Digital Technology for Teaching & Learning

Week 2: Routines October 30, 2018 I started my research on googling: “typing best practices” and I was so excited to see many websites available that could help me improve my typing skills. After surfing to a couple website links, I found the article How to Learn Typing very helpful for beginners in typing. In fact, it provides information about the basic of touch typing such as finger position, home row position fingers, ways to remember key rows, useful free websites and software and thirty-day lessons for beginners. Here are some of the visual aids taken from the article: I n theory, I learned that each hand, left or right, is in charge of a particular set of letters on the keyboard. Fingers have designated letters. Learning typing starts knowing the home row keys that are the row of keys on the computer keyboard your fingers rest on when not typing. For example, on the standard QWERTY United States keyboard, the home row keys for your left-hand are A, S, D, and...

Week 1: Discovery and Education October 23, 2018 "If you are working on something that you really care about, you don’t have to be pushed. The vision pulls you."  -Steve Jobs One of the skills that I would like to learn for my personal and professional life is to type using both hands and looking at the screen instead of the keyboard, learn home row, and be able to do it with some speed and efficiency.  I would like to set some initial goals for this skill: Look on internet for suggested best practices to learn this skill; Learn letter placement on the keyboard and corresponding finger placement over specific keys; Once the keys are learned, begin to practice typing for accuracy; Once the accuracy is good, begin to practice timing of words per minute. I feel very excited working on this project as it is a skill I will continually use as well as something I have always wanted to master.  This skill will be a part of enhancing my search and work i...

Hello All,          My name is Clara Prosiliakos, I have been working in the Cicero Public School District 99 since 2002. I worked as a first-grade teacher for 9 years and currently, I am a bilingual reading interventionist. I decided to take technology courses because I, as a teacher, would like to integrate more technology tools into my instruction. I believe that students are interested in technology so if they can use the tools they love, they stay engaged and their learning process is more meaningful and fun.         My favorite tech tool is the Microsoft Office software (Word 2016, Excel, PP, Publisher). I would like to take advantage of all it offers for two main reasons. First, I want to apply them in my instruction and second, I would like to guide my students to use them in a more creative and efficient way to develop critical thinking skills. Currently, the school district is trying to incorporate tech in our student...

Generally speaking the Managing Educational Technology Services course developed a variety of concepts that increased my knowledge regarding the technology implications in the classroom. Those concepts were: other flexible learning spaces, ISTE standards for educators, readiness assessment tool, the federal laws: CIPA, FERPA & IDEA and the impact of the technology in ELLs. While the concepts were studied, in teams, we were developing a project that consisted in creating a proposal for school administrators regarding supporting technology in the classroom by using the topics discussed in class. At the end of the course our final project was a Slides presentation  regarding digital citizenship for parents. I liked the way the final project is going to educate parents about the use of technology in schools today. Moreover, our project intends to offer an overview of tech concepts and rights that can be deeply discussed in future workshops throughout the school year. For the ex...

Here is a presentation of the organizational readiness assessment report. For the realization of this assignment, it was used as a readiness assessment tool regarding the ISTE standard for educators  together with the observation of four elementary grades (two 2nd & two 3rd grades). The observation purpose was focused on measuring teacher's tech practices in the classroom. As a result, it was found that in this particular case, teachers are including technology in their daily tasks, some with more intensity than others. As a matter of fact, teachers demonstrated a great level of implementation for standard 7, Analyst. The sample shows how teachers are familiar with Schoology and Google Suites for tracking student's progress and planning their lessons. On the other hand, data also shows that the implementation of the standard 3, Citizen, is  not fully implemented due to the lack of knowledge and resources on how to encourage the concepts of digital citizenship. G...

ISTE Standards for Educators Assessment Tool The creation of this tool was based on the seven (7) ISTE standards for educators described by the ISTE . These standards describe how teachers should approach technology in the classroom. The ISTE standards consider educator's tech roles as a learner, leader, citizen, collaborator, designer, facilitator and analyst. For each standard, a variety of descriptors were written for identifying the levels of educator's tech practices in the classroom.  Along with this, a rating scale was provided to score each standard. The scale goes from one reflecting it has never been implemented to five which means it is regularly implemented. I believe this readiness assessment tool covers all the ISTE standards for educators and should provide data for reflecting where we stand in terms of integrating technology in the classroom. It also helps us move forward in the school and to create an action plan towards improving the implementation ...