Interactivity 5

Spreadsheet from Activity 4

The teacher I interviewed is a teacher of middle school science in Denville NJ. Middle school is grades 6-8. He was unfamiliar with the NETS. The initial reaction to the NETS was confused and he was unsure why they were necessary. Because of the environment that comes with the teaching science he felt that using technology was inevitable in the classroom. I asked the teacher if he would look at the standards and talk about one in particular and he chose NETS-T 2.B, “Develop technology-enriched learning environments that enable all students to pursue their individual curiosities and become active participants in setting their own educational goals...” The teacher understands the pressure to teach for the student and let students guide their own learning, but fears giving middle school students too much power before they can handle the responsibility of determining their own learning. The teacher has been teaching for nearly 40 years yet makes it a point to use technology in the classroom including a smart board for in-class notes and reviews, computers for researching and conducting experiments, and dozens of science technologies such as Bunsen burners.

The district is apparently unaware of the NETS -T and -S. There is not much in the area of media literacy, as the district doesn't have money to buy the required materials to teach students. However the teacher expressed interested in the NETS-S 5. Like myself, the teacher feels that social media and new technologies require our culture of a responsibility we have not yet learned. Children can get into trouble for posting comments like “I’m going to shoot myself;” when written it is considered a suicidal thread but when said aloud is an expression of disinterest in an ongoing activity. Because text does not convey inflection, every person interprets text with a different idea based on his or her own way of typing. Due to my own curt way of expressing emotion via written text I am often mistaken for being rude or exerting power when I am simply using as few words as possible.

I wasn’t surprised at the teacher’s responses; I have known the teacher and district for some time and expected the answers I received. Because of the organization of school districts in New Jersey, small towns have their own districts with many less students than districts in other states. Therefore the districts have fewer resources in their community and their boundaries are much smaller. This created numerous budget-funding problems long before we entered the recession, which means technologies in many schools in the area are decades outdated. The only digital technologies in my high school music classrooms were a single PC operating on early Windows XP and an old CD boom box. As a future educator, I would collaborate with other music teachers and in cross-curricular projects to integrate technology into student learning. Once the NAEPs become active I feel it will be easier to understand technology in our schools.