Testing Audio Post: [You do not have permission to access this file]

http://www.learning-blog.org/2007/05/16/leadership-and-technology-ca

A few weeks I wrote about school leaders needing to ‘get’ technology. Scott McLeod seems to be the epicenter of this movement. He is directly involved in UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE) which,

“was created to help address the critical nationwide shortage of administrators who can effectively facilitate the implementation of technology in schools and school districts. CASTLE is widely recognized as the nation’s leading authority on the technology needs of K-12 school leaders.”

They go on to descripe,

“CASTLE’s School Technology Leadership graduate certificate program is the only academic curriculum in the country that comprehensively covers ISTE’s National Educational Technology Standards for Administrators (NETS-A). The graduate certificate program has been found by the American Institutes for Research to have positive, statistically significant impacts on participants’ school technology leadership knowledge, skills, and abilities and has been acclaimed for its innovative incorporation of technology into its coursework.”

CASTLE has also created LeaderTalk, a blog from School Administrators, for School Administrators. This has quickly become my must read of the day.

I want to personally thank Scott McLeod for all he has done to bring the relationship between technology and leadership to the forefront.

This seems to be the beginning of what I was looking for during my first post on leaders and technology.

http://www.learning-blog.org/2007/05/01/defining-21st-century-educat

In my last post I discussed the curriculum design on 21st Century Schools. Recently, Patrick Bassett, President of NAIS has pre-published a paper entitled, “So What’s it Gonna be, Huh?” that defines 21st Century education as:

In my work with schools in the US and around the world, I frequently address groups of leaders, not only educators but their boards of trustees, primarily comprised of CEOs, social sector leaders, professionals, and, internationally, the diplomatic corps. When I ask the kind of “generative” question these school leaders should be asking themselves, “What are the skills and values that will be rewarded in the 21st. C.?,” I always, every time everywhere and anywhere in the world, get the same list:

* integrity and character

* teaming and leadership

* communication skills

* empathy, social and global consciousness

* expertise/competence in some field

* innovativeness and creativity.

What’s interesting is that this “wisdom of the crowd” is actually confirmed by a whole host of researchers, observers, and commissions who have “weighed in” on the topic within the last year or so.

He goes on to list a number of examples of programs that embody these characteristics and challenges schools to implement one of these programs during part of your school day/week.

He’s looking for feedback, and the place where I’m very interested in seeing what is out there is in the examples section. Here is his list.

What are the programs that you think of in Bassett’s definition of a 21st Century School?

http://www.learning-blog.org/2007/04/20/educational-research-and-re-

I recently received Improving Student Learning One Teacher at a Time by Jane Pollock (My ASCD Book of the month). Last year at this time I received Classroom Instruction that Works as my Spring ASCD book. Both of these books have helped me become a better teacher by giving me data to support research based instructional practices. This new book goes even farther, by providing a framework for designing curriculum called, “The Teaching Schema for Master Learners.”

Pollock argues that a good curriculum is defined by having clear expectations (Goals), setting up good instructional models, assessing work, and providing feedback. I see this work as a management style for adults, or a classroom environment for students. I see this pattern: goals, instruction (conversation), assessment, feedback, in Management books such as Good to Great or Now Here are My Strenghts. It’s amazingly flexible and seems to be a process that is running through many different realms of my life.

So why am I writing? Because this data conflicts with a survey on David Warlick’s blog where he asks, “Thinking of those great teachers that you had who truly influenced who you are today. What percentage of what those teachers did do you think might be effectively measured by scientific research, and what percent do you think is not measurable?” and out of 169 respondents he has received the following results:

100% measurable - 0% not measurable:(4%)

75% measurable - 25% not measurable:(12%)

50% measurable - 50% not measurable:(27%)

25% measurable - 75% not measurable:(45%)

0% measurable - 100% not measurable:(13%)

I answered 75% measurable and 25% not measurable. I find survey results like the one above concerning, because 58% of the respondents say that less than 25% teaching skills of great teachers can be measured by scientific research. I just find this hard to believe when reading books like Improving Student Learning One Teacher at a Time and Classroom Instruction that Works. I believe that there is a type of person that will be a good teacher, but I also believe that these natural teachers can get much better when using current research.

