Assignment # 2

All 5 technology standards are important but if I had to choose one, I would lean towards Practice2-Digital-Age Learning Culture. Everything that we do somehow revolves around technology. Therefore, we must strive to immerse ourselves in technology to “keep up with the times.” The students who we teach come to us with a vast amount of technology knowledge. If we are to prepare our students for life in the 21st century, technology is the key. As an administrator I have to make sure that my school is equipped with the necessary equipment needed to provide adequate instruction to the students. The technology should be geared towards meeting individual student needs, and incorporating all students in the learning environment. In our readings for the class we learned about digital natives, these are the individuals who we have in our buildings and we have to be able to meet their diverse needs. I have to be able to model how effective technology can be so that the digital immigrants that I have on staff will be more willing to incorporate technology in the classroom, because technology can help to increase student achievement. I also have to provide the tools and resources necessary for my staff to incorporate technology within the curriculum. To give an example of where our students are, my husband is an army recruiter, he needed some information from an applicant in regards to their driving record, he told the applicant to call the DMV to get the information. The applicant asked my husband, if he knew the number to DMV, my husband said no but told the applicant he can look the number up in the phone book. The applicants response was “how do I do that” I told my husband if he had told the applicant to Google the number, there would have been no problem. I say all this to say that we have to be aware of where our students are and incorporate ways to meet them at their level to help them succeed and I believe technology is the way to do it.

Response to Dr. Floyd and Shelly

As an administrator, I would first have to educate myself on the means and avenues utilized by students to get around filters and cheat. I would start by enlisting the help of the most tech savvy students, plus the IT personnel to aide in gaining an understanding and ways to stay abreast of the digital natives practices. Second, I would educate the staff on the natives’ practices, and strategies to help alleviate or help stop the occurrences. Next, I would find it in my budget to purchase software (plus site license for all the computers in the school) that capture everything someone does while logged in. Hire additional IT personnel whose sole purpose is to monitor the usage activity provided by the program and use the information to deliver tough consequences to deter students from trying to get around the filters and cheating.

Digital Natives

I strongly agree that we have digital natives in today’s classrooms. I look at my own children everything they do revolves around the internet and their cell phones. If you take away access to either one of these items, it’s as if you took away their reason for living. In the classroom, we have to work very hard to keep the natives focused, because they are so easily distracted. Having these digital natives in the classroom has brought about a need for us as educators to become technologically savvy. In order to keep up with the natives we need to be willing to step out of our comfort zone. It seems as if these natives are always one-step ahead of us. They are able to get around blocked websites set up by the district. Yet they have a hard time reading and understanding simple math equations. As a CTE teacher I have to be very vigilant in the classroom, I utilize technology every day. I do all my quizzes and test online, but I have to make sure I pay close attention to the students when they are testing because they can find ways to manipulate the system to help them cheat. I also need to make sure that they stay on the assigned websites while in class. One way that I monitor my students is to constantly walking around the room and watch what they are doing while they are engaged in independent work. I also check their browser history to see what sites they are visiting while they are in class. Eventually someone is going to figure out how to get around this and then I’m going to have to figure out another way to keep an eye on them. An example of how these digital natives operate, I borrowed my daughter’s phone one day and in the ten minutes, she received the following two text messages. The first one stated that all girls should wear skinny jeans to school the next day to protest administration banning the jeans the day before. The next message announced a fight the next day. Both text ended by saying send to everyone in the school. I bet in the space of 30 minutes most of the students in the school received these messages, If only they would be so resourceful when it comes to academics. As an administrator, my goal would be to ensure that my staff had a of lot exposure to technology, which would lead to them becoming technologically proficient. In order to do this, if money wasn’t an issue I would send all my staff to all available technology training on a rotating basis. That would be in the perfect world, but in the world, that we live in I would send teachers who are considered technology savvy to training and have them come back and train everyone. I would put in place some sort of incentive program to help the hard-core immigrants step out of their comfort zone.

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