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