I believe it when Warlick asys that we need to re-define literacy, and learn to use the immense resources on the Internet as part of our schooling. I believe it when Richardson says that we need to Re-Envision Schools due to the new Flat World.

But there are clear processes and techniques that are research based that seem to me to benefit learners in our classrooms. I believe that the best teachers will be looking to use these procedures of curriculum design as found in Improving Student Learning One Teacher to create wonderful learning environments for their students. The declarative knowledge (content) can varied from the most progressive to the most traditional.

I believe that goal of School 2.0 can be the same as President John Adams, “There are two types of education. One should teach us how to make a living, And the other how to live.” I believe we can get there in many different ways. I believe that you can use Pollock’s system to define varied schools.

So what do you think?

How does this apply to learning communities such that don’t have clear leadership such as open source projects?

What do you think, Will, David, Nancy, Fred, Laurie, Arvind and June?

http://www.learning-blog.org/2007/03/26/professional-development-day

We offered a professional development day in February. Below is the introduction talk I gave to the faculty. The day was successful, because we surveyed the faculty and designed the day for what they needed/required.

Thanks to Nancy White and David Wilcox for their inspirational comments that fundamentally influenced the design of this day.

Download PD Day Audio

http://www.learning-blog.org/2007/03/26/spring-break-slowing-down/

It’s Spring Break. The kids (and teachers) are gone for two weeks… Today has been very quiet. It’s been quite a productive day. Last year at this time, I was running around fixing things and installing new hardware/software. This year, I’m catching up on posting audio files, cleaning out my hard drive, and generally, just trying to catch up a bit.

What’s the difference? We have a new Head of School and Business Manager this year. One of the great parts of these two new perspectives is that I have been forced to slow down and look at our whole program. We have begun to review our mission, student technology program, staffing, budget, computer to technical support ratios, and training/professional development program.

This slowing down has been hard for me. But as we have, I’ve realized parts of the program that were missing/glossed over. So for next year, we will concentrate on reliability of systems and faculty professional development. We will have two new department members next year, and their perspectives will inform our metamorphosis as well.

I keep catching myself wanting to offer professional development seminars on blogging, wikis, etc, but that will come. Our professional development Tech 20s will get there… But I need a critical mass of faculty who are comfortable with tech before we go further. One step at a time.

It feels good to slow down.

http://web2learn.net/wpblog/2007/03/16/lan5184-journal-1-eva Ok, so I must admit that the thought of focussing on testing does not exactly thrill me. I have never really been comfortable with numbers, statistics and testing. However, it is an area that I would like to have a better command over, in terms of how a better understanding of testing and [...]

http://www.learning-blog.org/2007/03/07/skype-in-global-ed-program/

Question: I am extremely interested in using Skype in our Global Ed program. Do you give workshops or have good reference materials to pass on to me?

My Response:

Hi,

I webcast weekly at http://www.edtechtalk.com and Skype is the program we use to conference the participants together. I am going to give a workshop in the fall in Baltimore, but I think that with skype and a partner school, you can get this going.

I posted some directions on how we video conferenced with china here: http://www.learning-blog.org/2006/12/05/video-skyping-with-china/

There are so many resources out there. I would check out the Webheads in Action: http://webheadsinaction.org/ for a great group of international teacher where you can create these types of connections. Also, check out http://flatclassroomproject.wikispaces.com/.

I hope this helps.

- Alex

There are tons of other resources… What else am I missing?

Moving from teaching at the high school level to teaching at University is in many ways very daunting.  Do I really know my stuff well enough to try and help guide trainees to become good teachers?  Do I know all my theory and academic theories and terminology well enough?  I feel like I'm still learning a great deal about all this stuff as I undertake my Masters.

