Wow! What an informative, interesting learning experience with Thing #9! I think we all realize as educators that our learners and a lot of the world are in a Digital World, and we need to be right there with them both. To quote from the Horizon Report, "The Gap between students' perception of technology and that of faculty continues to widen!" This is a problem I would definitely say! I totally agree with this statement as it relates to where we are with digital learning/teaching in Newington.
No doubt technology is improving every day and students and lay people are using it more and more for a just about everything they do in life. While I do see it replacing the traditional ways of teaching/learning in the future, I'm not so sure we'll get there as quickly as we need to. I base this belief on the following. Newington hasn't yet adjusted for the Digital World in our most recent curriculum over hauls for teaching/learning. Our assessments both common and Mastery Test based are still very traditional. Lastly, professional development is lagging behind in this area...teachers need more training!!! This opportunity is right on!!!
To quote again from the Horizon Report, "Fluency in information, visual, and technological literacy is of vital importance, yet these literacies are not formallly taught to most students? The challenge remains to develop curricula and assessment rubrics that teach how to apply standard competencies to other forms of communication such as short digital videos, blogs, and photo essays."
The good news is that Newington is moving in this direction as evidenced by PD opportunities like this one. I see much more focus on technology integration at the high school. My sense is that there will be a shift from acquiring the hardware (smartboards, mac labs, clickers, etc.) to actually focusing on how to integrate all that we have into instructional delivery and assessment. We'll see.....
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