Technology competencies

Have you ever thought about whether teachers should use technology in their lessons or not?

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My reflection about "Editor-Invited Article Teacher Educator Technology Competencies" is ;

Most of us know that some teachers use some kind of technology in their lessons.

For example, some of my teachers use Kahoot to make lessons fun and provide a better understanding of the subjects for students.

Do you know when they are in teacher preparation programs, these programs prepare them for having these technology competencies?

There are some institutions, like the U.S. National Educational Technology Plan, the Teacher Educator Technology Competencies(TETCs), and so on. 

They suggest that having a common set of technology competencies is necessary for teacher educators who prepare teacher candidates to teach with technology.

Actually, this is very sensible because everything includes technology anymore and with technology, the proportion of students' success can increase.

According to the TETCs that shed light on the roles and responsibilities of teacher educators who address technology within their courses, the competencies (knowledge, skills, and attitudes) are described all teacher educators need in order to support teacher candidates as they prepare to become technology-using teachers. 

You can ask what happens if there is a teacher without having the competencies?

The answer is easy, especially in the Covid-19 period. 

Some teachers who don't have the competencies are suffering from online education. They haven't enough experience with online education or something that is very close to online education. They only rely on traditional methods, which means not including technological things. Now, they are trying to figure out how to overcome this situation.

Fortunately, most teachers tried to have experience with online education or something that is very close to online education, and now they are continuing to tell their lessons as usual.

Technology and Teacher Education

Teacher candidates are often required to design technology-based lessons in their coursework, but very few actually teach those lessons in classrooms with students, and due to this reason, teacher candidates graduate from preparation programs with little or no knowledge about how to use technology to facilitate PK-12 student learning.

Moreover, specific instructional models have been designed around the TPACK framework to assist content-area teachers while planning instruction.

However, due to the lack of technology skills, the teacher can't effectively integrate technology into the curriculum they teach.

I am very curious about how many teachers do use such a framework in Turkey. Do they skip any parts of it?

It can be claimed that some teachers only focus on knowledge. They tell the topics directly and some of them even tell the topics as if they read the coursebook. Students listen to the lessons as if they listen to podcasts or watch a movie but not like listening to the lesson. For some students, these kinds of lessons are more effective than others. I think, in this case, the learning method is depending on students' learning types and shapes.

Role of Standards in Teacher Education

According to InTASC  (Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium ), standards are grouped into 4 categories.

• learner and learning
• content
• instructional practice
• professional responsibility

According to CAEP ( Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation ), standards are grouped into 5 categories.

• candidate content and pedagogical knowledge
• clinical partnerships and practices
• candidate quality, recruitment, and selectivity
• program impact
• quality assurance

Both sets of standards hold teacher educators accountable for preparing teacher candidates who acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to ensure the academic and social development of PK-12 students.

Comparing them to ISTE standards, in which you can also see my article about ISTE Standards for Educators (Permitted Educational Use), these standards are more specific and not enough. They should have had more categories.

For example, there should have included that teachers should attend or create networks related to their areas, they should be a pioneer to support student empowerment and achievement, and they have what ISTE standards include at least.

Methodology

Phase I: Crowdsourcing

The process allows for many individuals to participate in knowledge generation, and to participate based on their varied expertise and experience.

It can be called group discussion.

Phase II: Delphi Method

This method is an approach used in research to validate and refine ideas because it “is designed to both obtain and identify areas of consensus and divergence of opinion”.

This method allows “a group of individuals, as a whole, to deal with a complex problem”, and involves experts who are carefully selected to provide their opinions on ideas

Phase III: Public Comment

Making surveys to ask the public what they think about the topic.

Implications For Teacher Educators

I evaluate Teacher Educator Technology Competencies (TETCs) with related criteria, which is from the book page 432 table 1.

We have seen some videos, like smart black board in chinese classroom, smart blackboard in chinese classroom, Smart education a trend in China with IT solutions and so on. The key thing is that they use technology very effectively for their lessons. 

In Turkey, we can't expect the same things from our teachers due to financial problems, however, using the smartboard for lessons is not the only way to utilize technologies to enhance teaching and learning.

For example, teachers can find and use some platforms, like Kahoot, to enhance teaching and learning.

Before the Covid-19 period, I guess, some teachers didn't care about this criterion because they used only the traditional method for teaching.

However, while the Covide-19 period, they are using online tools whether they want or not.

As I mentioned before, the result is that teachers using online tools before the Covid-19 period don't have issues about using online tools while the Covid-19 period as much as others.

For example, in this semester, some of my teachers use websites, Piazza, and Pearson. In Pıazza, students can discuss lessons with each other, and teachers. Teachers can mark important topics. Students can directly send mail to teachers. In Pearson, teachers send students assignments and quizzes and if students make a mistake, the system determines where they need help and then gives students hints to understand their mistakes.

I find these websites very useful for now.

In our era, it is necessary to keep continue to improve ourselves every time that we can because people continue to invent or discover things.

As a teacher candidate, we should follow innovations and change ourselves according to them.

In my country, I don't think that every teacher and teacher candidate try to engage in ongoing professional development and networking activities to improve the integration of technology in teaching. 

If they do, why don't we get high scores from PISA or any other institutions evaluating countries' education systems even if we can provide to engage in ongoing professional development and networking activities to improve the integration of technology in teaching?

I think that in this criterion, my department, Department of Computer And Educational Technology (CET), has a very critical role.

When we look at other teachers' departments, CET works with technology more than others.

Unfortunately, using technology in lessons doesn't always give students advantages. Sometimes, students can be wronged because of the system's mistakes. 

For example, some of my classmates were wronged in some exams, and they told their situation to teachers.

When teachers checked it, they saw there is something wrong in the system and immediately tried to fix it.

Fortunately, they fixed it, and then helped these students.

It released in 7.11.2020

The last update was in 7.11.2020

References

• Editor-Invited Article Teacher Educator Technology Competencies
• Freepik
• http://tpack.org/
• Google images