1. What policies govern your uses of ICT in your school setting?
-as far as I know, the only formal policies that we have, are written in the school agenda. They include things like no plagiarism and using information from the internet “responsibly.”
2. What digital technological resources do you have available for teaching and learning in your school setting?
-every classroom has 1 computer for the teacher and a digital project.
-our library has 11 desktop computers and has just purchased 10 mini ipads. Our 2 computer labs have roughly 25 working desktops each and we have also just purchased a 3D printer.
3. Please provide an example of an exemplary use of digital technologies for teaching and learning that you have observed or experienced personally.
-past students in one of our technology classes created a video game that was published and was also reviewed by a video game review company. This was a great accomplishment for these 2 young students.
4. Please provide an example of a problematic use of digital technologies for teaching and learning that you have observed or experienced personally.
-well technical difficulties like downloading videos from youtube is always a pain. Wifi also seems to go down too often at our school. Finally, the misuse of phones and other personal devices by students causes teachers to become very frustrated as well. I do allow students to use their electronic devices for research but I continue to see this privilege being abused.
5. Please provide a brief history of how you learned to use digital technologies (personally and professionally).
-most of what I learned was through pro-d opportunities and from our “tech guy” holding short workshops on how to use different technologies
6. How would you rate your digital technological proficiency? 0 = low level of proficiency -> 10 = high level of proficiency? Why did you give yourself this rating?
-at this point, I would say 6 because I have learned a lot in the past year working in the library but when I go to different workshops I realize just how much I do not know and need to learn.
7. What do you hope to accomplish in this course?
It is truly surprising to examine the policy conditions that govern digital technologies in education in British Columbia. There have been huge investments in ICT infrastructure, but there doesn’t appear to be any coherent governance, either in establishing a well-founded basis for incorporating ICT into educational practice, or into ensuring a sustainable, equitable distribution of ICT resources for all British Columbia students. Your school has a 3D printer? What are teachers planning to do with it? What software applications are needed to use it? Is it compatible with the computer lab desktops? Are teachers generally positively disposed toward digital technologies in your school? Are there exemplary uses of digital technologies outside the technology program per se? Why does the wifi go down? Why do you think students are misusing their personal tech devices when they are in the school? What is the relationship between owning personal devices and using them inappropriately? It might be useful for you to pursue an inquiry into digital literacy and what it means to support digital literacy learning in the school library. From there, for your final project, you develop digital literacy instructional design or create on online resource for students and teachers in your school to improve their digital literacy.