Last week my principal asked me these three questions:
- How you would like to see instruction change as technology develops?
- How does it transform instructional strategies?
- How do we intentionally design and train staff to accomplish the desired outcomes?
This was my e-mail response:
Yesterday I had a teacher share with me that they would really love to have some of “those mini laptops” for their classroom. When I asked why, they excitedly shared their vision of students being able to take STAR Reading, Math, and Accelerated Reader tests whenever they wanted. Seriously, if that’s the only argument for putting technology in the K-5 classrooms then my answer would be a definite “No!”. Computer based assessment is not a transformative use of technology. It’s just using a modern (and expensive) tool to do something we’re already doing.
The ISTE National Technology Standards for Students say that we should be preparing students so they can effectively use technology tools and demonstrate…
1. Creativity and Innovation
2. Communication & Collaboration
3. Research and Information Fluency
4. Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making
5. Digital Citizenship
6. Technology Operations & Concepts
In my opinion, we are already working on the first step toward transforming our instructional strategies through the process of curriculum mapping. Changing a mindset of “my textbook is my curriculum” to “my curriculum is my curriculum and a textbook is just a resource” is a monumental task. Once this has been accomplished then we can work on identifying lessons and activities that focus on curriculum goals and also meet these six areas of technology proficiency.
Preparing and training our staff to do this will involve tweaking a couple of other mindsets as well. First is that our students need to learn to be good citizens and demonstrate Christian morals and values in two worlds – the real world AND the online world, because they will be living and working in both. Our teachers need to be able to model and teach good digital citizenship to their students. This will involve training in web safety, appropriate use, and how to integrate our Online Behavior Agreement (PDF) into their Christian Learning curriculum and any lessons that involve using technology.
Second we need to help them understand that all learning and knowledge is not limited to the walls of their own classroom. They need to be connecting and collaborating with other people (subject matter experts) and classes outside our school, state, or even country. To do this, teachers need to develop their own Personal Learning Network (PLN) – an online community of professional educators for sharing ideas & lessons, getting support, and working together on projects. This will require moving beyond email and training them to use and integrate online collaborative tools and social networks into their daily life. It will also require some cooperation with our IT Department, convincing them to open up some of the restrictions currently prohibiting such tools. If our staff understands and demonstrates proper use of the tools and can use them effectively to help our students meet the ISTE Standards, this should not be a hard sell.
After we met on Tuesday to discuss this further, I was assigned the task of planning our professional development days for the 2010-2011 school year.
Be careful what you ask for...
(Be warned, I will be calling on my PLN for help with this.)
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