Week 7 - Bringing students' technology skills to the community

This week's article that I chose was rather fascinating to me. Students in Indiana, PA who are taking technology courses are applying their skills and bringing them to the community. Some students are working as interns in the school, helping the technology staff and teachers with the school's available technology, including a one-to-one Chromebook program. Now, with the school board's approval, the students are looking to begin to teach community workshops for their parents and neighbors who want to learn more about technology. The workshops would be primarily created, advertised, and led by the student-interns. This idea provides so many benefits to both the students, who can showcase their skills and hone their communication and presentation skills, and the community, who may not understand some of the technology the students are being taught and want to learn more than computer basics. By allowing the students to run these programs, they are gaining valuable work experience and necessary interpersonal job skills.
I believe it is so important for schools to reach out to the community. Because schools are funded by tax payers, many times residents of a district want to know what they are paying for. This is especially important in less forward-thinking communities who are skeptical when they see more money being pushed toward technology that they may not understand. By allowing students to showcase what they have learned, the school gets to prove the benefits of their investment into educational technology, educate the community, and provide valuable real-world experience to hardworking students.

Article: https://www.indianagazette.com/news/indiana-news/community-technology-workshops-to-be-offered,25362624/

Week 6 - Integrating Technology into Assessments

First off, I wanted to give a quick update to my Week 2 post about bilingual education in California. Proposition 58 has passed! Students in California now have a choice to receive their education in multiple languages. This is a great step not only for the ESL community, but also for native English speakers that want to enhance their educational and professional opportunities by learning a second language.
Changing topics, I read this week about integrating technology into our assessments. This article on Education Week pleaded a strong case for ditching the traditional bubble-filling format of standardized tests in favor of a more interactive computerized test-taking format. The author cited a few reasons for making the switch, but the primary benefit would be that students would be taking their test in the format which makes them the most comfortable, which in this day and age is more likely to be electronically, rather than paper-and-pencil.
Initially, I thought the article was going to discuss the merits of using technology to completely change our assessments and evolve them into a more real-world application of what they learned. However, it seems like the primary goal of the technology integration as described by the article is merely to provide an alternate format of taking the same tests, or essentially bubble-filling on a screen instead of on a piece of paper. This disappointed me, but it made me think about how I can reinvent other assessments to include technology. For example, creating digital posters instead of paper ones, a Skype session instead of a face-to-face interview, or a WebQuest instead of a traditional research assignment. Additionally, maybe the simple format switch from paper to computer can pave the way for a total reinvention of the standardized testing process.

Here is the article: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/education_futures/2016/11/why_we_should_integrate_technology_into_assessments.html Oddly enough, I was able to read the whole thing on my phone, but when I tried to access the link on the computer, it wouldn't let me read the article without subscribing first. Hopefully it works for all of you!

Week 5 - Replacing Teachers with Computers?

As teachers, one of our worst nightmares is for our jobs to be replaced by computers. In this day and age, where all the information in the world is literally at our fingertips and in our pockets, the idea of being replaced by technology is not as improbable as it once seemed, but it still feels like that time is still far away. However, in Maine and several other areas across the country, that concept has become reality. In an article that I read this week, Rosetta Stone is currently taking over language classrooms, in place of human teachers. The article cites a severe teacher shortage and lack of interest in language education programs in college, which is an entirely different issue in the education world. This seems hard to believe, since Pennsylvania has such a teacher surplus, but it is scary to think that schools in other states may start doing the same as Maine. Although Rosetta Stone claims to be intended only as a supplement to language instruction, I can see schools implementing the computer program and hiring technology aides to cut down on the cost of paying highly qualified teachers. I already know of one school in Pennsylvania where my friend, a certified Spanish teacher, was working as a long-term substitute, where she supervised a Rosetta Stone lab instead of actually being able to teach. Language learning technology is a wonderful thing, but we need to be careful that we do not let it take over and replace the human interaction between a teacher and students. In addition, we as teachers need to adapt our work to ensure that we bring more to the classroom than a computer program alone. How do you think we can embrace technology without becoming obsolete ourselves?

Article: http://qz.com/825803/computers-are-replacing-foreign-language-teachers-in-us-high-schools/