To be an effective educator of technology a teacher needs to continue to learn about new technologies throughout their career. Standards A and B of Section V. (Productivity and Professional Practice), of the National Educational Technology Standards both relay the importance of teachers who are implementing technology staying abreast of technological improvements and advancements. Standard A states: Use technology resources to engage in ongoing professional development and life-long learning. Standard B states: Continually evaluate and reflect on professional practice to make informed decisions regarding the use of technology in support of student learning. In order for technology education to be useful to students the technology needs to be current and the teacher needs to have a solid understanding of relevant technologies. If one were to teach students on computers from the early nineties, with 5 ¼” floppy disk drives little of what they were taught would be of any use to them in the real world. So if you are a teacher who has been teaching and implementing technology for only twenty years, and you had not educated yourself and updated your classroom technologies, much of what you would be teaching would be a waste of you and your students’ time.
The need for teachers to keep up to date with improvement and advancements in technology is fairly obvious. The question is: How? After searching the web, reading several sources, and thinking about this question myself I have come up with a few resources to aid teachers in this quest.
1. Teacher Workshops
2. Educational Courses
3. http://learnweb.harvard.edu/ent/home/index.cfm
Educational courses from a variety of sources are fairly easy to find. There are a variety of on-line courses available. Additionally, local community colleges offer courses that are often reasonably priced. The Harvard website is a valuable resource for teachers looking to stay abreast of changes in the world of technology as well.
My question is, how are we suppose to keep up with technology when there isn't any money to buy the new technology or teach the teachers how to use it? I work in a building that still isn't wireless, and doesn't have the technology needed to move into the 21st Century classrooms. Makes our jobs a little hard to do....Jayne Kreifels
ReplyDeleteI think it is a catch 22. You're right that we need to stay updated on the technology and know how to implement it in our classrooms, but Jayne has a good point, also. How can we implement technology that we cannot afford and have no way of getting? Keeping teachers in the loop and presenting them with workshops and other programs to learn about the technology is great. But, then you get all excited about using the new technology only to find out that your district is not going to purchase the new program or software or whatever because they cannot afford it.
ReplyDeleteGood post. I honestly believe that teachers along with students should be learning in school everyday. I want to learn just like my students in my class. I am always wanting to learn what ways my students learn and how to do thing better. Using technology is still new in most classrooms so finding new and interesting ways to use technology is my job for this year in teaching.
ReplyDeleteMike Koch