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Welcome to Module One of our course!
As noted in my Welcome video, this course has been
completely overhauled. The overhaul brings
a digital age focus to the course which better
reflects the national educational technology
standards for teachers and students. If you are
not yet familiar with the national educational
technology standards for teachers, known as
the NETS-T or the national educational technology
technology standards for students, known as the NETS-S
you will be! These documents are the underpinning
for our 6 week course. Published by the
International Society for Technology in Education
also known as ISTE, both the NETS-S and
NETS-T have been refreshed in the last couple of years.
The focus is on 21st century skills,
tools, knowledge and attitudes for the digital
age workforce in today's classrooms. In our
course materials you will find links to
these NETS-S and NETS-T documents, please download them!
While these documents do focus heavily on
the use of digital tools the most important thing
you will learn from me is that teaching comes
before technology, even in the dictionary!
Technology will not transform mediocre
lessons plans, in fact, it will probably make them
worse. Good teaching is good teaching, period.
Technology is a set of tools, not a
curriculum to be taught, and they are tools
curriculum to be taught, and they are tools
which should be chosen purposefully as part of
the lesson planning process. This is not to suggest
suggest that I believe we should not use tech in
the classroom, quite the contrary,
but we must plan lessons with effective uses of technology.
Today's classrooms do not have time to waste
on poor uses of technology OR
mediocre lessons with or without technology!
I know the pressures faced by teachers!
You are constantly being pushed to teach to the test,
much of your technology does not work or
you just don't have any technology at all.
This class will not change those realities
but it may change how you view those realities
and how hard you will fight to change
those practices being foisted on you which you know
are not best teaching practices.
Today's students inhabit a world filled
with technology. Instead of making school a
technology-free zone, let's encourage them
to use every bit of tech they have with them to
supplement what we have in our classrooms.
And stop worrying that you must master the tech
before using it. Instead put the technology
in the students' hands and learn from them.
They will see you as a life-long learner
and you will learn more than you thought possible.
Teaching with technology means lessons must be
carefully planned but remain open-ended.
This can be hard to do,
but with practice you will learn how to support students
as they work on the projects
but leave them open so students can find creative ways
to show what they have learned.
What you likely will find is that using technology
leads to authentic assessments.
Real-life products such as blog postings, advertising,
videos like this one are all
authentic ways you can assess student learning
via technology. You will also find students learn
much more than you intended, and they retain it longer.
And it is guaranteed they will be
motivated and excited about their work.