Module+1

Module One: Standards and Technology

//**Reflection Prompt:**// How has your knowledge of technology standards changed after this module? Reflect on your own use of technology standards in your classroom and personal use.
====**Description:** For this module we were required to read the //National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers// booklet along with the introduction and chapter 1 of the //ISTE’s Technology Facilitation and Leadership Standards// book. The //National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers// booklet focused on the technology standards and performance indicators for students and teachers. The //ISTE’s Technology Facilitation and Leadership Standards// readings focused on the separate sets of performance standards, performance indicators, and performance tasks for Technology Facilitation (TF) and Technology Leadership (TL). ====

====**Impact:** These readings truly had a larger influence on my knowledge of what a 21st century, technology rich, classroom environment should look like then I thought our first readings would. In order to create digital-age learning experiences for students I realize that I needed to fully understand the performance indicators for teachers and students. Just like any other content standard in school, the technology standards provide educators with a goal to reach while teaching and skills for students to master. I had heard of the National Educational Technology Standards before but, I had never taken the time to sit down and really read them. At first, when I read the rubrics in the NETS-T booklet I felt like I was at the beginning or developing level but the more I keep reading over the rubrics I feel that I am more in between the developing and proficient levels. My goal is to get my lessons at the transformative level. The thing I struggle with the most is using technology on a daily basis. I do use the SMARTboard on a daily basis but I do not have enough computers to have all students working on them daily. Since I only have four desktop computers in my classroom I have divided my math classes into groups which rotate through a series of three or four stations a day; one station is always a computer station where my students work on a program called IXL. This has been the best way for me to ensure that all my students have had the opportunity to be working on a computer. However, not every lesson works with stations and some lessons are more effective with hands-on activities than computer support. I feel like my students should be interacting with computers on a daily or at least a weekly basis but, I guess I still wonder if working on a math program really constitutes as technology integration. ==== ====Also, to be completely honest, I always thought technology facilitation and technology leadership meant the same thing before completing these readings. I now know that although technology facilitators have an in-depth understanding of various technologies, technology leaders need to have an even more advanced understanding than facilitators do. In addition, I liked how Williamson and Redish (2009) pointed out that “critics have expressed concern that technology skills training has been overemphasized in teacher professional development, while support for integrating technology into academic content area has been neglected” (p. 21). While reading this statement I actually yelled out “YES…EXACTLY.” I am so glad the district I work in is using our professional development days to provide us with training on SMARTboards but, I would also really love to have some professional development days devoted to teaching us various ways to integrate technology in daily lessons. I know there are so many ways that I could be having my students interacting with technology that I have not learned about. Principals are always encouraging their teachers to integrate technology into their classrooms, but what does that really look like? (Looking ahead, I think chapter two might help me out with this a little more). ====

====**Intent:** By reflecting on what I read and learned about technology standards, I thought about what I intended to do with this newly gained knowledge and then I actually implemented it. These readings encouraged me to set a technology goal for myself this week. Normally when I do math stations, one station is a game, one station is a practice worksheet, one station is a computer station, and one station is the lesson with the teacher. When I teach the lesson, my group is always utilizing the SMARTboard. The students come up to the board and solve problems on it but, I wanted to plan an activity that would allow my students to interact with the SMARTboard independently without a teacher present. I was always acting as the facilitator on how to navigate from page to page and what problems we would do next. I wanted the students to demonstrate how well they could interact with the SMARTboard by themselves. In setting this goal for myself, I created a math activity using SMART Notebook 10 software where I provided my students with a question that they all had to work out on their marker boards. Then one student at a time would act as the teacher who worked out the problem on the board and checked to see if everyone got the answer correct. I created Notebook pages in which there were two different colored boxes; one box had a math problem and the other one was blank. Once all the students completed a problem on their own, the student acting as the teacher would drag the problem into the empty box and the problem would disappear and the answer would appear. My students thought it was the coolest thing ever! It was only a small step but I was proud of myself for implementing a new skill that I learned last week from my SMARTboard waiver day training. I was also excited to see my students interacting with the SMARTboard by themselves as I worked with another group of students at my back table. The students were so engaged in this activity and could not wait to get to that station. Not only do I intend to design more activities that allow my students to independently use the SMARTboard but, I would also like to see my students start designing activities like this one by collaborating in small groups. Students have diverse learning styles and diverse ideas. I think it would be great for my students to design and develop their own SMARTboard activities that we could use in the classroom because they would be showing me their knowledge of the content area and about digital tools. ==== ====If you have SMART Notebook software you can take a look at the math activity I created for my students to use independently. It focuses on adding and subtracting positive and negative numbers. Feel free to use it in your classroom or adapt it if you would like. It is not anything spectacular but it did allow my students to practice one of their math skills and independently use the SMARTboard without any assistance from a teacher (this allowed me to work with a small group of students in the back of the classroom). ====