My school district is currently looking at adopting a baseline of technology skills that all teachers must have. At this point, we are brainstorming ideas and eventually will have a document/checklist in place that will help drive our technology staff development time. My question is: Are there school districts out there that already have such a checklist? If anyone would be willing to share, that would be great. Most searches I have done reveal only state or national standards which tend to be fairly general. We are looking for specific computer/technology skills that teachers need to have to function in today's classrooms.

Tags: standards, teachers, technology

Views: 286

Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

We have undertaken the journey that you are beginning, and will be happy to share our resources. Even though these are based on the Texas expectations (SBEC) for teachers, they are composed of a baseline of technology skills broken out into three levels - Foundations, Basic, and Intermediate. We are in the third year of administering an online assessment to go along with this effort. Here is the information: http://www.neisd.net/et/educator_standards.html
Hey! That's great. Thanks for sharing, Becky.
Becky the tutorial is excellent. I was wondering did you guys purchase the test or made it yourself? I am looking for some sample tests to view for our program next year. I appreciate your post.
We used a product from FADV Assessments (formerly called SkillCheck). They have this huge bank of questions, with lots of them being task-oriented as opposed to multiple choice/true false. We then customized by selecting 40 questions to match the objectives per each level - a representation of the checklist. This made much more sense, having a person actually copy and paste, or merge cells, instead of a factual recall type of test.
What a great idea. I attempted to create such standards for my grad school final project unfortunately with no real sucess. I still believe it to be a valuable idea. One of the big challenges was dealing with dynamic change. When I was trying to come up with standards email and using the Internet were still considered skills. Today those skills are such a part of everyday life that considering them important seems silly. I teach computers in middle school and what I use to spend my entire year teaching is now done on a cell phone with zero instructions. Keep it simple and generic so it has a longer life expectency. For instance All teachers must be able to submit lessons plans and communicate electronically, instead of saying teachers must use MS Outlook to email lesson plans. Just a suggestion.
I agree with you completely. Email and Internet skills should be a part of us--especially as teachers. Some still need to learn things within email such as creating groups and contacts, etc. We will need to decide what skills are really important and what are not. I have found that some districts are dividing their standards for teachers into basic, intermediate, and advanced, which seems like a good idea. We probably don't need every teacher to be an advanced user, but the do need to keep up with the students!
Our school is also discussing this topic and putting together a list. I was wondering which model your school is going to use for the training and assessment of these skills. We are looking at Atomic Learning for this purpose. Have you used it for this model?
We have not used Atomic Learning. I wasn't aware of it, but looking it over, I can see the possibilities. Currently, our IT department offers after school training sessions as the need arises. We recently surveyed the staff on technology needs and several mini-classes arose from the results. As always, the challenge is getting people to take the classes, which is why were are looking at creating a list of skills. Until you require certain skills, many teachers will not make the time to develop them. That is understandable. Teachers have a lot on their plates. Technology is only one part of that, but certainly could enhance all areas of their teaching.
we are actually looking for some kind of free online assessment of teacher use of technology. Does anyone know where to find one? i have looked and cant seem to locate one that will work for us.
Tech Literacy at learning.com has online tech assessments for students and teachers. They are not free, but they are the best of the one's I've researched. Our fifth and eighth grade participated in the beta testing of the new Tech Literacy exam for AZ and it was really well done!
Clair
actually we looked at learning.com for students and we are considering using it. I thought it was either free or very inexpensive however i did not see the assessment offered for teachers. thanks for the reply. Do you have samples of what you used i could look at?
We used the tech lit exam for our 9th graders and soon for our 8th graders. The only bad thing about it is based on the curriculum they provide.

RSS

Report

Win at School

Commercial Policy

If you are representing a commercial entity, please see the specific guidelines on your participation.

Badge

Loading…

Follow

Awards:

© 2024   Created by Steve Hargadon.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service