Gaining confidence with NETS-T

When looking over the National Educational Technology Standards, I can see where I still need to grow as a teaching professional. In the past two years, I have gained valuable insight and know how when using technology in my classroom. While teaching I have made a pronounced effort to digital tools and technology formats to communicate with both parents and students. I have used our school based web page to offer help and assistance throughout the school year. Parents and students can access my page to check homework, and find useful links and activities that correlate with the curriculum being taught in class. The goal is to offer interactive ways to promote student success. I recently dabbled with a blog to increase student participation and creative thinking to real world political and environmental issues.

As a teaching professional immersed in a digital world, there is one area I need to develop. I do a very good job of finding programs, links and other digital activities to help students be successful. I want to gain more knowledge and confidence designing and developing learning experiences using a wider array of digital tools. I have limited experience with cameras and video in particular, and see where this digital tool could offer students valuable experiences. I guess I never really had a personal interest, so I am not comfortable with this tool.

My game plan is to learn more about digital cameras and seek how to implement them into my classroom for educational purposes. I want to find out how to mesh this tool with parts of my 4th grade curriculum. I plan to take action by searching the internet to learn more how the tool works. I will pursue this tool on a personal level to help my professional growth. This goal will be monitored by creating a list of ways digital cameras can be used in the classroom for creative learning. I will extend and follow through by collaborating with peers and seeking out the tech coordinator at our school. I will also be looking into training at our school and start to match up how I can use this tool effectively with lessons through out the year.

One additional pursuit with technology, would be the use of blogs. I do have experience with the the use of learning blogs, however our school has restrictions and the school controlled blog slowed things down and created too much work. My goal is to search online other options to incorporate the use of blogs in class. I would like to give my students a way to problem solve, add opinions, and communicate their thoughts. I plan to investigate if there are blogs or other formats to get around school restrictions and save me time. At our school, blogs get backed up because I have to check over and submit each student's response one by one. This will be moitored by what found programs have to offer. Will they work? Is the program a more user friendly to bounce ideas and thoughts back and forth. I will seek out our tech coordinator to help and guidance on this learning tool. I want to know if I can access something that will let my students the freedowm to bounce learning ideas at a faster pace.

Jay Raines

Cennamo, K., Ross, J. & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology Integration for Meaningful Classroom Use: A Standards-Based Approach. (Laureate Education, Inc., Custom ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTeachers/2008Standards/NETS_T_Standards_Final.pdf