The teacher I interviewed is a friend of mine who recently got a job in my old middle school. He teaches history to eighth graders in the Woodbridge School District. When I first discussed the NET standards with him he was completely unaware that they existed. After emailing him a copy of the standards he made it clear that while the specific standards weren't known, he had been making efforts to incorporate technology into his classroom. Another interesting thing being that the few colleagues he asked about it hadn't heard of the standards either. He was also surprised that his school hadn't given any acknowledgment to the standards, considering the school and the district as a whole are really pushing technology in the classroom. As far as he knew the school as a whole was not actively pursuing the standards, but he wasn't entirely sure.
While the school is replacing old technology in the classrooms, it is a slow process. However, the classroom has a mounted electronic projector on the ceiling, a major benefit for a teacher trying to use tech in his class. Using this he shows clips from online, teaches the students how to research appropriately online, presenting Powerpoint slides to the students, and uses a number of online activities to engage the students. One of the better examples is a Jeopardy game on the computer which the students really love and use as preparation for unit tests.
I was surprised at the lack of time individual students receive on computers. While most students today have ready access to computers at home, at school the students rarely, if ever, use the computers. There are accessible computers in the library, but these are only used when classes spend their class time there. There is also a dedicated computer room, however these computers are almost always used by language learning classes. I asked the teacher if there were plans to bring more computers into the classroom, there is only one and it can only be accessed by the teacher, he said that there were plans to get more computers, but it has been an extremely slow process and that they were told they would be installed by January, but still haven't arrived.
As a future educator it is imperative to not only use the standards in the classroom, it is also important for colleagues to learn these standards as well. By educating the teachers about the growing need to expose students to technology in the classroom students will have a greater opportunity to see technology used in all aspects of their curriculum and not just in specific classes.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ai7nSURhHiO0dHlRUnBDeVpleFVNRllsU3kzLS13clE&pli=1
