Technology Self-Assessment: School 2.0 (NETS-T 1)

NETS-T (1, 2, 5)


Using the Reflection Tool on the School 2.0 website, I took a questionnaire based on the NETS-T modules regarding my success of implementing technology into my classroom.  For activities that I did not indicate as successful, the results offered various resources to help improve those categories.

What's so wrong with being wrong?  Students are constantly assessed by any number of tests starting from the moment they step into the classroom.  Right answers get rewards.  Wrong answers get reprimanded.  So where do students find the desire to think otherwise?  School, at some points, became very stale to me.  Everything had to be submitted in a particular format, or with a particular look.  Even if a project was "left free to the imagination", there was still a quiet pressure to conform to previous models.  As I grew older, and eventually returned to the classroom as a substitute teacher, I began to notice that the system never changed.  Creativity was still sterilized.  From that point, I vowed to bring creativity back to the classroom.  Students get enough rights and wrongs already;  I don't need to add to that.
I was curious to see how I could develop my own understanding of Creativity, and the need of it in the classroom, so I explored the NETS-T Module: Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity.  Ken Robinson gives an engaging lecture on how "Schools kill creativity".  He proposes the idea that schools are still caught in an old system based around emulating the work world.  Education has implemented a heirarchy of subjects:  Mathematics and sciences sit at the top while the arts sink to the bottom.  Why is that?  Despite our understanding of the learner (that intelligence is diverse, dynamic and distinct), there is still a resounding message that the arts have little value in the world of academia.  Change, however, begins with questions.  It begins with admitting that something is wrong because, "If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original" - Ken Robinson.