Technology Assessments for all.

     Education is evolving at a rapid pace.  Teaching practices that worked 5 years ago are “old school” today.  The cost of technology has come down, availability has gone up and students are born into it. Teachers must stay abreast of these changes in order to effectively guide students into an education.  Accessing the educators’ technology skill levels gives the campus leadership the opportunity to develop appropriate professional development and training opportunities. 

    No Child Left Behind legislation requires that all students be technology literate by the time they leave 8^th grade.  If our educators are not technology literate, they will not be equipped to provide integration of technology into the learning environment?  Technology can be taught in a specialized class, but the skills should be incorporated into every classroom.

     In my district, 8^th grade students are given a Technology Skill assessment in the spring. The resulting data is not used for high school course selection.   The passing rate, at some middle schools,  for the Technology Skills test is below 50%.  That does not meet the requirement, yet those students move on the high school technology illiterate.  The “next step” is missing.  It has been my recommendation that the test be given in the 7^th grade and the data used to place students in a course that will give them the skills they need.  An alternative would be to utilize 5^th grade test data by a campus to enroll students in a technology classes during the middle school years. 

Web Conferences

 I participated in the first web conference to be sure my laptop webcam and headset were working properly.  I was able to enter the room, activate my camera, mute my mic, and participate in the chat.  There were problems with speaker feedback into microphones. After all microphones were muted, the conference proceeded and I felt confident I could repeat the process during the 2nd required conference.

Jan 25, 2012

My confidence was shattered as I tried to log into the room the next time, and was not successful.  I received  a message indicating my credentials had expired and ‘it’ would not allow me to enter the room.

After many attempts and with time running out, I quickly opened Mozilla.  I was able to connect and enter the room with 5 minutes to spare.  It was a stressful experience, however,  I was able to relax and close the door of my little room to keep the barking dogs from disturbing the process.  I began to scan the names of people in the room, and I discovered Mary Angel was already in the room!  I was Mary Angel 2 (on Firefox).   I quickly closed out the IE version and reduced the number of Mary Angels to 1.

With my microphone muted, I watched 15 faces of my cohort26 group.  We are a very diverse group and I am looking forward to forming long lasting bonds with many of them.

As I am more comfortable blogging, I can visualize using this in a classroom.  I  also see blogging as a communication tool for a committee on which I serve.  We are working on a project to lobby for change in language in an existing bill to include accessibility for K-12 education.  Because we live and work in all parts of the city, meetings are difficult to plan.  In order to increase communication and decrease the need to meet face to face, we are sharing documents and information in Dropbox.  However, collaboration may be easier on a blog.   Because I am gaining experience in this process, I am more comfortable with the tool. Next meeting, I  will revisit the idea with the committee.

Blogging

Today’s web conference had a shaky start.  The video was great, but there were issues with the audio.

It was interesting to put faces with names and to see that many of us have things in common.

After the conference, I was telling my husband about the sound problems.  He said that, in his experience with streaming audio and streaming chats, headsets are a must.  If participants do not use headsets, the speakers feed back into microphone on the laptop, causing delays and feedback issues.

Hopefully, it will be resolved on next conference.

On a side note - I am a virgin blogger.  I have never been one to 'journal' in public forum.  So I am glad you are all here to guide me.  :-)

Just for fun - That is K'Cee and Me