Survey

The Technology Applications Inventory and the SETDA survey results honestly surprised me. I thought that I was fairly computer literate, but after taking these surveys I feel like I am in the Stone Age of computer knowledge.

On the Foundations domain, I had 5 "yes" responses and 13 "no" responses. I had no idea what it was talking about with some of the questions such as interfacing digital and analog technology. I had 4 "yes" responses out of 10 in the Information Acquisition Domain, 9 "yes" responses out of 18 in the Solving Problems with Techology Tools, and 6 "yes" responses out of 12 in the Communication Domain. It is very humbling to feel you know next to nothing about technology. What is pretty sad is I am considered to know more about computers than many of our other faculty members. Obviously I have to strengthen all four domains since I am weak in all of them.

I chose to take the SETDA teacher survey. This was an interesting survey to take because it asked questions about technology that I had not thought about before. The general outcome of the survey revealed a couple of things to me. First, I have room to grow with technology both personally and in my classroom. I knew we had Kindergarten technology standards, but they had never really been talked about or given priority. I've already started looking at ways to integrate more technology into my classroom. Second, my school is trying to grow in technology use, but there are many areas such as access and funding issues that need to be addressed. I have the same computers from 9 years ago when I first began teaching. Another area my school can grow in is technology professional development. We rely heavily on Region 7 to address this area. It would be great to have workshops that really are tailored specifically for our school.

So, in a nutshell, my school district and I have plenty of room to grow in technology.