Monday, April 9, 2012

Interactivity #5


            For this interactivity, I interviewed a mathematics teacher of high school grade levels, who also happens to be a mathematics department supervisor of the Mahwah School District. I began by asking him whether or not he is familiar with the NETS for Students 2007. To quote him, he writes, “As I understand, the basic goals and objectives for these standards, to better prepare students for the digital age, by giving them access to various technological tools for critical thinking, real-world problem solving, global communication, project-based learning, 21st century goals and objectives as required by the NJCCS Tech Standard. It is clear to me that he has a clear understanding of the goals of NETS.
            I next prompted him about whether or not his particular school and/or district have begun to implement NETS. He responded with the fact that the school has not yet implemented these new standards, but are fully aware of them and are committed to NJCCS Tech Standard, which he believes mirrors NETS. He is unaware of any plans to adopt NETS since their primary focus is to pay closer attention to the NJCC Standards. He does not know how the state plans to implement the new NETS.
            This school district has had an increase in the amount of technology used in the classroom. For one, he explains that they use the, “TI-Inspire in both the middle school and high school as a formative, diagnostic tool.” He also stated that the district continually provides local funding to purchase digital tools for the classroom as well as budgets money within each of the teachers contracts specifically for professional development whether for tech training or other related resources.
            After inquiring about the Mahwah school district I was surprised about some of the information provided to me. Although NETS is a relatively new group of standards to be implemented within schools, I am surprised that further action has not been taken in order to become more up-to-date. NETS seems to be very useful and I believe every school district should begin implementing it as soon as possible. I was not surprised by the fact that although NETS has not yet been implemented, the district has other means of integrating technology into the classroom, such as the NJCCS Tech Standard as mentioned previously.
            As a future educator, I want to ensure that NETS-S and NETS-T are implemented within the school district. I want to be as diligent as possible towards making these standards one of the priorities, especially if I end up teaching in a school district that has not implemented these standards. If the district is unaware of NETS, I will make it my goal to inform the higher ups of the district about these standards and help to further integrate them throughout the curricula for math and other subject areas. We are living in a world where technology is becoming a primary resource and I believe it is important to teach our students using these tools.

Link to Spreadsheet:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmFRlBCmbnbUdHJTM1R3N0x0c2JHRkpEZ1ZqUU51S2c

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