Reflections on Day 2

The copyright laws that we discussed at the end always seem to make me laugh. In education we are continually infringing on copyright laws, especially when it comes to watching movies. I also understand that teachers are given some leeway. I enjoy learning about the law and I can only imagine the size of the new educational law book as more and more technology related cases make their way into the court system.

After today I have a new appreciation for technology in the classroom. I can honestly say that I do not use enough. I feel that part of this problem is our lack of professional development. Too frequently we are told to intergrate technology and given time to add it to your classes. No advice, no modeling, no help...just get it done. For me it seems that I want to know how to run the program myself and provide instructions for my students before I can expect them to perform tasks. Even with all this said, my wiki that I plan to develop will be used by my students this year. If you start with one small project and become comfortable, I think you can build and expand on that.

Lastly I realized another reason for understanding literacy, adapting, and tranforming...knowing which level your teachers are at. Too frequently administrators are happy when you make your kids do a powerpoint and feel you have intergrated technology. I think that looking at these three definitions allowed me to better see how well teacher are using technology and if they are getting to the transforming level or just staying at the literacy level. Too frequently are students are still at a literacy level and a few adapting projects may be developed. You stated it very well when you said that an administrator needs to model this. Our administration (superintendent) has slowly been decreasing the computer requirements of our students. We have very few students that can manipulate programs beyond the basic level. Sad to say we are moving in the wrong direction when it comes to technology.