CODE77 Rubrics for Administrators 2010 Part 7 of 10

I warned you these were coming.

Self-evaluation Rubrics for Basic Administrative Technology Use (2002) 2010

The key to effective staff development: work with the living. The Blue Skunk

VII. Teacher Technology Competencies  (TSSA Standards I.F, II.E, V.B, V.D) NETS-A 2009 (3a, 4c)

Level One:  I cannot specifically identify any specific skills teachers in my school or district should have in order to use technology effectively. My school or district has no written set of technology skill competencies for teachers.

Level Two:  Our school or district has a set of technology skills that teachers are expected to master correlated to the NETS-T or other national standards. A formal staff development program that offers teachers a range of staff development opportunities in technology and a means for assessing the effectiveness of those opportunities is in place. Technology and training in its use for teachers has a high funding priority in my school/district. The effective use of technology in supporting all teaching improvement efforts is recognized and addressed in staff development initiatives.

Level Three:  All teachers are expected to use technology to increase their pedagogical effectiveness and integrate high-level technology uses into their classes when appropriate.

Implications of administrators needing to understand teacher technology proficiency issues:

The United States  has done a poor job of teaching teachers to be productive users of technology. Only one-third of all teachers report feeling “well-prepared”.to use technology as a part of classroom instruction. (Teacher Use of Computers and the Internet in Public Schools New teachers are not coming into the profession any better prepared. (Note: more recent studies need to be done in this area to determine accuracy. Last studies now 10 years old.)

Despite such a dismal track record, both research and the observed experiences of schools with technology savvy teachers know that there are major benefits. Technology can help teachers:

1. Improve their professional productivity by automating routine administrative tasks and improve communications
2. Reach, challenge, remediate, and motivate exceptional students through the use of educational software targeted to specific learning objectives
3. Master the same skills they are expected to teach students so that they can complete project-based units that rely on technology for research and presentation
4. Facilitate active, student-centered, constructivist learning

The decade-long ACOT studies have long reported positive changes of a transformational nature in the classrooms of teachers who have entered the “appropriation” or “invention” stages of computer use. The findings tell us among other things that these teachers expect more from students, spend more time with individual students, are more comfortable using groups, spend less time lecturing, are more willing to take risks, and collaborate with other in ways that improve learning opportunities. A second round of ACOT studies (ACOT2) identities the conditions under which technology use supports "21st Century" learning in high schools. A wide variety of studies report a wide variety of results on the impact of technology on student achievement with types of assessments, abilities of learners, and methodologies resulting in differing outcomes. Just like eductional research in general.

A common finding is that schools looking for ways to improve the total educational environment so that more students perform at higher levels see that the long term benefit of teacher technology use will be in facilitating constructivist classrooms that use project-based learning experiences that require problem-solving and higher level thinking skills.

While most administrators and parents when asked would say they’d like all teachers to be technologically-literate, few of these individuals can define what being “technologically-literate” actually means.

The National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS-T, 2008) is an effort of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) to help provide the definition of what a teacher needs to know and be able to do with technology. ISTE breaks the competencies into five broad categories. While visionary and inspiring, these standards are not specific and difficult to measure.

Individual districts have developed their own sets of competencies based on ISTE teacher technology standards. The Beginning CODE 77 Rubrics (2009) are an example of such a set designed to help guide teachers in their skill acquisition and to help evaluate our training program. These rubrics help measure how well teachers have mastered basic computer use including using productivity programs such as word processors, spreadsheets, databases, and online tools to improve their professional work.

Even teachers who know all the fundamentals of computer use need help and guidance if they are to use technology to fundamentally change the way they deliver instruction to assist all students and improve the degree to which problem-solving and high level thinking is asked of students. “Information literacy” skills that rely on the effective use of technology are rapidly gaining prominence as the most important, whole-life skills that schools can teach. The Advanced CODE 77 Rubrics are designed to help teachers create professional development plans that help them learn to use technology in new ways, we wrote. Instead of being taught in a classroom setting, these skill sets are long-term goals reached through the educator’s successful completion of a variety of collaboratively planned and authentically assessed activities over the course of a school year.

School leaders need to understand:

• How technology can help meet their district’s educational objectives
• The specific skills teachers should be expected to master to use technology effectively
• How schools can design professional development opportunities that both teach basic productivity computer skills as well as allow teachers to continue to improve professional practice through more sophisticated technology uses.

This will not be a one-time, set timeframe initiative, but an on-going part of administrative planning.