Productivity and professional practice is an important area for teachers to demonstrate technological competence in. This standard includes using technology for: professional development and learning, to support student learning, to communicate with other people both in the community and the school, and to increase productivity. In our advanced society, more and more of what we do is becoming dependent on technology. If you don’t know how to utilize the technology you are at a disadvantage.
If properly used, technology can offer us many advantages. We can increase our productivity allowing us to spend time on other aspects of teaching, and we can also use technology to enhance our development and learning as professionals. In addition, other teachers, parents, community members, and school personnel want to know what you as a teacher are doing and technology can play a large role in communicating to people outside the classroom. Also, since technology has become ever present in our society today, we must ensure that our students are prepared to enter the world of technology. To do this, we must use technology to support their learning as well.
To demonstrate competence in this area, teachers can give presentations or make websites available to parents, other teachers, and community members. One specific way that we have learned in this class is creating a website for the classroom. A website is something that can be used to enhance all aspects of learning. It can be used as a tool to communicate with parents about what is happening in the classroom or to educate the community about what the classroom is doing. A website can also be used to educate the students and if they help in creating it, it can give them a sense of belonging and community.
Another way teachers can demonstrate competency is through student projects using common computer programs. Technology has become ever present in our society and therefore we must ensure that students are prepared to use it. We can ensure that students are prepared in many different ways. Examples are creating projects with word processing programs, spreadsheet programs, presentation programs, and other common computer programs. In addition we must show students how the internet can be a valuable resource when used properly.
The other reason I think it is important is because it is a necessary skill for today’s society. Children as well as adults must be able to glean important and reliable information from the internet for many different reasons. If we teach children now, then they are more likely to be able to use these tools as adults.
One activity for students would be to critique a variety of websites. They could be given a checklist and asked to review two different websites that cover the same information. They could then give a report to the class about why these websites were or were not reliable. From this information, a class web resource book could be developed for future research projects.