Technology Standards for Teachers
My school district is currently looking at adopting a baseline of technology skills that all teachers must have. At this point, we are brainstorming ideas and eventually will have a document/checklist in place that will help drive our technology staff development time. My question is: Are there school districts out there that already have such a checklist? If anyone would be willing to share, that would be great. Most searches I have done reveal only state or national standards which tend to be fairly general. We are looking for specific computer/technology skills that teachers need to have to function in today's classrooms.
Tags: standards, teachers, technology
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Brad Bahns on
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Next year, my tech. classes will be out of the "guaranteed prep" cycle for teachers, so we are going to require them to be in the lab during my classes. I'm hoping this will encourage more participation from the teacher and more willingness to integrate technology into their classrooms. Plus, they may learn a few things!
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Permalink Reply by Alicia on
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Our district currently has 2 ed tech specialists. We are to help model teaching with technology, train teachers use technology, etc. Fortunately we have a lot of teachers that LOVE learning technology. Our problem comes when they try to do things in their classroom and things don't work, they have a hard time troubleshooting and/or don't have the time or patience to do so. We ( the specialists) have been able to go to the classrooms lately and help support if needed. We are slowly but surely getting to where teachers want to use the technology, we find it hard when we force them to use it though. It is scary for those that are uncomfortable using the computer to now managing 20+ computers at a time.
We also have 5 sessions of teacher summer technology academies. 2 days they receive "exchange time: it counts for 2 Professional development days during the school year they can miss" and 2 days paid stipend.
Hope this helps! :)
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Alicia,
We run into the problem of equipment not working, too. Several of our classrooms have student response systems and teachers often have trouble getting them to work. Unfortunately, we don't have someone on staff that can go immediately to the teachers to troubleshoot. An outside consultant assists us with the "clickers".
I like the idea of the summer academies and the incentives that you tie into that. I will definitely share that model with our technology team.
Thanks for the response!
Brad
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Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on
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Nothing halts the technology wave than when things go bad.
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Permalink Reply by Becky Ernsberger on
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In Texas we have the Texas StarChart: http://starchart.esc12.net/docs/TxTSC.pdf
This pdf is the Teacher Star Chart. Hope this helps.
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Wow that is nice, the state has standards? Do the teachers use it? Is there any assessment of whether teachers are using the guide?
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The state standards are very similar to the NETS standards. Currently, we don't have an assessment of whether the teachers are using, but we are working on it. Our focus is to make the standards more tangible and managable for training and assessment. (i.e. a checklist of skills that teachers need to have).
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Actually, it comes down to the building administration and the support of the district. Do they care about technology use/skills enough to monitor it? I'm blessed at my school. In our Campus Improvement Plan this past year technology was included as a priority. Our principal purchased 30 new computers and a bunch of SmartBoards (the goal is for every classroom to have one). He encourages teachers to attend training and we have an empty computer lab that's utilized as a flex lab for teachers to bring classes for projects. Our goal is to be the premier technology school in our district. We use some of our staff dev time for technology integration. You can't beat that with a stick!
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I will be teaching in a new school next year with a configuration very similar to yours. We will have Smart Boards in most of the classrooms, mini-laptops for the teachers to check out, a full lab for me in the library, and an extra lab available for teachers and classes. Training will be crucial so that this equipment gets used to its full capacity!
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Training definitely will be crucial. I was the teacher technologist at our public all girls' school its first two years. All girls had laptops and teachers were thrown into this with no training, the "technology" training the principal scheduled wasn't very useful and we had very little time focused on utilizing the laptops. Laptops either didn't get used at all in classrooms or teachers were frustrated with students' surfing inappropriate sites during instruction time. Projects were, "Let's research on the Internet and write a report using Microsoft Word or create a PowerPoint with a minimum of 100 words per slide." I think you get my point.
This year (different school) we used scheduled staff dev time for technology training and teachers loved it. They aren't nearly as receptive if you expect them to give up their time before/after school. During the technology session we had 2 SmartBoard stations and my station on odds and ends. I burned a CD of open source software installers, the Microsoft converter for 2007 docs, information on how students use proxy servers to bypass the firewall and some interesting websites focusing on projects other than research/written report/PPT. The technology session received rave reviews and was everyone's favorite.
You'll find some great Web 2.0 ideas here: http://cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com/
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I hear you! So often at our meetings people are focused on "what we should buy next". I say, let's get better at using what is already out there and available free of charge. We, too, have had some very successful staff developments that were focused on technology. We like to provide "menu" trainings where people can go to sessions that fulfill their needs. Best of all, these sessions can be taught by classroom teachers that are using these tools in ways that are effective.
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Becky,
That definitely helps! Thanks for the link.
Brad
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