But don't you know all that from your own teacher training Brad?  Well yes and no!  The year of my post graduate diploma was turbulent, with the success of good practicums and academic results mixed against the background of a marriage that broke down dramatically over the course of that year (now about 10 years past).  At the time I think I held things together pretty well with my study despite the personal traumas, however there were many days that I needed to take time out from study and lectures just to try and deal with the personal crisis that was happening.  Pedagogy lectures were perhaps some of the most poorly delivered (read boring) and so it was often those that I opted out of when I needed some time.  Subsequently today I feel there are some gaps in my knowledge and theoretical understandings, which I'm now trying to address through my study and own professional reading.

In the meantime though I have taught for about 10 years and think it would be fair to say that I have been a reasonably good classroom teacher.  Not necessarily brilliant, at times just surviving and at other times helping students learn some fairly creative stuff, and having reasonably good relationships with most students.  The parts of teaching that I enjoyed most were helping students to develop their creative skills with multimedia and seeing them produce some great work, the downside was trying to drag other students through a course that they were not really interested in, they were just there to fill up their timetables because they were not allowed to have free periods.  Unfortunately that latter began to wear down my enthusiasm for high school teaching over the last few years, as well as my perceived decline in student behaviour generally within the school environment.

Stepping out of the classroom, taking leave without pay to look after my young daughter, actually gave me the chance to develop professionally and become aware of many new developments in my field, Information Technology, particularly Read/Write web (Web 2.0).  At the same time I began working on my Masters and started to develop my understanding of Educational Theory, in particular getting my head around post-modernism and having some of my points of view challenged and change as I considered and assimilated points of view that I'd previously known little about.  This is a journey I'm still on and am acutely aware of the gaps in my understandings, which I want to improve on.

In the day-to-day reality of teaching in a high school, planning lessons, marking assessments, purchasing resources, trying to work collaboratively with colleagues; there is often little time for truly deep reflection of the theoretical level.  Usually the deepest you have time to go is making sure that you have a logically constructed programme for the year that will ensure that students learn all the required skills and content and complete the mandated assessments in the given time.  Along the way you try to improve and tweak learning activities form the previous year or to suit the particular group you are working with.  Managing students and trying to keep up their interest and motivation takes up a lot of professional time.

So against the above backdrop, sorry about the ramble, I now find myself here trying to effectively help first year teaching trainees come into the profession.  I am nervous and optimistic about my role in this.  Optimistic because I really do have a passion to help teachers in their work, particularly in the area of ICT integration.  I believe that effective use of ICT tools, in particular Web2.0, can help teachers to engage students in learning activities that have a real audience and are then likely to be more engaging for them.  I'm also interested to be doing more work that involves examination of learning theory and its practical application in the classroom.  Having to focus on this in my teaching will also help me develop my understandings and revisit my own classroom practices.  The most driving part of this is to do the reading that the students are doing, making sure I have a sound knowledge of the theory and being able to assist the students in their understandings.  At times it seems to be a case of demystifying the academic terminology and relating it back to my teaching experience, looking for the real-life experiences that I can anchor to what the theory is saying.  There have been times when I know my teaching practice has not been good by the standards of what we promote with students and in the theory, and there are as many times when my teaching would get close to reaching the ideals we strive for.

About half an hour before my first Education lecture this week I was very nervous, however as I got up in front of the class, I felt less so.  Maybe it was like riding a bicycle; I did really know what to do.  I think the thing about teaching here is that I will be examining my delivery even more, because I want to model good teaching practices.  Fortunately I am just so well supported by the lesson plans and resources that the unit coordinator, Jill, is putting together, I certainly do not have much pressure with regard to preparation from that aspect.  Which is great, it gives me time to get my head around the material to be covered and make sure that my own understandings are sound for when I have to deliver to my students.

