My reaction to the Ed Tech Standards...

Sup Barry,

The standards tell me that "all students will have access to, and develop proficiency in utilizing technology to improve their academic achievement." That sounds wonderful! I still have questions about access-does that mean the districts should provide enough technology to make this possible? Is this including access at home, or should there strictly be enough time and enough resources at school to learn how to use technology?

Another thing I noticed was that the standards are broad enough that they should be able to last for a while. If they specified a certain software, it would likely be dead in a few years and we would never be able to keep the standars up to date with our technology practices.

I'm lucky enough to have lots of technology at my fingertips while I teach at my practicum site--a smartboard, wireless internet, a document camera and a projector, and several computers at the back of the room. I think the computers are used strictly for the READ 180 program, but we'll see. There are also plenty of computers in the library that I can use if I need to. I'm excited to see what I can do with the Yodio tool to help students have experience recording their stories and voices. I'm also excited about the Google documents because of the opportunity to share between users. I can see students collaborating in the library, adding their research findings or other bits of information to a common sheet that we can all use later on.