Tech Integration or Ed Reform?

An overall concept I've been struggling with this academic year is technology integration. Dr. Scott McCleod has been working with a group of our school and community members on how best to approach this with our school system. As a building that is trying to integrate a small amount of iPads at the elementary level, we have been struggling with what this should look like for our students. As I originally feared, this is not a topic that can be simply addressed.

At the same time, as other districts and states are, we struggle to incorporate the Iowa Common Core State Standards into our teaching. Just as we can't simply incorporate iPads into the way we currently teach, we can't "do the Core" and do what we have always done.

Today, a couple of amazing instructional coaches presented what they learned at an assessment conference. One of the resources they shared with us was sample items and performance tasks from the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium. I am convinced that if teachers were exposed to tasks like this for students, they would immediately begin to change the way they think about what they have students doing in the classroom.

While I would love for someone to just place in my lap the learning we need to do as educators, I know it will not be this easy. And so our journey begins.