The common goal of technology plans on the national, state, and district level is to provide students and teachers with the technology needed to make learning authentic and engaging. It is to allow students the ability to learn in a new way that they are more accustomed to. It is also to prepare students for life and allow them the means to problem solve in real-world ways that will enable them to be life-long learners (and life-wide learners, as stated in the national plan).
Teachers are encouraged to learn more about technology and weave it in to every content area. In order to achieve this, teachers are being promised high quality technology programs, technological support, and professional development classes in order to learn the software and hardware needed to implement these plans.
I felt that reading the plans from the national to the state to the district was helping pare things down specifically to what is being asked of me and how the action parts of the plan affect me. The Georgia State plan specified a couple of things that stood out to me: a computer ration of 1:3 (1 computer to every 3 students), and an acceptable percentage of 70% of blogs updated among a faculty. I would love to have one computer for every 3 students. I definitely hope that within the 3 years that this plan is in place, we will see this happen. Also, I thought only 70% of faculty keeping an updated blog was a little low. I checked the blogs at our school and was pleasantly surprised to see that we exceeded that expectation.
The national plan stated a goal that “all learners will have engaging and empowering learning experiences both in and outside school that prepare them to be active, and ethical participants in our globally networked society”. I think that is outstanding! Who wouldn’t want to prepare children in that way? I definitely want to be a part of that.
I agree with you when you saw that teachers are ENCOURAGED to learn more about technology and how to incorporate it into their planning for the content areas. The state and national plans definitely list suggestions as to how and where they plan to see technology in the next few years. Teachers are being promised the high quality technology programs, technological support, and professional development classes but teachers have to also use what they have learned in the courses and apply it to their lesson plans and classroom.
ReplyDeleteAt my old school, it was required that all teachers have websites set up. At my current school some teachers have them but it is not a required thing to do at my school and if it is.... it has not been communicated to us. I think part of the other problem is that in my area, many of the families do not have access to computers or internet for that reason.
It will be interesting to see how technology plans are implemented in our schools the next few year. I also noticed how the National site mentioned preparing students to use technology for life beyond k-12 education. I think this shows a vision to see that technology is an important part of everyday life.
ReplyDeleteI noticed that a majority of your faculty have their own blog! That is great because not many of our faculty have their own blog. We are not required to have a blog but we are required to post to "Homework Hotline" which parents can find on the middle school's website. Everything for "Homework Hotline" has already been set up for us, all we have to do is type on a page that looks like an email page and publish. It was even an issue for some of our teachers to understand that!
One computer for every three students would be great! I think the state includes teacher laptops, classroom computer, computer lab computers, and laptop carts when they average those student-to-computer ratios which means that some of counties may actually already reach those ratios, but I don't really think that is a true indicator of student-to-computer ratios. I would love to have 8 computers in my classroom to accommodate all of my 24 students.
ReplyDeleteWow! Your school is really impressive with your blogs! My school has just recently started taking on blogs and we are slowly getting in the habit of using them frequently. I think that 70% of users is an attainable goal for our state to reach at this time. I think within the next couple of years, after we have reached this goal, we should increase our goal to at least 90%.
The national plan did have a lot of really great information. I think if I had more time, I would like to really read through it and wrap my brain around all the different aspects of it.