stages of technology professional development

The author Vanessa Elaine Domine defines each of the stages of technology, and also mentions that as teachers we must know all the stages and how each of them work to find the best way to help out our students. For the first stage she has defined it as what the educator uses for themselves such as a phone to make calls or a computer to simply check their emails and write to others. In the second stage where she calls it professional, this is where the teacher would use their phone or their computer to communicate with other teachers or even the principal  within the school setting. They might use this to ask if a students has arrived to a class to see if they are skipping, or to call for assistance.  The last of the stages is the pedagogical stage where the teachers would use the technology directly to help the students within the classroom or while they are on a field which is the example that the author used in the book.The technology can be used in any classroom setting no matter what subject it is, from geography to psychology to physical education.

In the gymnasium it will be somewhat hard to do, since there already is no technology within the gymnasium like a computer or a celular phone. One example that can be used in the physical education classroom would be to give the children a little homework to do with checking videos online. Let us say that we will be trying to teach the students how to do a proper soccer kick, we are trying to teach it to young elementary students. I will give them a paper with a checklist, they would have to mark off what they see in the video, i will also provide them three videos. Some of the things that they would have to check off would be: knee over the ball, does not lean back, leg trials in back , foot is planted beside the ball. This would be something that the younger students would be able to do since it is very simple and it is something that they can see over and over again so they can reproduce the same later. With older students I would  not give them the checklist at all and they would have to write down only the right things that the kicker does in the video. It may also be used for the teachers for making their plans, or to help out students or even other teachers.

Technology is something that most of the children will have quite a lot of experience with by the time that they would be in the sixth grade. It is the teacher’s duty to try to keep up with the technology even though it is changing and be able to identify the different teaching approaches that would be best suitable to show to the children. The following video shows just how fast technology can change and all the predictions tht were made about technology and how they were all correct and occured years in advance.

here is a video to further explain my point

There also different ages that different types of technology should be introduced to different age children. To give them the best possible learning experience possible. Also each of students would be in different stages and could be capable of doing different things with the technology available to them (1). Just because we are going into a more technological era it does not mean that the students are all at the same level with different types of technology(2). Some of the students might be only known as enthusiasts where they would just simply know how to use their little Ipod and put songs on it from their computer. Whereas some other children might be categorized as professionals because their parents would buy them different pieces of technology such as gaming consoles and powerful computers, this might be because their parents could be computer programmer or designers of some sort and their children would just sort of follow in their footsteps at a very young age.

1.http://www.bobpearlman.org/BestPractices/Stages.htm

2.http://www.wiredprairie.us/journal/2008/01/the_four_stages_of_technology.html

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Tags: professional development, stages of technology