Carver STaR Chart Presentation

NOTE: This blog post is part of a requirement for Lamar University graduate course EDLD 5306 Fundamentals of Educational Technology.

The slide show below will serve as a visual aid when I present to Carver Elementary staff on their most recent School Technology and Readiness (STaR) self-report regarding campus levels of technology access and integration. The presentation covers the background and purpose of the STaR Chart, what the current status of technology integration is at Carver, and finally includes recommendations for district and campus staff to work toward continuous improvement of technology use and integration for Carver staff and students.

View more presentations from EdTech SandyK.

Opinion on Texas LRPT: Educator Preparation and Development

NOTE: This blog post is written as a requirement for Lamar University graduate course EDLD 5306 Fundamentals of Educational Technology.

The Educator Preparation and Development (EP&D) area of the Texas LRPT focuses on professional development of educators to equip them with the necessary skills “to effectively facilitate and manage 21st Century learning in technology and information-rich settings”.

Progress indicated by the 2007-2008 STaR Chart for Texas schools in the EP&D area is as follows: 5.4% are at Early Tech level, 74.2% are at Developing Tech level, 19.9% are at Advanced Tech level, and .6% of campuses have attained the Target Tech level envisioned by the LRPT.

Since a majority of campuses are at Developing Tech level, I assume the following trends: Most teachers have access to and have participated in nine to eighteen hours of large group professional development regarding increasing productivity and integration of technology into their content areas, and most have attained two or three of the SBEC Technology Applications Standards. Most educators are adapting technology knowledge and skills for content area instruction and have received training on the use of online content for instruction. Administrators expect teachers to use technology and allocate 6% to 24% of their budget for professional development.

For continued improvement in EP&D, I recommend that a standardized measure be developed so teachers can earn a required Technology Applications endorsement on their teaching certificates by proving they have mastered the SBEC Technology Applications Standards. This requirement will spur districts and ESCs to offer a variety of staff development opportunities, and teachers will more quickly attain the skills they need to teach 21st Century learners.

First paragraph quote and statistical data taken from TEA Progress Report on the Long Range Plan for Technology. Statistical data also taken from STaR Chart Campus Statewide Summary by Key Area.

Why We Can Never Educate Enough About Copyright and Online "Privacy"

Stumbled across this story on Yahoo! news this morning and thought it was a perfect example to use when trying to make the points to teachers and students that

1. Just because the picture is posted on the Internet does NOT mean you have permission to use it.
2. You give up control and privacy when you post anything on the Internet. Even if people aren't supposed to use your stuff without your permission, they still do and will.

The short synopsis is a family photo that a U.S. blogger posted on her blog and used on a few other sites like Facebook wound up being used for a life-size advertisement in a store window in the Chech Republic. Fortuntately this was a fairly innocent use of the photo, however, since it could bring profit to the store some money should have probably been made by the professional photographer who took the original photo and the family that was in it. Let alone maybe the family would like to have a say in what their likenesses are used to advertise?
For the full story, and for an example to share with teachers and students (or even just your friends who post things willy-nilly all over the web), check out these links:
Story of Stolen Picture at ExtraordinaryMommy.com
Yahoo! News Story

The Three R's Are So 20th Century...

Great overview of the educational challenge before us. The three R's (Reading, 'Riting, and 'Rithmatic) are obviously still important, but education has to expand beyond those three basics. Warlick does a great job of explaining why and what the new definitions need to be in the video below.

A Vision of K-12 Students Today

We have come so far...and we have so far still to go!!!!!

The New Literacy

One of my first assignments was to react to a quote from the first week's reading. Below is the quote I picked and my response to it.

In The New Literacy: The 3 Rs Evolve into the 4 Es, Armstrong and Warlick state:

The challenge to us as educators lies in keeping up with an information environment that has changed dramatically in the past 10 years, a decade during which the very nature of information has changed in appearance, location, accessibility, application, and communication. Thus, it is crucial that when teaching literacy to our students, we emphasize skills that reflect the information environment of the present, not the past.

This quote appealed to me because it succinctly explains the tremendous change I have witnessed in technology and education during my career. It also emphasizes for me the gravity of the truth that we cannot settle for “teaching the way we were taught”.

I myself am struggling with wanting to print out the articles we are reading for this course so I can learn the way I’m wired to learn – by physically highlighting and making notes in the margins. This struggle combined with the quote above makes me realize that those of us whose brains were wired before the early 1990’s when the digital age really began to take hold in the main stream have an incredible task before us as we strive to create literate students who have grown up bombarded by and wired to take in information in ways and quantities that we barely comprehend. Learning more about learning styles and needs of digital learners needs to become and remain a priority for me so I can help prepare our teachers to successfully educate their digital students.

NOTE: Opening quote from
THE NEW Literacy: The 3Rs Evolve into the 4Es
Sara Armstrong; David Warlick
Technology & Learning; Sep 2004