Tech Standards

Today at the 21st Century Skills Master Teacher Academy we looked at a lot of information, but most notably would be the Educational Technology Standards (which are available on the South Dakota DOE Website).  

The lesson plans that each of the participants of the Academy are required to create and subsequently post online are required to include these Ed Tech Standards as well. From just visiting with my advisory group, I know that there are going to be some great lessons available (not to mention that I am really excited about a lesson plan I heard about across the room that another high school English teacher is planning on Beowulf). 

The whole idea of standards is to install some sort of consistency in our teaching throughout the state. And, as I posted before, there is now a 46- state push to create national standards in English, Math, and Science. We seem too often to be inundated with standards and as I am trained in both Social Studies and Language Arts, I have really critically looked at a great deal of the standards that have been created for secondary students. I think that these standards may not seem as difficult to approach. 

Do I agree with standards? Yes and no. Do I want the Secretary of the Department of Education to tell me exactly what to teach in my classroom? Absolutely not. Do I want all students entering my Senior British Literature class (from any school district) to be prepared to read at grade level and understand difficult text, not to mention be able to write effectively? Of course I do! 

Standards are overall a very practical way to lay out a curriculum, but like most educators I know, I don’t want to be told exactly how to teach in every lesson in my classroom. The educational technology standards for high school seem to be very broadly written. They also seem to allow a lot of liberty for teachers to approach these standards as they see to best fit into their classrooms. As I have not yet aligned these standards to my curriculum, I resist the tendency to say that they will be easily integrated. 

 Most of these standards seem easily attainable for my classroom and for my peers’ classrooms in my district. They all do a lot of really amazing things in their classrooms with technology. This is something that we can do because of the resources that are available. The 1:1 Laptops, Promethean Boards, wireless projectors, and soon iPod Touches have made technological literacy in our district more easily attainable. I actually think that most of these standards most of our high school teachers already assess regularly through regular classroom projects. 

I invite you to check it out for yourself and rate your own proficiency on these standards– how well would you do? 

 

uGoogle? iGoogle!

There are so many web tools that you can try and they are always changing. I think that one of the best tools that you can use is actually one of the most common words ever spoken in any high school classroom across the U.S.– Google! This afternoon during the 21st Century Skills Master Teacher Academy this tool was brought up a few times. One of the tools that I have used in class is Google Docs. Google Docs allows all people with a Google Account (not necessarily g-mail, but just an account) to create and share documents with any other Google Account owner. There are many rights and privileges that you can give to each collaborator or viewer of the document. The possibilities for the classroom are endless. I think that as educators we need to look at these tools of online collaboration as a primary way of working in a group. 

For example, my Seniors’ final English unit was a partner project in which a student in 2nd Hour partnered with a student in 4th hour to work on the same assignment. The assignment was very research instense and displayed many of the general recall, writing, research, and collaborative skills that they learned throughout the school year. Each group worked to create a properly cited research paper and multimedia presentation that they delivered individually. I directed the students by sharingcertain research guides that were necessary to complete and also provided the students with clear deadlines and grading rubrics for each step of the process. When I first explained this unit to my peers, some of them thought I was nuts, and rightly so, but (you know what?) it worked! It worked really well. The students could present from their Google account or download it to a Power Point and present it that way as well. (All of the documents created can be downloaded in more familiar forms to your computer.) 

One way to make projects like this work is to give students some more information to make it relevant. For this project, I likened this project to students working in New York City as a site manager and their company having a branch in Los Angeles. The company was introducing a new product and both you and the LA branch manager both need to present about the benefits of this new product to your entire company. Why should you both make independent presentations? It is not necessary in the age of technology. By using something like Google Docs and sharing the document with their counterpart in LA, both of the site managers can save time and money for the company. 

Google Docs is just one way that you can use some of the Google tools available. You need to open a new tab on your browser today and go to Google. From your basic white Google page, click in the upper right hand corner on the iGoogle link and create your own account. You can also set your browser to your own iGoogle homepage. Add fun widgets about the weather, news, You Tube favorites, photos, other email accounts, and even an Einstein Quote of the Day if it tickles your fancy! There is a widget for just about everything you could imagine. I invite you to explore it for yourself and see some of the apps that are available to you.