I have enjoyed the initial interaction with the students and certainly view teaching them from the aspect of assisting their learning but also my own, hopefully I become a better teacher along the way as well as developing my own academic understandings of the field of Education.

 

 

 

  

I have had my head down for the last few weeks due to taking on a new job sessional lecturing in Education at my local University - Edith Cowan University - South West Campus (also known as the Faculty of Regional Professional Studies).  I am lecturing and tutoring in two first year units - Becoming a Professional Teacher and Personal Office Computing (a foundation computing unit).

 

At the same time I am also chipping away at my Master of Education course and am completing a unit on testing and evaluation.

 

So over the coming months I will be using this blog space to refelect on my experiences in all facets of my involvement with university, indeed part of my coursework and professional activities require such refelection.  So if anyone has some thoughts, experiences or advice they might like to share as i take this journey, feel free to comment! 

http://www.learning-blog.org/2007/02/25/so-much-to-write-about-21st-

Boy has it been an intense few weeks. I have so much to write about and will soon. In the mean time, I have a thought.

Last week I had a conversation with a colleague about his head of school. My colleague said the following in reference to technology, education and our changing landscape, “Yeah, my head is young and great, but he doesn’t even get it.”

So Saturday morning, I got up and thought, what about a leadership academy for school heads, principles, and any other school leader that would help them see this new world, these new literacies, and the new frontier that we must adjust our educational system to work with, instead of against.

I Googled for sites that would cover 21st Century School Leadership issues and found some, but most of the links went back to Chris Lehmann at Science Leadership Academy.

Warlick, Richardson, Lehmann and others write about School 2.0, but to get there, I believe we need to have leaders who “get it.” So how do we get our leaders to “get it?” We train them, right? (I know it’s not quite that simple, but…)

Maybe this is the type of project that EducationBridges.org will help fund. What do you think, Dave? Or some national organization or international organization.

What do you think? Do you know of any leadership academy that does this type of work?

http://www.learning-blog.org/2007/01/28/john-seely-brown-interview-b

If you haven’t checked out the School 2.0 interview series that Steve Hargadon had been doing, you’re missing out.

This interview with John Seely Brown challenges my thoughts about education and gave me wonderful ideas on how to begin to explain the shift to my colleagues. This one is getting burnt to CDs and handed to my Administrators. It is inspirational and wonderfully reflective.

Thanks, Steve, for your great work on these interviews!

http://www.learning-blog.org/2007/01/24/questions-about-basic-techno

Thanks, Nancy and David for stretching my thinking about this professional development day.



I’m struggling with appropriate administrative pressure and my department’s buy in to provide basics training to faculty. I have been re-tooling our sessions to allow for better technological solutions for everyday problems. For example, “Appropriate Presentations” would include a discussion about what appropriate skills and guidelines are, how to find images, and create a presentation that is visually appealing. Another example is, “Creating a Newsletter” which would include pulling resources together and then formatting them in a desktop publishing program.

Nancy, I love your visualization question,

“Try to “imagine it is a year from now and you have embraced a couple of tools and practices that make your work more meaningful/fun/productive. What does that look like?”

I plan on using this when asking folks to register for sessions.

I am truly struggling with David’s game. I believe in my heart that that is the way to go, but want to start slow in smaller groups so we have some practice before going to the “big group”. I would like to try this with a small group of faculty during this day.

I hesitate because this is my professional development first day like this with a new Head of School and Business Manager. We have a traditional faculty and I want to expose small groups to this before we do it with the entire faculty.

I will definitely use these exercises in my department over the Spring, and then during our Summer Professional Development series where we’ll be working with faculty to use read/write web options…

I’m trying to be transparent in my writing here… Honest and open. But boy do I feel like I’m not living up to good pedagogical principles for adult learning… It’s very hard to let go of that “control”.

Thanks again, Nancy and David, for stretching me.

http://www.learning-blog.org/2007/01/22/questions-about-basic-techno

I have been thinking a lot about what basic technology skills faculty should know. We’ve surveyed our faculty on basic tech skills, and have a good idea of what people know and don’t know, but what Technology skills should they know?

