The First Step: Assessing My Strengths and Weaknesses

As part of the first week’s assignment, I had to take two surveys: one assessing my technology skills and one assessing the use of technology on my campus. Based on these surveys, I need to discuss my strengths and weaknesses in technology and in technology leadership on my campus. So here it goes.

The first assessment was the Technology Applications Inventory provided by TEA. It was a simple yes or no inventory broken into four domains: Foundations, Information Acquisition, Solving Problems, and Communication. Overall I answered ‘no’ to less than 14% of the statements. I was pretty proud of myself. There were a few statements that I was on the line about, such as, “I can delineate between the various digital file formats including, but not limited to, .wav, .mid, .au, .doc, .txt, .gif, .jpg, .mov, and .cwk.” I will admit that .au and .cwk stumped me until I looked them up. Ahhh… Clarisworks. Yep. Got it. And .au is a simple audio format. I had to dig for that answer. Even Google wasn’t on familiar terms with it. So I found I could answer yes to most of those I was iffy on because it was just a matter of looking up the vocabulary. I have a sound working knowledge of most of the items on the list, and I feel that I can quickly learn anything that I might be lacking. I knew nothing about how to use Photo Story yesterday afternoon, but by evening, I had it downloaded for my daughter’s Spanish project and now have enough basics to take it into my classroom and have my 4th graders create! (And now I’m at 279 words… *sigh*)

The second assessment is the SETDA survey for the teacher. This survey was more about technology use and philosophy at the campus level. From this survey, a picture developed of a campus that encourages technology use and provides many options for use, but doesn’t have a set requirement for teaching nor an assessment of student’s technological education. For myself, I see that to be an effective instructional leader, I will need to take the steps into using more technology with my students, and sharing those successes with the school. This would provide an audience for my students’ work and would provide teachers with a motivation to use those technologies with their students.

I plan on developing my skills in multimedia technology as much as I can in the near future. I believe that virtual schools are still growing and will need leadership as much at brick-and-mortar schools do. I want to be ready for anything.