International Society for Technology in Education Standards for Teachers

Welcome back bloggers! Well, it has been awhile since my last post so I think I will start with some personal updates! This has been one of the most rewarding and interesting years of my life. As I sit and type this blog my wife and I are celebrating our first year of marriage, (don’t worry I am taking her out tonight I am not that lame) our first child, Jonathan Michael Ruark, was born a month ago, and we just closed on our first home! What a whirl-wind year it has been! Okay, back to business. This week I was asked to read over the International Society for Technology in Education Standards for Teachers and I was struck by how unfamiliar I am with them. I have copied a link to the site here if you would like to visit. http://www.iste.org/standards.aspx. I have selected two technology standards that I feel I could improve upon within my own classroom. The goal of this blog is to set up a GAME plan for how I would improve myself with integrating technology in my classroom. So let’s get started! Here is the first standard I struggle with and a GAME plan for how I am going to improve: 2. Design and Develop Digital Age Learning Experiences and Assessments b. Develop technology-enriched learning environments that enable all students to pursue their individual curiosities and become active participants in setting their own educational goals, managing their own learning, and assessing their own progress Action: I find this standard difficult mainly because I have to have the students set their own goals and then give them the freedom to reach them. This is not easy to accomplish as a teacher as most of us crave control and order. I would like to take the following action to improve in this area; students will complete at least two assignments using technology of their own choosing to enhance the overall experience of the assignment. Monitor: I will, as the standard dictates, leave the bulk of the monitoring to the students. I will require that students implement new technology into everyday assignments within the classroom and monitor their progress by conferences and random checks. Students could select to turn in a journal in the form of an online blog or visit my online classroom and post it there. Students could work with multi-media tools to aid in presentations…the possibilities are endless! Evaluate: I would evaluate the students and myself in this area at the end of each unit. After each unit I would conference with every student to make sure that they used at least two types of technology to enhance everyday type assignments. I would evaluate my own success in this standard by how my students work was improved creatively, their individual motivation, and the rate at which the students succeeded in meeting the standard goal. Here is the second standard that I struggle with and a GAME plan for improvement: 3. Model Digital Age Work and Learning b. Collaborate with students, peers, parents, and community members using digital tools and resources to support student success and innovation. Action: I will take the following actions over the course of the school year to meet this technology standard; first, I will require students to post journal responses on a class blog in a similar fashion to how online courses work. Students will be asked to visit the blog once a week to post or respond to a peer message. I will post weekly prompts that deal with current events or literary terminology that we are studying in class. Secondly, I will update and monitor my online classroom to better inform students and parents of upcoming events. This will help improve communication between myself and parents/students. Monitor: I will monitor the classroom blogs and online classroom every Monday and Friday during the school year to make sure that I am current with my classroom events and that the students are posting on the blogs. Evaluation: I will evaluate the effectiveness of my improvement in the area of this standard by reflecting at the end of each nine weeks. I will hold myself to checking the blogs twice a week and grading the students and I will update my online classroom weekly. I know that this standard can be improved by hard work and effort on my part. What do you think of my GAME plan to improve these two standards in my classroom? References: International Society for Technology in Education. (2008). National education standards for teachers (NETS-T). Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/Libraries/PDFs/NETS_for_Teachers_2008_EN.sflb.ashx