The reason I ask this question is that we have half of a professional development day in February to work with our entire faculty on technology skills. Our plan now is to run 4, 40 minute sessions on the basics: word processing, spreadsheets, presentation software, desktop publishing, e-mail, information literacy skills, laptop hardware optimization and troubleshooting and configuration, and a number of other ‘basics’. We are planning lessons that demonstrate and allow participants to practice 2-4 skills, walk them through an Atomic Learning Lesson (if applicable), and give examples of the use of that software in a classroom.

NETS has a long list of skills that beginning teachers should have when entering the classroom. This list is well above the performance point of my faculty.

In order to learn something new, faculty (for that matter - anyone) must feel a need and be engaged. How do we get the second and third wavers to be engaged when teaching the basics? Nancy White asks these types of questions often.

Here are some of the other questions running through my head:

If you were running a seminar for faculty who have a wide variety of technology skills, what would be the core goal of each session that you teach?

Just thinking through my fingers: Start with the learners, know their skill set, and teach them what they need to get to the next level, even if that means configuring windows and file management.

What skills/applications would you teach?

Word vs. Google Docs

Do you have links to examples?

Our lesson plans will be posed here: Tech at Collegiate when complete.

Thanks for your time and thought.

http://www.learning-blog.org/2007/01/14/the-readwrite-web-rss-blogs-

1/15/07 Update:

What are they? How can I use them in my Classroom?

Here’s the outline of my NYSAIS Professional Development Seminar for Tuesday. Any comments would be appreciated. Bring Blue SnowBall, Get Richardson: Blogs, Wikis and Podcasting. Review last blogging outline:

Goal of Day: Exposure to RSS, Blogs, Poscasting, Social Bookmarking and

Wikis.  The ability for participants to take one of these and start using it in classes in the near future.

General Themes of the Day: Categories, Tags, Taxonomy, and Folksonomy

9:30 - 10:00: Framing the day

Yarn exercise: How you link together in the real world

10:00 - 10:45: RSS: Reading 21st Century Style

Get a Bloglines Account. Search, Subscribe, Comment.

Other rss feed aggregators: NetVibes and Pageflakes

More about RSS:

• Weblog-ed: Will Richardson


• RSS For Educators: K12 Online Conference: Quentin D’Souza

10:45 - 11:00: Break

11:00 - 12:00: Blogging

Blogging Definition:  Will Richardson and Others (see Examples below)

Why Blog? What is the difference between 21st Century Learning and 20th Century Learning? Dr. Lawrence Lessig’s “Read/Write Society” presentation at Wizards of OS4

Get an EduBlogs Account — What will you blog about? Linking. Categories. Trackback. Tabbed Browsing and Social Bookmarking.

Blogging Platforms:

• EduBlogs - Great Flash Tutorials on the Botton Right


• Blogger - Google’s Blogging Platform

Examples…

• A Difference: Math Scribes


• Global Voices


• Teachers Teaching Teachers


• List of Teacher Bloggers


• David Allen’s Blog


• Dan Rubenstein’s Math Blogging


• My Flickr Blogging Group

Educator Social Blogging

• EducationBridges.net Elgg


• What everyone is saying at EducationBridges.net


• LearningTimes.org 

Blogging Resources:

• About Blogging From the School Computing Wiki


• Support Blogging.com

• Start Blogging


• Articles and Resources


• Bud the Teacher’s Blogging Wiki - Lots of awesome blogging resources in one place


• “Blog if You Love Learning: An Introduction to Weblogs in Education (Basic)”


• Will Richardson - Why Weblogs, Weblogs in Schools, and the Read Write Web Changes Everything

12:00 - 1:00: Lunch

1:00 - 1:15: Globalism…

• Did You Know by Karl Fisch


• The Web Enabled Teacher

1:15 - 1:45: Podcasting

• Check out the iTunes Directory (need iTunes)


• Search using Podzinger


• School Computing Wiki: How to Podcast

1:45 - 2:30 - Wikis

Review: Creating a Wiki and Wiki While You Work (Basic): Mark Wagner

Examples:

• Wikipedia


• School Computing Wiki


• Vicki Davis


• Collegiate LS Wiki

Possibly: 2:30 - 2:45: Bringing it all Together

Epic 2014

We need to model and teach using information in deep ways! 

