Technology+Standards+V+andI+VI+Reflection

 **Chapter 5: TF/TL Standard V, Productivity and Professional Practice ** The performance indicators for standard five reflects on what I believe to be some of the main roles technology leaders and facilitators must achieve to enhance productivity and professional practice with technology in schools. These indicators not only include teaching our educators but leading them on how to become technology skilled, how to create an effective classroom for learning, and to help them teach 21st century digital native students. In most schools technology is available for teachers and staff to use and incorporate into the curriculum, but very few are technology savvy enough to figure out how to use it. Even if they are technology literate they usually do not have the time to learn or research all the new technology we have. I have learned that is why we need technology facilitators and leaders, to help the teacher do their job better. Technology leaders/facilitators should develop lessons, models and activities for the teachers and staff to use in the classroom. Technology leaders and facilitators should create professional development opportunities and learning communities to make sure all teacher and staff are technology skilled and has had the opportunity to see the potentials of today’s technology. As I compare the old way of doing things to what I have learned in this course and from the readings, I realize we have come a long way with technology. The early technology was confined to things like typewriters and copy machines. Information had to be typed, corrected with an eraser or some form of white-out, or you just had to start over. We had to make copies for other people by using carbon paper or a copy machine and the information was delivered by hand or through the postal system. With the invention of the Web 2.0 tools, we can now enter data, share the document with multiple members, and they too can add to the content, edit the document, and share their views regarding the content. All which can take place simultaneously regardless of where you live or who wrote the document. The final document does not necessarily have to be printed to have a copy of it or to give it to others. It can be saved to the hard drive, a disc, flash drive, or other external storage device. It can be e-mail or even faxed to anywhere in the world. With each new technology comes a need to learn about the new product and how to utilize it to its fullest potential and that is why we need someone to keep us updated and help us move on to newer and better ways of accomplishing our daily tasks. In the past two years in the Lamar Masters Degree Program we have been taught standard five many times. We have accomplished TF/TL-V.C. which says to apply technology to increase productivity and we have used desktop publishing software, word processing software, spreadsheet software, and communication tools to help us be productive in this degree program. We learned TF/TL-V.D. which says to use technology to communicate and collaborate with peers, parents, and the larger community in order to nurture student learning. We had to participate in online collaborative curricular projects and team activities to build bodies of knowledge around specific topics. While getting my hours for the internship I designed and conducted a professional development class for teachers and staff on how to use Microsoft PowerPoint. The teachers and staff wanted to know how to do the animations and noises. I used my leadership skills that I learned in this program to teaching them how to use PowerPoint to help them make their class more productive and interesting. This type of professional development should be standard practices in every school. Many teachers are eager to learn and employ new technology into their daily routine they just need a little help. I know many teachers shy away from technology and digital media type lessons because they simply do not know how to use it, or like I often hear, they are afraid of doing something wrong or just do not have the time to do the research and learn to the same thing in a different, more digital way. Most teachers at our campus only use technology when they have to. The idea of training teachers, going into their classrooms to model today’s technology to make them feel comfortable about using productivity tools and other technology should be one of the main concerns of every school district. Why that is not the case, I truly do not understand.

**Chapter 6: TF/TL Standard VI, Social, Ethical, Legal, and Human Issues ** The use of technology in schools and at home has created a variety of issues which must be carefully addressed through school policies, procedures and practices which need to be strictly enforced in all educational environments. Online safety has become a huge problem in our society. New criminals such as cyber bullies, online pedophiles and predators are able to trap children into unsafe situations. Social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace or Twitter allow you to post pictures, addresses, phone numbers and all other type of personal information, which can be used by the wrong person for the wrong reason. On December 21, 2000, these concerns let to the enactment of the “Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA)” (Williamson & Redish, 2009, p. 128). This law requires that, as a condition of participating in federal educational funding programs, school systems will have protections mechanisms in place to block or filter sites that are obscene, pornographic, or otherwise harmful to children. I think in all school internet safety should be taught to all students who will be on the Web. They need to understand the possible consequences and have a good understanding how to deal with any situations that might occur online. I also think that all students and teachers need to be educated in copyright laws and plagiarism. With the invention of the Web, this has become a big concern for all. Copying and pasting from the Web, illegal downloading, and other unethical practices are common practice for most students and sometimes teachers. I have always known that you should not copy music or make copies of books and etc., but I never knew how bad it was until I took this class. “The Copyright Act of 1976 defines intellectual property rights and what constitutes violations of these principles, and Section 107 of this act discusses the fair use defense for teaching, scholarship, and research” (Williamson & Redish, 2009, p. 131). It is a great concern for me that even though schools have acceptable use policies (AUPs) which set boundaries for technology use and educate teachers and parents about security, online safety, copyright, netiquette, cyber bullying and other issues, these rules are broken everyday and no one ever catches these people. I do believe that the proper procedures for online safety, etc. need to be modeled and taught in classrooms and any school environment. This will help to teach our future how to cope with these issues when they arise. Standard VI also addresses privacy, securing students records and protecting their personal information. We studied student information systems and the amount of data they can collect on each student in a class that we took in this program. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) of 1974, protects the privacy of all the student records that are collected by the system. Technology leaders and facilitators need a great deal of knowledge of FERPA and other privacy laws related to education. I plan on learning more by reading, consulting with others and studying the law to help me better understand what to do and how to follow the rules of FERPA. All students should have equal access to computers and the benefits of modern technology regardless their race, gender, socioeconomics, physical or any other disability. This can be a big problem, especially in schools where there are not many computers, and students come from low income families. School districts and technology leaders need to step up to “equalize the digital playing field for their students.” (Williamson & Redish, 2009, p. 127) I think more funding needs to be reserved for technology to close the digital gap. Schools need to be made aware of the importance of technology to catch up with international education and allow students to be prepared for their future jobs and careers. It is puzzling why The US is still so far behind in realizing the implications of not being technologically proficient. In my internship I created a PowerPoint that addressed Online Safety, Copyright laws, and morals and ethics that all related to technology. I distributed it to the teachers and ask them to share it with their student. Most of the teachers said that they learned something from the presentations that they did not know was illegal. They were very surprised that they had been violating the law. They commented that they were just using what was available to them and had not even thought about breaking the law. I will continue to educate people about these laws. They are very important and I want everybody to understand how they work and what it means to break these laws. During my classes and my internship the past two years we have covered technology standard five which say that we must model and teach legal and ethical practice related to technology, apply technology resources to enable and empower learners with diverse backgrounds, characteristics, and abilities, promote safe and healthy use of technology resources and facilitate equitable access to technology resources for all students. We have devised an AUP for our school, we used technology to make a book online that will let the students see and hear the story, we looked at student information systems and how they can help us be a better school.

**Reference: ** Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC). (2007). //CIPA Internet safety policy guidance.// Retrieved from [|www.usac.org/sl/applicants/step10/cipa.aspx] Williamson, J. & Redish, T. (2009). ISTE’s Technology facilitation and leadership standards: What every K-12 leader should know and be able to do. (77-147)