Measuring Teacher Technology Proficiency

To establish a baseline of teacher technology skills,  I decided to use Learning.com's Wayfind Teacher Assessment. This online assessment in aligned to the NETS-T standards and measures proficiency in 5 strands:

1. Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity
2. Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments
3. Model Digital-Age Work and Learning
4. Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility
5. Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership

Prior to assigning to my teachers, I took the assessment myself and found it to be  pretty rigorous. It assesses at an application and analysis level which was especially challenging for primary teachers who do not apply technology in the classroom in the way the questions were structured. I took a little heat from several of these teachers who thought this was a pointless exercise since their instruction does not include students researching, citing sources, using databases or creating spreadsheets. 

It is my belief that all teachers should be digitally literate. Teachers who are digitally literate will be more likely to see the instructional connections and opportunities to integrate 21st century skills across all subjects and grade levels. Just because a person teaches 2nd grade does not mean that they only need mathematical understanding through 2nd grade math. Just a metaphor but you get my point.

Teachers were uncomfortable and anxious about having their technology knowledge and skills assessed. We ask our students to do this all of the time and many feel that same anxiety. I assured teachers that this assessment was not going to be used punitively, shared with the Head of School or tied to their annual evaluation. The purpose was to help me, help them grow professionally. We need to assess our own knowledge and skills periodically so that we can identify areas for professional growth.

The Wayfind Teacher Assessment is just one method amongst several that I am using to track our transition to a new educational paradigm. It is a dipstick; a way for me to begin the process of personalizing professional development. As a multiple choice test, there is a margin of error due to correct guessing. I also take into consideration that just because someone demonstrates basic proficiency in the application of technology tools on a multiple choice test it does not mean they are effectively using them with students. 

My next steps include meeting with individuals to review their strengths and focus areas based on their results and the creation of personal learning opportunities. Learning.com allows an administrator to prescribe curriculum based on the assessment results. Learning activities in the database include content from learning.com as well as content from 3rd party vendors and other educators. The quality is varied; many of the Google Apps lessons and resources are from 3 or 4 years ago and if you are a Google Apps user you know a lot has changed. I will assign a few things from the database but I will probably create my own content to make sure the quality is worth teacher's time investment.

The bottom line is that in order to move forward, I need to know where our current strengths and weaknesses lie. The Wayfind Teacher Assessment by Learning.com is a place to start. It is inexpensive and included in an annual school subscription. Like our campus technology plan, it is aligned to the NETS-T standards. This gives me a baseline for our faculty technology proficiency and helps me set goals for improvement.

From Idea to Execution: My First Ga(meh) Expo

Sometimes things just look better in your head. To culminate our first ever game design course, I thought it would be fun to have a game expo for the students. This would give them a genuine audience for their game designs and hopefully motivate them to produce high quality work. The plan was to bring all of the Middle School students together with laptops to play my students' games and vote on their favorites. Students earning top votes would win gift cards to Game Stop and Target.

I think most of the students in game design were excited about this competition. All of them used feedback from their mentors to try to improve their designs before the game expo. I created a website and embedded their games as well as a voting tool for their players. The students seemed pleased with the site and how their games appeared within it. During the game expo, several of the students walked around, talked to players and helped with problems they may have with the games. Although Gamestar Mechanic servers had been very slow the previous day, everything was working fine for the expo. The main glitch we had was with the voting- I did not realize Poll Everywhere was going to limit us to 40 responses and after that, students could not continue to vote. I had to tell students I would fix the poll and send them an email to go in and re-vote. I ended up switching to Poll Daddy which worked fine.

So what was different in reality from what I pictured in my head? I'm an 80's chic so I was picturing a video arcade-type atmosphere with excitement and laughing and questions and whoops when a hard level was beaten.  In reality, the kids sat in bleachers with their laptops, quiet and playing; there was minimal interaction. It did not look anything like a game expo! It did not feel like a game expo.
 Where was the excitement? The sounds? The interactions? Ultimately, I think I accomplished my goal.  My students had a real

purpose for the games that they were designing; to have them played by the people whose opinions matter most- their peers. Maybe the picture that I had in my head was just a non-gamers vision of what a game expo would look like. Maybe this is just what it looks like when kids play video games. If I have an opportunity to do this again their are things I would want to do differently if for no other reason than to create a more exciting aesthetic. Maybe the better thing would be to have the students design and plan the expo themselves!