#COACHBETTER Spotlight
Kim Cofino at #COACHBETTER SPOTLIGHT interviews James Welsh regarding the five characteristics of effective educational technology from a coaching perspective. Listen to the full hour-long podcast at CoachBetter.tv or watch the 15-minute spotlight version on...
TIM Tools Application Programming Interface
The TIM Tools development team has always put an emphasis on the school or district’s convenient access to their own data. Clients can create reports just by making a few selections in the Report Tool. Data from the TUPS, TIM-O, TIM-R, and TIM-LP can be...
PD Resources for Implementing the TIM in Your School or District
So your school or district has decided to implement the Technology Integration Matrix (Good choice!) and it falls to you to provide the professional development for your teachers. Fear not! The TIM website now has over 1,000 pages of content you can use. So where to...
Extensity: A Teacher’s Highest Integration Level
This month we will begin a new series entitled “Getting the most from your TIM Observation Data.” A careful consideration of your TIM-O data will give you a deeper understanding of the technology-related strengths and needs of your teachers so you can more...
Choosing Models and Modeling Choices
The Second Handbook of Information Technology in Primary and Secondary Education is out this year and it includes an article by Scott McLeod entitled, “Technology Integration, Leadership, and Organizational Support Frameworks for Instructional Improvement with...
Ultimate Teaching Device
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Ultimate Teaching Device Identified Tampa, FL (September 26, 2019) After years of testing, the Florida Center for Satirical Research has determined that the ultimate teaching device is not the celebrated Infotroneks 2000 adopted by many leading...
Using the TIM-C Coaching Tool
It comes as no surprise that TIM Tools clients tend to have strong coaching/mentoring programs in their schools or districts. Current clients use the TUPS, TIM-O, and ARTI to support tech planning, resource allocation, research and evaluation, and professional...
TIM Tools: Do I need a school or a district license?
You might think that a school would always need a School license and a district would always need a District license. While that may be true in most cases, experience has taught us that our clients often use TIM Tools in ways that we never anticipated, so it’s...
TIM-Powered Research and Evaluation
In a previous post I highlighted updates to our published research page and mentioned several ways we are seeing the Technology Integration Matrix (TIM) used in research studies. In this post I would like to give a little more information about each of these...
Admin Guide at Your Service
We love interacting with TIM Tools clients via email, phone, or videoconference. Sometimes a conversation with a real live human is the most efficient way of getting started with TIM Tools. When we get a phone call from a tech director who says, “I need to...
“C” is for Coaching: Introducing the TIM-C
The September update of TIM Tools will include a new tool: the TIM-C. Many of our current clients have been using data from one or more of the TIM Tools to support their coaching programs, while documenting coaching cycles within spreadsheets or other tools that...
Collaborative Learning: Building Knowledge in Community
This is the second in a series on the characteristics of a meaningful learning environment. The first was Active Learning: Engaging Students’ Minds. The Collaborative characteristic describes the degree to which technology is used to facilitate, enable, or...
Check out our updated TIM Research page!
It is exciting to see more and more examples of people using the Technology Integration Matrix (TIM) and TIM Tools in their research! We recently updated the Research page on our website to share these with you. Our goal is to strengthen the body of knowledge...
The Invisible Technology Integration Matrix
On the surface, the TIM looks pretty simple. There are five characteristics of effective learning environments: Active, Collaborative, Constructive, Authentic, and Goal-Directed. And there are five levels of technology integration ranging from the Entry to the...
When Old Tech Is Better
Each week at FCIT, we interact with a wide range of schools and districts in a number of different countries. Many have enviable levels of the latest technology available to their students and teachers. Others struggle to provide even outdated, shared digital devices...
What do we mean by “independent access”?
I was recently talking with a friend at a school district about their upcoming round of TIM observations and we went down an interesting path talking about independence as it is discussed in the Technology Integration Matrix. A lot turns on independence. At the first...
Third Edition of the TIM Descriptors Arriving Soon!
Nearly a year in the making, the revised TIM descriptors are ready for publication. Last summer, we began conversations with some of our TIM Tools clients about revising the wording of the setting descriptors so that they applied equally well in virtual environments....
How many observations do I need?
Here’s a great question I recently received: In your experience, what are the optimal numbers of TIM Lesson Plan (TIM-LP) reviews per teacher and TIM Observations (TIM-O) per teacher to get actionable data? This is an interesting question and there is no...
