EDU 5625: Educational Technology in Indiana: Is it Worth the Investment?

http://ceep.indiana.edu/projects/PDF/PB_V4N4_Spring_2006_Education_Technology.pdf

Review/Summary:  This article is written by Vincent J.Palozzi and Terry E. Spradlin for the state of Indiana.  It provides information in a brief to the state government in the hopes of creating a state-wide policy towards educational technology.  The article provides information comparing various Midwest states (Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, etc) and information from states such as Maine and Georgia.  At the end of the article, the authors list their recommendations.  These include following the state of Maine in providing wireless networks and laptop computers to students who do not have any.  The authors state that Maine witnessed a rise in student performance.  They also included a recommendation for finding a way to assess a teachers ability to use educational technology.

My thoughts:  I enjoyed reading this article and wished that I could have found a similar document for the state of Tennessee.  I am originally from Iowa and I was interested in seeing another Midwestern state's policy towards educational technology.  The idea of providing wireless networks and computers to students seems to be a good one, but there are too many pitfalls in my opinion.  School districts would have to deal with insurance issues and theft, as well as, finding a way to monitor the students and their use of the equipment at home.  Students or others at the household may use the technology to search for pornography or other unsavory things.  I applaud the idea of assessing teachers and their use in educational technology.  The state of Tennessee also requires that teachers complete a training program over a time period of a few years.  Overall I thought this article was illuminating and I hope to find a similar one for Tennessee.

EDU 6000 Blog Entry #2

EDU 6000 Blog Entry #2

I worked with my grade level teachers on creating groups this week, but to be honest they were able to do so quite easily.  Much to my chagrin I realize that my first project was a bit too easy.  I spoke with some other teachers about technology needs and ideas and I have a few more ideas.  I will speak with Mrs. Taylor this coming week about creating a class website.  This is a personal project that I have done in the past two years and I would like to share it with other teachers on other grade levels.  I also spoke with our academic coach about teaching an in-service on how to create a Shutterfly website.  If I do teach an in-service it will be in about two weeks due to time constraints on making it available to the faculty.  I feel that my current goal with Mrs. Taylor is to get a poll together on technology needs from the faculty in an attempt to see what they would like to learn.

On a side note, I assisted one of my co-workers in reconnecting her computer to the wireless network.  This is something that I was not able to do as recently as a year ago and I felt quite proud of my accomplishment!

EDU 6000 Blog Entry #1

I started off my first week speaking with Mrs. Gina Taylor at Montgomery Central Middle School.  We discussed various activities that we could work on throughout the semester.  She decided that my first task would be to work as the Powerschool coordinator for the 6th grade hallway.  Powerschool is an online grade book application used by the Clarksville-Montgomery County school system.  Mrs. Taylor told me about a problem that was discussed in recent SIPs (school improvement plan) meeting.  The school has had difficulty reaching the desired achievement for students of low sociology-economical and racial backgrounds.  She informed me that Powerschool can be used to help keep track of these students, however, few teachers in the building understand how to do this.  My assignment is to work with my grade level teachers and show them how to create groups in Powerschool.  Groups are exactly what it says; teachers can select students to track, print progress reports, etc and place them in a specific group.  I plan on starting this task next Monday (January 23rd) and I will update my blog by the end of the week.