Educator Preparation and Development

The Educator Preparation and Development area gauges how well teachers understand the importance of learning about technology and the many possibilities of its uses. Development of this area is through ongoing job embedded training that is geared towards meeting the technology needs of all students. This is the precursor to the part that I feel is most important; teaching and learning. To quote Harvey S. Firestone, “You get the best out of others when you get the best out of yourself.” Progress in this area at the state and campus level was in the developing stage as of 2008. However, as of 2009-2010, our STaR chart rating moved into the advanced category. We have now moved from using technology for administrative tasks to implementing it into teaching and learning. The trend is logical because the base knowledge of technology by teachers needs to be met before we can move on to implementing this knowledge in to their lessons. My recommendation to continue this upward trend is to allow time for collaboration amongst professionals. It takes time and input from various resources in order to develop lessons that will truly infuse technology and not use it as a presentation tool. Since there is little hope of advancing past the students, we need to use them as a resource. Finally, our greatest untapped resource for new knowledge is the global learning community. According to the NETS for teachers, you can advance past the developing stage and move to the advanced stage by becoming a contributing participant in the global learning community. As a result, all stakeholders benefit.