3 Things To Look for in Any Classroom Observation Protocol
There are many protocols for observing classroom technology integration, including FCIT’s own Technology Integration Matrix and our corresponding TIM-O tool. In this post, I’m using the word “protocol” broadly to refer to any checklist, survey,...
Active Learning: Engaging Students’ Minds
The Technology Integration Matrix was not designed simply to promote the use of technology, but rather to encourage the use of whatever technology is available to promote effective, researched-based pedagogy. When constructing the TIM, we examined how technology could...
Leveraging TIM Tools Roles for Research and Evaluation
The addition of customizable roles in TIM Tools v6.0 has made it convenient to create and track different groups when evaluating technology initiatives, PD programs, or other interventions. The new roles feature defines eight different sets of permissions, or roles,...
Nail Your Next Tech PD with the Quadrant Graph
“Teachers are the toughest students.” Everyone who has ever conducted professional development has muttered some variation of that quote at one time or another. It’s no surprise that a classroom of teachers is a tough audience. They spend their days...
Rockin’ Roles in TIM Tools 6.0
Each new instance of TIM Tools includes eight predefined roles: Super Administrator, District Leader, Zone Leader, School Leader, District Observer, Zone Observer, School Observer, and Teacher. The default permissions for each of the eight roles are preset to what is...
TIM Tools 6.0 Arrives!
FCIT is rolling out a major upgrade to TIM Evaluation Tools this month. Site administrators will now have much greater flexibility to create and define roles within the system. The standard TIM Tools installation now comes with eight default roles: Super...
Using TIM Tools around the World
TIM Tools have been successfully used in individual schools and entire school systems around the world, but the new version 6.0 now makes it even easier to configure a TIM Tools instance to match the structure of just about any type of school system. The addition of a...
TIM Tools 6.0 and Private Schools
Much of the attention surrounding the version 6.0 release of TIM Tools regards the new flexibility of creating and defining roles within the system. While this may be somewhat more important to large school systems, it also has practical application to individual...
TIM Tools 6.0 in Higher Ed
Although colleges of education have been using TIM Tools for years, with the rollout of version 6.0, it is now much easier to manage any combination of research projects, grant evaluations, and intern observations in a single “district” version of the software. The...
A Teenager in the House: TIM Turns 13!
As the Technology Integration Matrix officially becomes a teenager, we take a look back at TIM’s formative years and speculate just a bit about the future. Originally published in 2005, the Technology Integration Matrix was produced by the Florida Center for...
Custom Banners for Your TIM Tools Instance
While most TIM Tools clients use one of the 100 or so built-in page header images for their site, some clients prefer to make a custom banner to match their other websites or sometimes just their school colors. With just a few minutes effort you can create a custom...
Overcome Survey Fatigue with Cute Robots
Survey fatigue is a well-documented phenomenon that lowers both the response rate and quality of responses. Two types of fatigue are generally distinguished: 1. Survey Response Fatigue happens when people are asked to take too many surveys. They are simply tired of...
Three ARTI Scenarios
Most districts begin their use of TIM Tools with the TUPS to capture a snapshot of their technology and professional development needs. They then begin implementing the TIM-O with their teachers. And then, well, they often don’t get to the equally useful action...
How often should we administer the TUPS?
We are sometimes asked how often the Technology Uses and Perceptions Survey (TUPS) should be administered. The answer, of course depends entirely upon your purposes, the implementation timeline, and the professional development opportunities available to your...
iTeach Professional Learning and the TIM
Is your district looking for ways to help their teachers and administrators further their knowledge of the Technology Integration Matrix (TIM)? We offer online professional development courses to help educators learn about the TIM and how to implement the TIM Tools....
4 Tips for TIM Observers
We integrate technology, not for technology’s sake. We integrate it in varied ways, in ways that are pedagogicly sound, and in ways that relate to the subject matter. We integrate technology in ways that play on the strengths of the teacher and address the needs of...
TIM Single Sign-On and Classlink
No one likes remembering multiple passwords. At FCIT, we have worked hard to provide TIM Tools administrators with plenty of options for managing user accounts and passwords within the TIM Tools, including user-controlled password management and a batch-change process...
The TIM and Assistive Technology
The levels of the Technology Integration Matrix describe a range of different pedagogical approaches applied to the use of technology in K-12 classrooms. But how does the TIM relate to assistive technologies that are designed to be used by students with disabilities?...
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