How long do you plan on teaching with CCCOnline or online in general? More than for the next two years or so? There’s a lot going on in the field of K-12 education that will impact us in the very near future.
Over the past couple of weeks my email mailbox has been flooded with all kinds of information about online learning and technology. One item that caught my eye was an email announcing the New Education Technology Plan released by the Department of Education. This plan is aimed at K-12 and teacher education programs. So why should higher ed be mindful of these proposed changes?
If you plan on teaching for more than the next couple of years, the students who will be impacted by these proposed changes in this report will be our students in the future and they will demand more and better technology from instructors and colleges. Remember we’re talking about K-12 students here and the teachers (and future teachers) that are in the classroom with them. I would even venture to say that we should extend some of these ideas to Pre-K.
This report calls for an increase in online learning opportunities for K-12 and the development and use of technology to “to reach all learners anytime and anywhere”. It suggests using the “power of technology to improve learning” which I’m guessing is more than having 5th graders put together a PowerPoint or first graders using Reader Rabbit. Online learning opportunities for K-12…….so in the not too distant future we will have a population of students who will have been involved with online learning for several years prior to walking through our virtual doors. I can hear a lot of you saying “Great!” and I would agree with you all. But, are we ready for them?
If they have previous experience with online learning, then their expectations will be high for our programs and for each instructor. Do you think they will be content with posting to a discussion board and writing papers when they were building content through student wikis, telling stories through digital storytelling, taking virtual field trips and editing video, audio and images in addition to posting these online or even collaborating online with students in different states or countries?
Equally important are the recommendations for teachers to have opportunities to learn new technology AND how to effectively use these technologies in a classroom. This report also suggests educators should design and participate in online learning communities themselves to further their collaboration and knowledge and provide access to sources of teaching and learning research and practice. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve heard my Intro to Computer students say they are taking my class because their kids know more about computers than they do. This is probably the case in a lot of K-12 classrooms as well. Finally someone is realizing that classroom teachers need support to learn and implement new technologies and to keep current with this field. Here’s an example of an opportunity for K-12 teachers: International Society for Technology in Education http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/2010/program/sessions_by_time.php
Will higher ed, and our program specifically, also start to move up the technology ladder to provide access and learning opportunities for faculty to investigate new technologies and to reward faculty for working with and using new technologies in their virtual classroom? I know in the ECE program, we are moving both our faculty and the statewide faculty up the tech ladder as we incorporate more technologies in our ECE classes. We’ve talked with employers who have told us that our students are not technically prepared when they leave any of our programs. It’s time we realize that we can’t stay technologically stagnant in preparing our students for real world situations.
So even if you are in a different academic area, the references below give us a lot to think about for our kids and for our future students:
“Transforming American Education: Learning Powered By Technology”:
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Moving Forward with Technology
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