The approved educational technology plan for Williamsburg James City Schools sets out a five year plan to meet the educational technology goals for the division. The primary focus of the plan “is to ensure educational excellence and equity, providing all teachers and students with the resources, knowledge, and skills to thrive in technology intensive, ever changing, global society in which we live.” The division plans to meet this goal using a strategy that addresses infrastructure, an instructional technology standard, student computing, administrative computing, support and training, and curriculum integration. The plan describes an incorporation of numerous technology tools into the educational environment and then the training and support component necessary to make them effective.
The vision laid out in this plan is very similar to the technology literacy model found in the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) ICT Competency Standards for Teachers. The technology literacy model’s approach “is to prepare learners, citizens, and a workforce that is capable of taking up new technologies so as to support social development and improve economic productivity.” The UNESCO model also mentions making resources available and finding ways to incorporate them into the curriculum.
WJCC is currently in the process of revising the educational technology plan and that plan seems to focus more on the knowledge deepening model of UNESCO. The idea that students have more control over their own education by engaging with significant problems or questions of various subjects and then attempting to solve those problems or questions. This plan has not yet been approved and I don’t see WJCC making strides to meet the goals of that idea just yet.
Currently I am involved in the WJCC vision as an Instructional Technology Resource Teacher (ITRT). My role as an ITRT is to assist in the integration process. I teach the teachers how to use technologies to effectively instruct the students. My fellow ITRTs and I are on the front lines of technology integration. We are the ones providing the training and support to the teachers. We do this through division wide, school wide, team or curriculum, or one on one training sessions where we review and demonstrate appropriate uses of technology for instruction. Currently we are working to shift from basic instruction on how to use tools to greater integration of tools into instructional practice. We are in effective working to shift from the technology literacy model to the knowledge deepening model.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Session 7A Learning Community Participation
My plan for continued involvment in learning communities is as follows:
1.) Continue to be an active member of my team at work, which is a local learning community, by participating, sharing, and actively stealing all the good ideas that my team mates share at team meetings.
2.) Continue to reach out and communicate with my own informal learning network of educator friends as we share ideas and resources as we come across them.
3.) Continue to read the education blogs that I subscribe to in an effort to be aware of ideas and resources that exist out in the greater world.
Now on to how I really feel about this standard:
The ISTE NETS-T standard says, "participate in local and global learning communities ." Yet the proficient rubric we dealt with for this course said participation meant active contributions including responding to others. Here is how I feel about that.
While I recognize the value of participating in learning communities and the value that comes from learning from people around the globe, I take umbrage at the suggestion that to be an effective teacher who uses technology we should be actively participating in a manner that requires us to contribute. I believe active participation can include regular reading or subscribing to the information generated and posted by the community. Active participation does not necessitate my own contributions to that community. I recognize that a community filled with people who don’t contribute means nothing ever gets discussed, but at the same time a community that has no one reading or watching products placed before it also does not accomplish anything.
1.) Continue to be an active member of my team at work, which is a local learning community, by participating, sharing, and actively stealing all the good ideas that my team mates share at team meetings.
2.) Continue to reach out and communicate with my own informal learning network of educator friends as we share ideas and resources as we come across them.
3.) Continue to read the education blogs that I subscribe to in an effort to be aware of ideas and resources that exist out in the greater world.
Now on to how I really feel about this standard:
The ISTE NETS-T standard says, "participate in local and global learning communities ." Yet the proficient rubric we dealt with for this course said participation meant active contributions including responding to others. Here is how I feel about that.
While I recognize the value of participating in learning communities and the value that comes from learning from people around the globe, I take umbrage at the suggestion that to be an effective teacher who uses technology we should be actively participating in a manner that requires us to contribute. I believe active participation can include regular reading or subscribing to the information generated and posted by the community. Active participation does not necessitate my own contributions to that community. I recognize that a community filled with people who don’t contribute means nothing ever gets discussed, but at the same time a community that has no one reading or watching products placed before it also does not accomplish anything.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Session 6 - Authorized Use Policies
The AUP discussion really got me thinking about how to do a better job of communicating the important ideas found in an Authorized Use Policy. For those of you unfamiliar with this educational term it is a legal document that parents, teachers, and students sign saying they will use the technology provided by the school division in a proper way. That is for educational purposes only and in a way they were instructed to use it. I know that some of the problems with my division's policy include its lenght, the legal language used, and its mix of addressing behaviors and technologies instead of focusing on behaviors. The AUP is fast becoming dated because it does not address portable devices which our division is just now beginning to implement. Students have trouble following it because they dont really understand what it is that they are signing.
My thoughts on that are to have the ITRT team create an educational video on the AUP to be shown at the beginning of the year as a refresher for teachers on the important parts of the AUP. The ITRT team could also create an educational video for secondary and elementary students reminding them of the important dos and donts with school technology. By showing and reminding students of these important rules every year, we would help to reinforce the message with in. One can always hope for these changes.
My thoughts on that are to have the ITRT team create an educational video on the AUP to be shown at the beginning of the year as a refresher for teachers on the important parts of the AUP. The ITRT team could also create an educational video for secondary and elementary students reminding them of the important dos and donts with school technology. By showing and reminding students of these important rules every year, we would help to reinforce the message with in. One can always hope for these changes.
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