I have always been a proponent of having a "national" baseline standard for academic knowledge and college readiness, therefore, I am highly supportive of the 2010 Common Core Standards that over 40 states have agreed to implement. In today's changing environment, very few people gain employment at one company and remain employed there for the duration of their career. It is more likely that employees will change companies several times and might even have to locate out of state in order to move ahead in their career. It therefore seems pertinent that students are educated using a national standard in preparation to apply their knowledge, no matter which state they find themselves working. I myself, was educated in Columbus, Ohio and yet have lived and worked in five other states. The important consideration here is that I was able to take what I learned from the Ohio state curriculum and apply it to my jobs in other states.
Not only should students be able to apply their education within various states, they must also be able to apply that knowledge worldwide. With the advancement of technology and most importantly the appearance of the Internet, most jobs today require workers to interact with others from around the world, specifically using computers. What this means is that in addition to having national standards, students should understand and be proficient in using technology in order to best help them in their quest to succeed at a career.
According to the article 21st Century Skills, students should be proficient at the following things in the 21st century: Critical thinking, Communication, Collaboration, Creativity, Life and Career skills and Media and Technology skills. The article further explains that one of the key ways to accomplish this is to tie these skills in with national standards. Some of these items might be attainable without the use of technology or more specifically computers, however, many of them are further enhanced through the use of technology. That being said, just like any tool that a person uses to help them accomplish something, technology needs to be specifically aligned with a standard and clearly defined so that students and teachers are able to see how and why technology is benefitting them.
In teaching students today, I will pay close attention to the Common Core Standards and the 21st century skills and make an effort to align the two so that students are able to perceive how technology can help them apply both the skills and standards to a future job. A large part of utilizing technology in an individual classroom will be directly linked to the availability within the school district where I will work. Often times teachers have to work within certain technology constraints which seem to ultimately be tied into budget considerations for the district.
As part of my technology assessment project, I evaluated the technology available within the Rockford Public School district. Within each classroom, every teacher had a personal working station that included instructional software programs, video streamlining and a document camera. If working in a situation similar to this, it would allow me the ability to show students educational videos, it would allow our classroom the ability to communicate and collaborate with another classroom in a distant location and it would allow me to project a lesson plan or use information directly from the computer in my lesson plans. Furthermore, within the Rockford Public School district, every class has specified computer access time once a week. This would allow me the ability to assign projects to the students in advance and then allow the students to conduct research and put together projects during the computer access time by using programs such as PowerPoint.
One of the best teaching tools that I feel that I acquired in taking this class and which will be beneficial, are the resource assessments that we researched and shared. There are many helpful resources that will be an asset in gathering ideas for lesson plans and ideas for integrating technology within existing lesson plans. A large barrier to integrating technology into lesson plans is not knowing what resources are actually available and not knowing where to find them. By sharing these with each other, this allows all of us the benefit of gaining a lot of resources without actually having to do hours upon hours of research individually.
In order to best keep up with technology, it is imperative that current and future teachers like myself, continue to take technology classes which provide us with ideas and information on what the latest application can mean for us. Often times local school districts will encourage and in some instances pay for teachers to take college or community classes that would help them in their career. A lot of these classes can be taken at night or online, thus offering teachers the ability to be able to work during the day in the school setting. Another way that I plan to stay in tune with and keep up with technology will be to collaborate with other teachers either within my own school district or outside of my school district. I think teachers can benefit from each other by offering suggestions of lesson plans that were successful by incorporating the Internet or another type of technology within a lesson plan.
I think the biggest obstacle to overcome in learning about technology is learning what currently exists within that realm and how best to make use of it. As I stated earlier on, a tool is only helpful if you know why you need it and how to use it. Successful integration with standards and helping students accomplish significant career and life goals are key here. If your objective as a teacher is to teach critical thinking skills, there can be many different ways to accomplish this task. The goal and challenge as a teacher is in determining the "best" way to help the student achieve this goal of critical thinking. Knowledge about all the choices available, including technology choices, further helps the teacher to make a sound decision in weighing all factors.
No comments:
Post a Comment