Creighton Chapters 1-4

After reading the chapters, I remembered the principal telling us that we need to use the technology we have in the classroom.  We were trained on the interwrite board as a crash course into technology last year.  We had an option to get retrained recently, but it was during school hours for one hour. Many of the teachers were in class teaching. I don't know how it would benefit those who didn't attend, but it did put a few of us in a position to teach or review with those in their grade level.  I am wondering if the teachers are going to be the technology leaders or followers.  Is our technology going to succeed or fail in this way?

A principal is there at our schools to lead us in the upward direction to reach our yearly goal to meet or exceed AYP.  Counties have spent a lot of money to put in technology in our classrooms to assist us and help challenge the students to help meet our goals.  We are suppose to be train to make sure we know how to use it.  When I walk into some of the classrooms,  I see students on the computer playing educational games and reading drills.  We have a computer lab, but the students are playing educational games and drills.  With the use of the interwrite boards,  the teachers do use it as a visual tool to teach their lessons.  We are stuck in these techniques of technology.  The principal says nothing as long as we use all the technology that was put into the classroom.  We need to start thinking outside of the box and putting more effort into how we can use the technology we have in new ways.  We also need a leader  to ensure we are  coming up with ways to teach the students how to use the computers to find answers instead of drills.

Being in a Title I county is a challenge when majority of our students don't have computers at home.  Students get their technology experience at school.  At my school, we have the highest ELL population for elementary schools.  In the classrooms, half of the computes have updated software.  In the ESOL Resource Center, none of the computers have been updated since we recieved them a few years ago.  They are unable to run Rosetta Stone which is valuable to the ESOL program.  The county can tell when we don't use the programs in the ESOL Resource Center. If we don't use it, we lose it.  How can we get a newcomer to catch up with the english speakers when they can't get the technology assistance to help them learn english?

As long as my county doesn't try to find the next big reading series or math series, we can try to concentrate on technology training and updates.  We need to encourage teachers to take a risk with their technology to find new ways to have all students understand how to do research on-line, using software to print out information for visual projects, or creating a visual project on-line.  They need these skills to get the students to start using technology for themselves instead of games and drills.  We also desperately need a technology mission statement to keep everyone focus on the goal which can coincide with our school goal to exceed AYP.  I am excited about the process but also worried about having the support.  I would like to produce our technology mission statement with the help of every faculty and staff so we can all focus on the same school goal/ goals.