I recently received this e-mail from a principal:
Our district has always hired teachers to be in charge of the technology in their respective buildings. Because we are growing rapidly, these tech specialists are slowly moving out of the classroom and focusing
solely on technology. However, we are still required to evaluate them as teachers because they are on a teacher contract.
I was hoping you could direct me to some resources that would help me create an appropriate evaluation tool. Obviously, the form used in a classroom setting is no longer functional for these individuals. I would appreciate any help you could provide. Thank you.
This is not the world that I live in, but I know that technology integrationists – the folks that roll up their sleeves and work side-by-side with teachers and students to help them meaningfully integrate digital technologies into their classroom work – are critically important to the success of most school technology initiatives.
Do any of you have resources for evaluation of technology integrationists that you can share? Thanks in advance!
I’ve been niggling over how technology and thinking go together, and I think showing some success atProject Euler problems would be a good start at showing that you get it.
Thanks to Kate and Brad for getting me interested in that.
Here is a link to our districts tech integration plan. One of the pages is a rubric that we are supposed to use with our teachers.It is called a skills audit and it is page 6.
https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B_e0N49r8hyAYzhmZjM1MjgtYTkwMC00ZTc0LWI1Y2UtZTg3NjViMzE1MzQ3&hl=en&authkey=CPD1s3M
ISTE had, at one point, a set of standards in the works specifically for technology facilitators. I can find bits and pieces of them on ISTE’s site, and the bits and pieces are mixed with technology “leader” standards.
I’m not clear how (or if) those might be different from the ISTE Administrator standards, but it could be a good place to start in terms of evaluation of technology facilitators.
http://www.iste.org/images/excerpts/TLPREP-excerpt.pdf
Joel
I’d agree with Joel that ISTE’s Technology Leadership and Facilitation Standards is a good place to start. The ISTE publication on this topic will have everything you need to develop the rubrics you’re looking for.
http://www.iste.org/store/product.aspx?ID=380
I’ve created self assessment tools using the ISTE standards in the past. I don’t have a link to the assessment available, but I can send you a copy if you’re interested.
While this one is aimed mainly at TESOL teachers. administrators, teacher triners etc. the TESOL Technology Standards Framework may be good for helping you design your own rubric.
h
ttp://www.tesol.org/s_tesol/sec_document.asp?CID=86&DID=11779
Oops. Sorry about that. Hope this one works.
link name
Third times a charm? Sorry for my excessively steep learning curve.
TESOL Technology Standards Framework
Hi All-
We’re more on the side of those being evaluated, but we’ve been working with universities to develop online learning solutions that can be highly customized based on the institution’s needs. I’d be happy to discuss and provide input if it would be helpful in any way. Please check out our site and do feel frree to email me directly if you have any questions. Happy to see such an active community in this space!
-Michael Burk
Aprendi Learning
mike@aprendilearning.com
I would argue against traditional evaluations for an individual who serves in this capacity. You can actually gauge the tech integrationist’s effectiveness by determining amount of improvement or growth in tech integration for your individual classroom teachers. It is important to document the beginning levels of proficiency for each teacher (and their need areas) so that a value-added model of assessment can be applied. If you develop a model such as this, teacher evaluations, input and feedback are valuable and honored, as they should be. This way, you can spend more time creating improved, customized evaluation instruments for your district teachers with regards to tech integration.
Long time reader first time commenter-
I’m a classroom teacher in a school of 800. We have a great technology team for the hardware but only one computer teacher. I’m passionate about integrating technology into our everyday learning but we are far behind -very few teachers have their own website, students just got google accounts this year and the roll out for how teachers can use them has been difficult. (Many teacher’s main hurdle is integrating technology into their class when they have only 4 or 5 computers in their room for a class of 28.)
I’m a relatively young teacher but have been at the school longer than a third of my coworkers. Not knowing what to expect in the budget for next year, but still very committed to growing our technology literacy, I’m open to the idea of teaching less and being a tech specialist. Any suggestions on how to approach the subject with my administration? How are these other teachers making the transitions?
@katie
My school is in a similar situation, we also just got google apps and classes have between 4-6 computers with 3 computer labs and computers in the media center. My principal forced everyone to take the plunge by putting the sign up for our PLCs on google apps, the PCL forms and documents are all shared in google docs and our computer lab sign up is in docs. I teach ss but me and the computer teacher serve as “quasi tech facilitators” providing the PD for the implementation of apps in our building. Our school is piloting it for our district (17 schools)so I also have to keep the data documentation, and yes I teach a full load of 4 8th grade and 2 7th grade classes! I love what I do and I love helping my colleagues integrate tech. My administrators are very proactive and have been using faculty meetings for our rollout of apps. Our first PD was introducing docs so every could sign up for their PLC. The next one we sent out a form to individualize the PD for staff based on their needs. So Donna (comp teach) took the “advanced” group and forged forward with forms and I took the other group and reviewed docs, showed them how to create contact lists to use in docs and mail and showed them how to comment and collaborate on docs. We worked in time to have both groups create a lesson (or idea) that they could use the next day or week and record it on our shared doc that we are using to track the many ways across the staff we use google apps in our school. I was pleased that we even came up with ideas for the guidance counselors, world language and even the choral teacher!
This is so similar to the role of a library media specialist. Many in our profession have struggled to get principals to understand that we need a different evaluation tool so I applaud you for recognizing this! Here is a nice example of an evaluation tool for school library media specialists aligned to the AASL Standards for the 21st Century Learner: http://library.mansfield.edu/compchecklist.asp
Another thought – why not align with your state’s professional endorsement requirements? Here is Colorado’s: http://www.cde.state.co.us/cdeprof/download/pdf/addendwksheets/instructionaltechworksheet.pdf. Likewise, look at your district’s job description and build the evaluation rubric based on the same criteria.
Two responses:
A New Paradigm for Evaluating the Learning Potential of an EdTech Activity
http://stager.org/articles/71_Stager.pdf
Humble Suggestions for the Computer Lab
http://stager.tv/blog/?p=1625