Quotes. 

Contact info.

Resources:

• Webheads in Action


• K12 Online Conference



Getting a bit more manageable… What do you think?

This coming week I will be delivering a week long Summer School unit called 'Teaching Methods Incorporating Computers' at Edith Cowan University, in Bunbury Western Australia.  During this week I'll be introducing about 20 trainee teachers to the basics of the read/write web.

As part of the course I will be helping the trainee teachers to sign up for an Educationbridges account.  I feel that this will be greatly beneficial to them as it will put them in contact with many educators who have a strong interest, skills and experience in using technology in the classroom.  Also I think it will be a positive contribution to the community to have the perspeective of some trainees who are close to beginning their in-service careers.

The course participants will be posting regularly during the week as they reflect on the new tools they are introduced to and respond to some readings.

I would greatly appreciate any commenting that existing community members might have the opprotunity to give if you come across a posting that you are interested in responding to.  Students will be asked to include the tag CPE4201 to all their postings (the course code).

I hope you will welcome any of these new community members you come across.  Please contact me if you have any concerns. 

http://www.learning-blog.org/2007/01/12/young-readers/

Our Librarian just asked us for a picture of us as a kid and a book that we remember reading… I forwarded it to her, but thought it would be fun to share.

I remember lots of Dr. Seuss when I was a kid: Especially Yertle the Turtle.

Here’s my picture:

This is my dad and me on my Mom’s VW Boxback. I was about 3.

http://www.learning-blog.org/2007/01/12/help-iste-develop-the-next-g

Just a forward that I thought the EdTech Community would appreciate:

Help ISTE Develop the Next Generation of NETS for Students

ISTE’s National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) were introduced

in 1998. Since then, the NETS have served as a common denominator for

effective technology integration in education throughout the country and

around the world. To keep the NETS relevant in today’s increasingly

digital world, ISTE is developing the next generation of the NETS for

Students (NETS*S) and needs your feedback. There are two easy ways for

you to get involved:

* Take the NETS Refresh survey

* Register to attend one of these free NETS Refresh Town Hall being held at regional conferences: FETC, January 25, Orlando, FL and TCEA, February 6, Austin, TX

http://www.learning-blog.org/2007/01/05/google-map-meme-started-by-l

Lucy Gray has started a Google Map Meme.

She asked us to answer the two questions below in a Google Earth Placemarker and then send her the file — she’s going to compile them into one big map…

1) What has been your most memorable learning experience?

2) Who is the teacher that has influenced you the most? and why?

Her instructions are here.

Lucy, Here’s My file!

Now for the folks I’m going to tag… Here we go:

Arvind Grover

Fred Bartels

Bill Knauer

Jim Heynderickx

Richard Kassissieh

The wonder of the blogosphere….

http://www.learning-blog.org/2007/01/03/faculty-survey-update/

Back in November, I posted about a basic skills survey for faculty. I received a number of surveys from folks on the ISED-L listserv and pulled them together into this survey.

The results have been interesting. Many of our faculty knew much of what is on the survey. The holes and comments are what we’ll be digging through the results next week during the first of two 3 hour Technology Department meetings.

Just wanted to get the link to the survey up. Thanks to all who helped me putting this survey together.

http://www.learning-blog.org/2007/01/01/new-years-resolutions/

1. Spend as much time with my family as possible. I learn from my wife and kids each day more than I could ever learn from any other group of people.

2. Keep blogging, webcasting, and reflect on my learning as much as possible. This reflective part of my life has become critical to my being.

