Web Conference 1/29/12

Web Conferences can be very valuable. We use them in my district. Our district is big and we have seventeen middle schools. Our content coordinator has meetings over Adobe Connect. I will admit at first I was not really ready for this type of learning. I found it hard to concentrate and wanted to “play” with the new technology. I learned quickly that I really had to pay attention. Not everyone attends this meeting and it is up to me to get together with my team and share the information with them. They are counting on me to share the information accurately. I think it really helps with our group not having to leave their home campuses when we have meetings. It is respectful of our time and schedules. I think that is why it is perfect for our purposes in the Lamar Program. It allows us to get together with our fellow students and teachers and really help each other out. During the web conference that I attended there was a lot of students helping other students. It made you feel good to know that others had similar questions to the ones that you had. The biggest take away from the web conference is that I really understand my power as a teacher. We really do have power to get new technologies in the hands of our students. I remember a few years ago we could not access YouTube. Now we can. It took many teachers asking for it. Our district technology people allowed us access to it. It is wonderful. I teach history and many of the things that we talk about are all over the country and most of my students have not visited those places. Now I can describe the place and show them the place with YouTube. Teachers have to be vigilant in our work. The work that our students will do in the future have not been invented yet, so it is up to us to use new things like technology to prepare students with skills that will be marketable in the future.

EDLD 5352 Week 2 Assignment, Part 3: Blog Posts

I am looking at the area of Teaching and Learning in the STaR Chart or School Technology and Readiness assessment. Teaching and Learning is the most important piece of this puzzle to me because that is where the real work is done. Yes, teaching and learning must be fully supported by the other areas, but without effective teaching and learning the students will not meet the goals of the state. Teachers must be prepared either in their educator certification program or through professional development. The teachers and students must have the support of their administration to correctly implement any change. The structure must be there to support the technology. Teaching and Learning, just like the other areas it has four different levels. The first level is early tech. In early tech teaching and learning has the teacher at its source and there is little technology integration. If technology is used at all it is for drilling of facts. The second level is developing tech. This level instruction still comes from the teacher, but technology is used for locating information and making projects to be shown in the class. The third level is advanced tech. At this level the teacher guides instruction and technology is used to analyze data. The fourth level is target tech. Target tech has the role of the teacher as a learner along with the students. Students have access to all technology whenever they want allowing them to dictate when and where they work on school assignments. In looking at the area of teaching in learning we have had made progress over the years. When I look at my campus this is an area that we have grown in. In my campus we have grown from developing tech to advanced tech. When I reflect upon my own education, I really see a difference in this area. For the most part, when I was a student teachers taught and students sat and listened. This was the way it was. Today our classrooms do not look this way. I do not think that we are to the point where we have total acceptance in this area, but we are making strives there. Teachers are really seeing themselves as lifelong learners and one of the ways we can show this is by working with the students as co-learners and not seeing ourselves as the sole catalyst of learning. In looking statewide, we need to move to the advanced tech and target tech more. In looking at trends in teaching and learning, we see that our state is growing more into the advanced tech from the developing tech. This is a step in the right direction. The problem that I have is the target tech has stayed exactly the same over the period from 2007-2010. One would expect some growth, but with so much shifting from early tech to the higher indicators it would make since that the next step would be more growth into target tech. I would recommend that we encourage more schools to reach the target tech before the deadline of 2020. One way to do this would be to offer financial incentives to schools and districts that reach target tech before the deadline. The state could partner with organizations that want to support education to help fund these incentives. The state could also offer a stipend to teachers and administrators that get a technology certification attached to their teaching credentials. I also think schools should reach out to higher education to offer dual credit for students in the area of technology. They could offer a degree to the students’ teacher this would show the public school students that their teacher truly is a lifelong learner. Personal Documentation Texas STaR Chart Retrieved from http://starchart.epsilen.com

Welcome to the dean s ta r chart meeting

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