EDUC 638 Christopher Interview
Upon the completion of the interview
process, the school that was chosen for this assignment was a school in my
school district by the name of Williams Sullivan High School. This school is
located in a rural town name Durant, MS which is located in the Holmes County
School District. This school is located on 14494 Hwy 51 South, Durant, MS 39063.
Williams Sullivan enrolls students from 9-12 grades.
Although school is of course is out for
the summer break and through extensive research, I was able to locate a teacher
by the name of Ms. Erica Clayton. Ms. Clayton is an educator that teaches
computer technology at Williams Sullivan High School. The interview process was
very informative because Ms. Clayton was friendly and made the atmosphere of
the interview very pleasant. When conducting an interview, the atmosphere must
be pleasant thus creating the right questions to be asked and the right questions
to be answered. The questions that was
asked was in the area of funding for computers, the effects of social
networking, effective training on the integration of new technology and the
current application of the computer technology class.
In the area of funding, due to the
financial effects of the economy, education is not receiving the full funding
that is really needed to advance or to promote the advancement of education.
Holmes County is one of the low income counties that are located in the state
of Mississippi. “Holmes County School district is trying their best to advance
with the advancement of technology to better prepare their students for the
real world” this was a direct quote from Ms. Clayton. Ms. Clayton stated that “due to the advancement
of technology that is constant on the rise, it has become difficult to try to
keep the computers, software and applications up to date.” The funding for
computers are limited but the school try it best to make sure the software are
current to date such as Microsoft Word 2010. The use of Microsoft word prepares
students for college such as assisting the student to become familiar with
Microsoft word, PowerPoint and excel spreadsheet.
Another area that was up for discussion
during the interview process was the effect of social networking. According to
our book the technology director’s guide to leadership the power of great
questions state that implement monitoring and management tools to determine
whether your network bandwidth is sufficient for organizational needs. Teachers
will not spend valuable class time waiting for long Internet downloads or slow
network response time. You must know what your peak time loads are and what
types of traffic is actually moving across those lines (Hall, 2008). Ms. Clayton
says that for one solid week in her computer technology class, the students are
educating on the pro and cons of social networking sites. Ms. Clayton stated, “My students are prepared
for the pro and cons of social networking sites. The pro of social networking
such as Twitter and Facebook is maintaining a clean image with NO profanity.
The reason for this is to educate my students on how colleges and possible
employers may browse their social network page to sum up there profile. The
cons of social networking sites, is profanity, nudity, and a bad self-poor
image. If their profile is not clean or does not contain morals, this will
interfere with their chances for colleges and possible employment
opportunities. I educate my children to be mindful of how they carry themselves
which will reflect how they are received in this world.”
Another area that was up for discussion
during the interview process was the vitality of effective training for the integration
of new technology in the classroom. Ms. Clayton discusses the importance of
effective training on new technology that the teacher must receive before
presenting it to her students. Ms. Clayton stated, “Effective training in any
subject produces effective results in any given classroom.” She further stated
that the integration of new technology is both vital for the teacher and for
the students. If the teacher is not familiar or does not receive the proper
training of new technology how can a teacher effusively teach the students the
new technology that is present in the classroom? New roles for teachers and
administrators have become evident as more and more school districts employ
full-time technology coordinators. In districts with many schools
geographically dispersed, it is common to have build-level-coordinators in
additions to district-level coordinators (Picciano, 2011). As Ms. Clayton stated, effective training is
so vital in the learning process of the new technology in the classroom that
will become beneficial to both the teacher and the students. Overall, the
interview process was a great process. Thanks to Ms. Clayton and the Holmes
County School District.
Reference
Hall. D. (2008). The
technology director’s guide to leadership: the power of great questions.
Washington, DC: International Society for Technology in Education.
Picciano, A. G. (2011). Educational
leadership and planning for technology (5th ed.). Hunter College,
NY:
Allyn & Bacon.
1 comment:
Chris,
Thank you for an thought provoking post. I agree with the comment you cited that said, "Teachers will not spend valuable class time waiting for long Internet downloads or slow network response time. You must know what your peak time loads are and what types of traffic is actually moving across those lines" (Hall, 2008).
Bandwith is more and more of an issue especially as students begin to all connect with mobile devices. This is why schools must plan to provide bandwidth for things that will accomplish educational objectives. In regard to social media, in my view, schools must block most popular social networking sites especially in k-12. Bandwidth issues and distractions are real issues in schools today. There are many products like CourseSites by Blackboard that make discuss forum's available for free and incorporate many of the same features.
This leads me to my final point, with all of the challenges you listed of schools providing technology to students I would suggest this. The government can't do a real effective job providing top of the line technology to every student except in a few limited cases. Parents must invest in their children't future by providing them technological opportunity, not depending on what is most often a dysfunctional state to facilitate.
Reference
Hall. D. (2008). The technology director’s guide to leadership: the power of great questions. Washington, DC: International Society for Technology in Education.
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