To Know or Not To Know

Taking the assessments was truly a learning moment for me. If someone would have asked me to rate my knowledge of technology from 1-5, I would have given myself a 4. However, after pondering the items on the Technology Application Inventory and the Teacher survey from SETDA, I know rate myself at 2.5.

According to the results of the Technology Applications survey, my strongest areas are in the foundations and problem solving domains. I am not surprised that I am proficient in the Foundations domain because I learned many things in that category in high school and college. Since then, I have repeatedly used different operating systems, keyboard functions, and used digital images in products and projects.

My knowledge in the solving problems did take me by surprise however. When I think of problem solving my mind automatically goes to troubleshooting. I am very weak in this area. But this section of the survey was more about planning, creating, and applying technological tools to produce a variety of documents.

I think both the Long-Range Plan for Technology and the Technology Applications TEKS are really good guidelines for educators to follow. They both coincide and outlines what should be done in schools as far as technology is concerned. The TEKS are a blueprint that a classroom teacher should follow to ensure that their students are getting the information and learning that standards that is required of them each school year. The Long-Range Plan is just that, a plan to help get classrooms where they need to be. I think it really details the vision, the roles of all the stakeholders, current situations, and the future goals to get the students ready for the 21st century in the educational institutions and at the workplace.

The survey form SETDA was an eye opening and thought provoking task to complete. I realized that my campus is far behind other campuses as far as technology is concerned. There is not much data being collected about the use of technology in our district because there is not much technology use available to our students. The equipment needed to teach my students how to produce power points, web pages, create spread sheets, and complete practice drills are just not readily available to them.

I am a person that learns by doing. I learned to create my own web page, well by creating one. Other things such as working with formulas on a spreadsheet, inserting tables, and cropping photographs, I learned mostly by trial and error. The downfall to this method is that I didn't learn the appropriate terminology or process to many functions.

As a classroom teacher, I would love to be able to show my students some other uses of technology besides typing a paper and updating their MySpace pages. The resources are just not available. I would like to pass the knowledge that I have on to my students. But I would also like to learn more things about other forms of technology use besides the computer. I need to become familiar with terminology, other forms of technology, and more uses to aid in the job of an educator in and out of the classroom.

Both the Long-Range Plan and the Technology Applications TEKS both conincide and detail what the use of technology should look like in the classroom. I believe both of them are good foundations. The TEKS are like a check list for the classroom teachers. They list everything a student should know before leaving that grade level. The Long-Range Plan gives a means and a roadmap on how to get the schools where they should be. It clearly states a vision, defines roles, gives a timeline, and identifies needs. I think with the two of them we can actually prepare learners to be better equipped for the future educational institutions and workplace.