Reflections on Technology Facilitator Standard III: Teaching, Learning, and the Curriculum

This chapter was chiefly focused on bridging the gap between technology students use in their home lives and technology used in the classroom; and in implementing national standards in order for students to achieve technological literacy. I was interested to learn of how ISTE has developed the National Educational Technology Standards for Students (NETs-S)and at the publication date of our textbook, 48 states had adopted the standards for its students (Williamson, 2009).

Before beginning this master's program, I was not aware of any program at the state or national level that called for students to attain a level of mastery with regard to technology. I simply thought that schools integrated technology according to their resources and local policy. After noting in this chapter that technology literacy is part of No Child Left Behind, and that the state of Texas includes technology standards in its Long Range Plan for Technology, I have a new-found knowledge from which to advance my future learning (Texas LRPT, 2006).

Since I'm not a classroom teacher, these two pieces of knowledge have not effected my implementation. However I was priveledged enough to hear Mark Prensky speak at a school in our district in June. Prensky's presentation was focused on how NETs-S and Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) can work together in the classroom. Many teachers and schools tend to believe it is NETS versus TEKS, however Prensky gave several examples as to how the NETS and TEKS can be intertwined (MacVeigh, 2010).

As I noted above, I'm not a classroom teacher, however there was one instance where I was able to integrate TF III into a field-based internship activity. Using the presentation from Dr. John Yearwood that he presented in EDLD 5366 - Digital Graphics & Desktop Publishing, I spoke to a business computing class in our district about principles of graphic design. I combined the simpler concepts from two of his presentations and used the Sweet Home Alabama poster as a visual aid (2009). During the presentation, I also taught students how to set up and use automated actions in Photoshop CS4. Since the class is conducted in it's own media lab with one computer per student, I had students log on to classroom desktops. I let them through the process to find my instructions saved to my Google Docs folder and download them. Then I led students through the initial processes of opening an image, recording actions, applying edits to the image, saving the recording, the applying the recording to other images. In this presentation, I integrated TF-1.B., TF-II.A., and TF-III.D (Williamson, 2009).

Participants were only about 70 percent engaged during the graphic design presentation, so I used the Socratic questioning method to spur their engagement. However when students were allowed to log on to the computer and begin to learn the physical process of automating actions for image editing, the students' questions became very technical and results oriented, and I could tell this was an activity that they had never engaged in and were eager to learn something new.

Though I use automated actions in Photoshop in my job on a weekly basis, it was a nice refresher in reviewing the specific process needed to save the actions. Also, this presentation would have been much less engaging without the presentation regarding basic design principles I received in EDLD 5366.

In the future I will be sure to look for correllations between NETS and TEKS. After Prenksy's presentation in June, he made it seem as though teachers should have no problem integrating the two in their classroom. In my presentation to the business computing classroom, I was able to integrate three Technology Facilitator Standards. It should be no problem integrating NETS in a similar fashion.

My past interactions with colleagues related to implemenation of Standards & Indicators is limited to this course. However through the discussion and group projects from this course, I have learned the vocabulary of the classroom teacher, and have learned how to speak the language of classroom technology as well. As a district or school technology facilitator, I feel that I will be more prepared to expain to teachers how best to easily integrate technology into their curriculum. I will be able to talk to classroom teachers about technology applications TEKS, and how they can be integrated even into core classroom areas where technology isn't traditionally heavily applied, but where there are clearly stated technology application TEKS (THE Journal, 2004).

For future learning, I would be interested to look into how many teacher preservice programs put emphasis on the technology applications TEKS for core content areas, i.e. science, math, social studies, English, etc. I realize that a lot of professional development s offered in our district, however I would be interested to know how many university preservice programs are relying upon district-offered training versus putting significant effort into training preservice teachers on technology applications TEKS prior to graduating them into the workforce.

Williamson, J. & Redish, T. (2009). ISTE’s technology facilitation and leadership standards: What every K-12 leader should know and be able to do. Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology in Education.

Texas Long Range Plan for Technology (November 2006). Texas Long Range Plan for Technology 2006-2020: Texas Education Agency. http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/technology/EktronAttach/FinalCombinedLRPT2020.pdf

MacVeigh, Matthew (July 14, 2010). Irving ISD District Weekly: Irving Independent School District. http://www.irvingisd.net/districtweekly/weekly356.htm

Yearwood, John C. Ph.D. (2009). Basic Design Principles. [multimedia]

THE Journal (July 1, 2004). Texas: Meeting the Technology Integration Challenge in Texas Schools. THE Journal. http://thejournal.com/Articles/2004/07/01/Texas-Meeting-the-Technology-Integration-Challenge-in-Texas-Schools.aspx?Page=1