After reviewing the Progress Report on the Long-Range Plan for Technology, 2006-2020, I can see that Texas will be undergoing many changes in the coming years.
According to the results from the Texas STaR chart, most teachers consider themselves Developing or Advanced Tech in Teaching and Learning. The goal is to increasingly get more teachers to reach their “Target” levels. The reason for this is that technology is now a part of every day life, especially for the students of this generation and generations to come. If we wish to engage students, we must teach to their interests.
As we all know, students must be technology-literate to be successful in today’s world. The purpose of the state’s Technology Applications curriculum is to ensure that students and educators gain and apply critical 21st century digital knowledge across the curriculum. In order to be proficient in technology, the State of Texas has developed expectations for particular grade clusters. At the same time, districts must ensure that teachers have adequate time to teach these applications.
I found the results of the 2009 Speak Up survey to be very interesting. Students in grades K-5 mostly used technology to play educational games, while grades 6-8 mostly used technology to create multimedia. In another part of the survey, students in grades 6-8 expressed a great interest in learning to develop their own website. There is so much technology has to offer but we, as educators, are not utilizing technology to its fullest for various reasons.
Also, during the 2008 – 2009 comparisons for Texas eighth graders’ average Skill Module Scores showed small improvements for modules assessing Systems and Fundamentals, Social and Ethical Spreadsheets, Multimedia, and Presentations; however, scores for telecommunications, internet, word processing, and databases declined.
We are improving in some areas and making declining in the basic areas. Overall, we are making slight improvements every year.
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