Alex Facciponte's Week 1 Blog Post EDU 5373

Week 1 Blog EDU 5373- Alex Facciponte

Interview with John Albert

    Something that I noticed about the path taken by the interviewee was how they took into account every student regardless of socioeconomic status or being English Language Learners (Stachowiak and McClay, 2024). Albert took the time to recognize and appreciate everyone's differences and tried his best to provide equal access to each student (Stachowiak and McClay, 2024). Understanding the various students in the community allows for a sense of empowerment to grow. If all students were not considered, reaching them would be more difficult. Albert also provides a sense of choice regarding the teachers. The original technology rollout for the teachers was entirely voluntary (Stachowiak and McClay, 2024). However, nearly half of the teachers chose to participate (Stachowiak and McClay, 2024). These teachers are more engaged in wanting to learn how to integrate technology in their classrooms because they volunteered to do it in the first place (Stachowiak and McClay, 2024). Providing this sense of choice helps to motivate people to gravitate towards their interests.
    Although there is no direct connection to the ISTE Standards in the interview, Albert’s actions relate to the idea of the empowered learner standard (ISTE, 2025). The standard implies that students should be taking advantage of the technology given to them (ISTE, 2025). This is exactly what Albert is trying to accomplish by improving reading levels through the one-to-one iPad program (Stachowiak and McClay, 2024).
    Some real-world challenges are that students can be behind when they try to apply to colleges or the job market without technological and literacy knowledge (Stachowiak and McClay, 2024). However, Albert has done an amazing job with their program by empowering teachers. Albert conducted various trainings focused on pedagogical strategies before implementing technology (Stachowiak and McClay, 2024). This shows that the technology has a true purpose to work as an enhancer instead of being utilized just to be utilized. I find this a current issue with technology use in the classroom today, as there seems to be an oversaturation. Albert also adopted strategies from students using the Lexia Core 5 (Stachowiak and McClay, 2024). This program helps to adjust to current student levels and is smart enough to understand what they are good at and where they need improvements (Stachowiak and McClay, 2024). In the first three months of implementation, students saw a 33 percent growth (Stachowiak and McClay, 2024).
    In the interview, there was also a discussion of professional development. Albert helps to conduct professional development around choice (Stachowiak and McClay, 2024). He states that they ask teachers what they have seen and what they wish to learn (Stachowiak and McClay, 2024). Allowing this sense of choice can make professional development much more engaging and beneficial because the teachers choose what to learn about. Teachers have a lot on their minds, and if they are not engaged in professional development, they will not get much out of it.
    I personally do not have any direct critiques of this plan, as it has been effective and appreciates the idea of choice from both teacher and student perspectives, which is great. Something I did notice in the interview is that it mentioned how they saw drastic growth in the first couple of years, but since then, there has been little growth (Stachowiak and McClay, 2024). A potential solution to these issues could be consistently trying to innovate with new methods.
    There have also been connections to the readings the course has provided for this week. Bartholomew and colleagues' work mentions the idea of student choice (Bartholomew et al., 2017). Although the research indicates mixed success in terms of achievement, providing choice can engage students and teachers more (Bartholomew et al., 2017). In his interview, Albert pointed out the significance of offering choices to allow all stakeholders to be more engaged in what they were participating in (Stachowiak and McClay, 2024). In Rule’s work, there is also a connection to student choice (Rule, 2006). It again gives the learners a sense of empowerment (Rule, 2006). Albert focused on this when trying to accomplish his goals by engaging all stakeholders (Stachowiak and McClay, 2024).

References

Bartholomew, S. R., Reeve, E., Veon, R., Goodridge, W., Lee, V., & Nadelson, L. (2017). Relationships between access to mobile devices, student self-directed learning, and achievement. Journal of Technology Education, 29(1). Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.21061/jte.v29i1.a.1

ISTE Standards: For Students. ISTE. (2025). Retrieved from: https://iste.org/standards/students

Rule, A.C. (2006). Editorial: the components of authentic learning. Journal of Authentic Learning, 3(1), 1-10.

Stachowiak, & McClay, J. (2024). Making voices matter with educational technology. Igniting Your Leadership with Technology. Retrieved from: https://pressbooks.pub/edd7032018f/chapter/making-voices-matter-with-educational-technology/