a banner along the top portion of the page and will have the different levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy listed. Users of my site will be able to click on Analyze, for example, and it will take them to the Analyze page. On the analyze page Will be a list of tech tools that will produce analysis, as well as, ease of use rating, and an explanation of the tech tool.

Home Remembering Understanding Applying Analyzing Evaluating Creating

Mrs B's Design Document - Purpose

I started this site with educators in mind. With the amount of time educators have in a day to plan, teach, conduct small groups, complete admin requests, grade, etc. The last thing they have time for is to dedicate hours to finding the right tech tool to use for their lesson plan next week. By having most of the tech tools and information all in one place my hope is that it will reduce the stress and time it takes to find the best tool for the lesson that is being planned.

Use Cases

  1. Use 1: Educators looking for a specific tech tool to align with Bloom’s Taxonomy and state standard DOK’s.
  2. Use 2: Technology coaches can use the site to facilitate lesson plan writing with teachers who are hesitant to use technology.
  3. Use 3: Give the site to the students so they can make the best choice as to how they want to present mastery of the standard being assessed.

    4. Survey Questions and Responses

    1. Why would this website be important to you?
    2. How would this website assist in your lesson planning?
    3. How often would you use a website like this?
    4. What specific content would you use?

    I sent the above questions out to my social studies colleagues. Of the 6 only 4 were able to respond in a reasonable time. The 4 that were able to partake included a sixth year teacher, 13th year teacher, 20th year teacher, and a 25th year teacher. Of the four, two were males, ages 34 and 45. The two females ages are 36 and 52. All of the participants live in Southwest Missouri and teach at the same suburban district. All 4 teachers taught 11th and/or 12th grade social studies. Three of the four have completed their masters degrees, and one is in progress of completing his masters.

    Collectivly the answer to the first question “Why would this website be important to you?” they answered with a similar response of, convenience, trustworthy, tested, provides examples, and it is all in one place. The 6th year teacher who was a former IT employee uses tech tools but wished he could use them in a more systematic way. While he has the background knowledge of technology, combining the technology tool with a specific outcome can be a challenge.

    The answers to the second question “How would this website assist in your lesson planning?” ranged from as a resource to providing it as a link for their students to explore their options underneath the correct domain. The 13 year teacher is probably the most experienced when it comes to using tech tools with substance. She has helped with the integration of our new LMS and promotes the use of tech in the classroom by offering PD sessions. She explained that letting the students have choice is an important factor in her lessons. Giving them a site like this would allow them to have many choices with examples modeled for them.

    Question 3 “How often would you use this website?” was answered the following way The 6th year teacher stated “Maybe once or twice a week.” The 13th year teacher explained “I would put this site as a resource within my homepage on our LMS. This way when students see the DOK verb they can go to the site and choose the best tech tool for them.” The 20 and 25 year teachers were a little more hesitant answering “I would try this out maybe once a unit.”

    The final question asks “What specific content would you use?” Each of the teachers responded with the student examples and explanations on how to use the tech tool successfully. By providing student examples the new group of students will have the opportunity to learn from their peers.

    While I got the impression that the teachers that were in the first half of their career were a bit more eager to try out this site, the two teachers that are nearing retirement seemed to be willing at least give it a try. I somewhat expected the split to be 50/50. Change can be difficult. It is hard to fully understand this generation of learners because they learned with books, pencils, and paper. They agree that technology is not going anywhere, but good old pen and paper still holds a lot of value.

    Use of Media

    The media that I intend to use will come from mostly images. I will be using student examples from my students and the students of the four teachers I interviewed.

    DOK Tech

    By the end of the semester I hope to have a nice website that will support teachers looking for tech tools that match a particular DOK from Bloom's Taxonomy I envision this website to be split up by the different DOK's and then providing drop down menus that would include different types of tech tools for those specific levels. For example if a teacher is planning out their lesson and they want to use a new tech tool that supports the creating DOK level, a teacher could go to my page, click on create and then see a varity of options along with examples. Technology is a part of education now, teachers can embrace it or fight it. I personally want to help teachers and support their steps to use technology to support their teaching. The quote below by Benjamin Bloom applies to everyone. Helping those with a fixed midset to see that growth is possible is an amazing challenge, but a satisfying one.

    "...a student attains 'higher order thinking' when he no longer believes in right or wrong". "A large part of what we call good teaching is a teacher´s ability to obtain affective objectives by challenging the student's fixed beliefs. ...a large part of what we call teaching is that the teacher should be able to use education to reorganize a child's thoughts, attitudes, and feelings".

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