New Tech Standards & Requirements

I think it is fantastic that technology is now part of the Oregon Diploma:  2012 essential skills. Just as colleges and employers of high school students expect a minimum standard of ability concerning reading, writing, and math, so to should they be able to expect a minimum standard of technological ability from graduates.  I also think that graduates deserve to receive technology training that prepares them for learning, living, and working within our society. 

One of the ideas I have for implementing a technology strategy for developing Creativity, Innovation, Communication, and Collaboration is developing a class blog.  Elementary school students can participate in the development and maintenance of a class blog. 

Students can be involved in the designing of the layout of the blog,  take pictures for the blog, participate in deciding what class work they would like displayed on the blog and, students can share all of this with their parents at home.  Younger students can actually watch on a screen in the classroom as I add pictures, classwork, and make comments to the blog. 

 Older elementary students can actually create projects and add them to the blog. For instance, in my son's class we are going to tape student's biography presentations on tokbox.com and embed them to the class blog.   Students will then be asked to visit the site in pairs, choose three biographies to read and make comments to each them.  I should point out that this project could not be carried out completely with the school's computers.  The school's computers do not have web cams.   The teacher and I plan to use our laptops so we can make the project happen, but I'm starting to see that there may be problems with lack of technological equipment available to students.

For research, information fluency, critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making,  I can think of many activities using active links.  Allowing students to explore the Internet for solutions to questions like, how do I safely get rid of termites in my home? This question can challenge students to learn about termites, learn about termite habitat, decide what "safe" means, come up with solutions, and determine if the solutions are legitimate.   This project could be done in small groups providing students the opportunity to think, problem solve, and make decisions as a group. 

I also think it is important for students to learn to develop power point presentations. Researched information can be put in a power point presentation which can include pictures and active links.  Elementary students cam also learn to use dictionary.com which offers not only word definitions but language translations and a thesaurus.  As we have mentioned in our class before, technology can be easily implemented into lesson plans throughout the curriculum if we decide to make the effort.  Because kids seem to be drawn to technology, I think technology can be easily merged with all of the Oregon Diploma essential skills.