TFTL+Standard+V-Productivity+and+Professional+Practice

TF/TL Standard V: Productivity and Professional Practice

In this standard I was able to share an article with our staff by Andy Guess called, "Student's Evolving Use of Technology," talking to them about how students are using technology in their own lives as well as at school (February, 2010). This article was helpful in seeing where we need to meet students where they are, and in some instances, play "catch up" (Guess 2007). The performance indicators for this standard included: using technology resources to pursue professional development and lifelong learning, continually reflecting on personal practice to make informed decisions about the use of technology to help student learning, applying technology to increase productivity, and using technology to communicate and collaborate with others (Williamson 109). I was asked last year to be a part of the Differentiated Instruction Cadre for our district. I learned a lot of great DI strategies as well as DI specific lessons during that time. I created a Power Point using multimedia elements to share at school on what I was learning (May, 2010). When I was asked to be a presenter at the DI demonstration school, I was also able to share the presentation there.

I was also able to share a couple of new web 2.0 technologies with others on my campus (April, 2010). These included Wordle and Prezi. I have gotten more response on Wordle so far, and people are still warming up to the idea of using these new tools. During our introductions to our students at the beginning of this school year, some of us created wordles about ourselves and used that to share some information about ourselves with our students. The teachers that I helped to do this liked it, and one came to me saying she was already going to be using this tool in a writing assignment. The students in my own class also got to create their own wordles about themselves. They loved a new way to express themselves and being able to select different colors and layouts of their final products.

Many of my co-workers have shared how much they have benefited from learning more DI strategies to use in their classrooms. The demonstration school was another layer, helping people to integrate these ideas and technology into their classroom teaching. Last year I was also able to help with our campus web page in addition to my own (May, 2010). This is something that we have to have the help of our tech department on, but it was great to be involved in and learn from them. I would like to complete more research and get more practice in web design. I would like to be better at it myself, and I would also like to be able to show others how to use that tool to be able to improve their teaching practice. I was curious about some of the things that I learned about graphics, such as why serif print is easier to read for the eye than sans serif print. That seems counter intuitive to me, so I would like to look into that further since it puzzled me during the course.

Guess, A. (2007). //Students' Evolving Use of Technology//. Retrieved from

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Williamson, J. & Redish, T. (2009). //ISTE’s technology facilitation and leadership standards: What every K-12 leader should// //know and be able to do//. Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology in Education.