Blog 3

The summary of the draft plan to transforming American education is to ensure that the number or percentage of graduates and college applicants are raised. To do this they must close the achievement rate. Meaning the students regardless of parent income, home situation, location/neighborhood, and race graduate. To do this the educational system must be held to certain standards. The school districts and the schools must be clear about the outcomes they seek. School leaders must collaborate to redesign the structures and procedures they already have in place to achieve effectiveness, efficiency and flexibility. Have a form of monitoring the progress, and a system to ensure accountability for the progress or lack of it. What this means for learning is that the how, what, where and who of learning is met with the use of technology. Technology is meant to close the gap by engaging, motivating, and inspire students and personalize their learning experience. For the educators this means not only a change in how the teaching is done but where it takes place. Accountability and the use of effective teaching have always been around, just in different forms and jazzed up wording. Technology is now a must to teaching, no longer is the education just left the teacher and state requirements of what needs to be taught. While resources are now available in all forms any time with a connection to the internet, it can also be used to connect classrooms and teachers to another. This empowers the educator to create, manage assess and provide real world connections. This requires that the educators and learning community is up to date on current and evolving technology, meaning professional development provided by the districts and outside development by the sole educator to achieve the requirement. What is my opinion on this, the issue I have is deciding what is relevant to the student learning, where the technology will come from, where the funds will come from and will they be used for this of magically moved to fund other programs. Also what is the line drawn for the student and teacher regarding the use of technology? Are videos and information provided fact or opinion and believed truths by the person providing it, is this program up to date, they change every year and is the computer updated to meet the evolving needs of system requirements. In other words, what is needed, how will it be provided and who will be in charge, and will the student be held responsible for their own learning and failures?

Blog 2

The schools and libraries program of the universal service fund or E-Rate is a federal program administered by the Universal Service Administered Company (USAC). Is the budget sufficient, when there is no federal budget the cost of the services falls on the school, not really, unless they apply for the program, which is difficult if they are not a high-risk school and receiving the funds from No-Child left behind. Professional development is provided by the Universal Service Administered Company , the librarian is in charge of coordinating the program and the funds (at least where I work). The professional development dates are p[osted on the site, located and available to specific states at a specific time, at least that was my understanding, from the site and the librarian I chased down to speak to about this program. Through audits the use of the funds are ensured, the system requirements; computer, speakers and phones need to be provided by the school. To be eligible for the program the school needs to be under state law, public or private, operate as non-profit business and can not have an endowment exceeding $50 million. The assessment of the telecommunication services, hardware and other services, occur with the documentation. The location of the equipment must be kept updated, listings of the model, location, installation date and the identification number. The equipment must work and be using the services provided and paid for, in most cases by the Universal Service Administered Company. Precautions are kept in place by permission slips signed by the student and parent, saying that not only can the student use the service (internet, computers and software) but will not commit misuse of the services. If so they are to removed and disallowed use of the services, the same is asked of the teachers, by the monitoring of the websites that are visited on the educators desk or lab top.

Blog Post 1

Technology assessments, what are the pros and cons, what should we be looking for to assess? Once might say we must assess the value of the educators technology leadership knowledge and skill, also don't forget the assessment of the students knowledge, skill level and their perceived needs? Depending on which side of the fence you're sitting on, it could go either way. Before the assessments there will be the professional development training, to several including me we're already seeing the word con blinking in red. But, it might not be that bad, if we follow the same or close to professional development of the SEDL, and use the ATRL (Applying Technology to Restructuring and learning), we have a better chance. The ATRL aim is straightforward as Mary Burns writes "to help the learner-centered learning environments supported by technology." in her article "From compliance to commitment: Technology as a catalyst for communities of learning."Through this teachers are given hands on learning on how to operate the technology with the same disadvantages the students and school faces. The pro to this, it means the professional development wont just be listening to someone talk and show us the same power point with a new name and jazzed up wording over and over and over again.The con, as shown towards the end of Mary Burns article the higher the tech skills of the teacher the lower use of learner-centered approaches are used. Meaning the lower the tech skills of the teacher the higher the learner-centered approaches are used. As an example if we are using Photoshop in class, if I am proficient the less likely I am to have the students gather around in learning groups and "play" with the program to learn. Since I know the program and showed them a tutorial "step-by-step" of everything they are to be doing. At least that is what my opinion is, technology assessments to me will always linger in the gray area between pro and con, I need to see more evidence than studies of a controlled group.

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