3. Be honest about my strengths and weaknesses. Embrace them.

4. Keep reading. I listen to numerous podcasts, read blogs, and listen to the radio — but I have lots books and research that are piled up. I need to balance this out.

5. Have fun with all of this — say no when I need to — and try to keep my life in balance.

Lots to do — lots of challenges — 2007 looks like a good one.

Happy New Year to you all.

http://www.learning-blog.org/2006/12/23/happy-holidays/

http://www.learning-blog.org/2006/12/05/video-skyping-with-china/

About a year ago I started blogging. My third child was two weeks old and I’m not sure what I was thinking, but I started… One of my early posts was about video teleconferencing. I created the video teleconference so the president of a web site development company could observe and ask questions to my web design class during their final presentations. Last year we used a combination of Skype for audio and WebEx for video. We were successful but it was not an elegant solution.

Yesterday, our junior Chinese class video-conferenced with one of their classmates who is on School Year Abroad in Beijing, China. All with Skype. We projected my computer full screen on a projector and ran the audio out through the amp in the classroom. We used the Blue Snowball to capture audio and a Logitech QuickCam for the video on both ends of the call. All of this was run by my IBM X60 on battery power over our Cisco wireless network. PowerGramo recorded the Skype call and I used a Canon SD400 to video tape the class (1 gig card on 320 by 240 and 15fps gives you 45 minutes of video). I ran the 600 meg video through windows media encoder and it’s now 30 megs.

Pretty amazing experience, even though I didn’t understand much of the conversation. The students were amazed at how fluent their friend was. I think that a follow up assignment will be to translate the conversation - especially since some of the students didn’t understand much of it. How quickly you become fluent when immersed.

Exciting day.

The attached paper is an assignment I had to submit for my Masters unit this semester.  The aim was to give a critique of a professional learning community that we, as unit participants are involved with.  As I'm not currently placed in a school full-time, I decided to examine the Webcast Academy community, which I've been involved with.  I was lucky enough to be able to interview Jeff Lebow and Dave Cormier at length about some of the issues that interest me about the Academy, particularly with regard to the future sustainability of the Academy (my thanks to Dave and Jeff for being so accomodating).

I was limited to five pages for this assignment and subsequently feel that I only scratched the surface of many of the aspects of the Academy that I had been thinking about.  I'm also still trying to develop my ability to write, and think, as critically as I would like to. 

Finally, I must admit that I was getting to the point where I just wanted this essay over and done with!  There were just too amny other important things happening at the same time and I was sick of it hanging over my head.

So for anyone who may be interested, the Word file is attached with this post.

Reaction Paper EDU6195 [application/msword]

http://www.learning-blog.org/2006/11/17/faculty-technology-assessmen

I’m working on a technology self-assessment for our faculty. We’ve collected a number of surveys from the Independent School community and are using them as a base to create our own. I’ll publish that on the School Computing Wiki when it is done — hopefully by the end of the month.

Our assessment is surveying application skills: Wordprocessing, Spreadsheets, Presentation Software, E-mail, Internet, our Student Information System. Our next step is to use the NETS standards to give us real world examples of how to apply technology skills in the classroom. Once we have the results of our skills survey, we’ll offer 1 hour professional development sessions that are focused on applying technology skills for in the classroom.

It is my opinion that there need to be clear expectations on faculty that they keep up to date on current research on teaching and learning, and within that, there is an expectation that they know what technology is out there to use as a tool to enhance the learning in their classrooms. Our goals of these 1 hour sessions is to give them technology skills and a way to use technology to enhance the learning in their classrooms.

I would love to see how other folks are training and evaluating faculty. My feeling is that evaluation needs to be based upon faculty teaching and student learning. Within this evaluation of teaching and learning, tools such as textbooks, worksheets, technology, etc. are critical as they are tools to enable the best possible learning results for all students.

What do you think of this?

If you have good examples, add them to the School Computing Wiki - Teaching with Technology space.