Week 9 - Vision to Reality

I enjoyed reading both of these chapters. The section regarding building a vision statement allowed me to understand what my school could be looking at when creating a plan. I really like how it talked about including the following elements: community, treating and supporting parents and students, aspirations for students, and teaching and learning. A lot of the time when I am thinking about technology within my school I am thinking about the teaching and learning. The vision for the school needs to be much broader than this. We must think of our community as a school and a town, we must think of the students and their parents and how it will influence and effect them. The vision statement will allow us to understand where we want to go as a school. I really liked the last bullet points in Chapter 5. It talked about TEACH ing technology in a school. It breaks the letters down to building trust, create equity, advocate on their behalf, collaborate, and be humble. These are great phrases when implementing technology.

The next chapter talked a lot about making your vision a reality and setting goals. Once these are created it is time to get the word out to your faculty and fellow teachers. Professional development is a great way to do this. Helping teachers plan their curriculum using technology will allow the teachers to become more comfortable with using technology in their classroom. I really like how they broke down different opportunities other than workshops to do professional development. My school does not give use much time to do workshops on technology at my school. These have given me great ideas in order to help other teachers effectively use technology.

These chapters really have allowed me to see what it takes to start a technology plan for my school. There is a lot more involved than just saying what technology you have and what you will have in the future. We need to find ways to incorporate it into more than just classrooms but families and the community. Finding more ways that just workshops to show and allow teachers to learn about the technologies is another must at my school. The chapters have allowed me to learn and find more ways to do this.