More Reading....

The Milken Exchange and the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) (1999). Will New Teachers Be Prepared To Teach In A Digital Age? A National Survey on Information Technology in Teacher Education.

When I began reading this paper, it put in mind of the presentation we had on Professional Learning Communities by Anthony Mohammed. He was speaking along the topic of change. Most of us as Educators don't really see the need to change. The reason for this is that in general, people who go into teaching were successful in school! Why would we want to change a situation that worked for us? We enjoyed it and were successful there, so surely everyone else should be able to be successful under those same conditions.....NOT SO!

We need to teach in ways that benefit all of our students. We need to try to look at the various learning styles and try to meet the needs of all, not just the ones who are like us!

Other points that popped out at me were that there is a rapid turnover of teachers in our profession today. If our efforts to create smaller class sizes move forward, that trend will continue. Now, more than ever, do we need to clearly define "What do teachers need to know?"

I've attended conferences in the states where I have learned that some districts require that teachers work towards specific proficiencies/certificates in technology. In our district, we are working on plans to help get down on paper what are the "essential learnings" for teachers in technology? We also need to define these learnings for our Notebook classes in Grade 7 & 8. Technology may eventually be so inherent to everything that a separate class may not even exist. We want to have a list to hand to the grade 9 teachers that includes everything there students should know by the time they arrive there.

An expansion of this theme would involve Administrators. They have different needs from teachers and would require much of the same knowledge, but not all....but perhaps and additional dimension all together.

In our district, my co-worker and I are very tired of watching the Department jump on every bandwagon that rolls by. We want our people to be very proficient at fewer applications/procedures that somewhat "in-the-know" about a whole bunch of information that means nothing to them in their daily work. That may seem harsh, but it's true.