I think it is important to assess educators and students knowledge and skills of technology. The assessments give us information needed to plan for ongoing instruction and staff development. Assessing the students will help the teacher know what is needed and will help teachers to plan for the integration of technology in their lessons. The assessment will also aid the teacher in grouping students; i.e., placing students who know Microsoft Word with other students who may not know it.
I believe assessing educators’ technology leadership knowledge and skills is essential to improving the use of technology in our education system. This assessment would aid the administration in scheduling professional development workshops. Of course, the downside of this might mean the teacher finding out he/she doesn’t know as much as the student. In some cases finding this out will inspire teachers to seek out workshops to improve their knowledge. Whereas, in other cases I feel some teachers would not seek out the workshops because they might be intimidated by technology. If professional development is held and the teachers become familiar with the programs, then I think they will include these programs in their instruction.
When working on my internship I was in a third grade classroom where the teacher instructed the students how to make slides using Powerpoint for their vocabulary lists. During small group time she assigned one word to two or three students. Each student would either type the word, the definition, or choose the picture that best represented that word. When they completed their slide the students saved the file and when the groups were finished, she had a Powerpoint for their vocabulary which could be used to review it. I thought this was an awesome way to study vocabulary.
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