Teacher Technology Competencies

What are your technology competencies as a teacher?

What should the technology competencies be of a teacher entering the profession?

And how do we catch some teachers up with other teachers?

New Skills Needed

The introduction of The Internet has changed many things in our society.  It sometimes feels as if education is the last hold out.  But how should educators, who may have started their jobs before email, educate students in a digital age?  For an online and connected world, new skills are needed for students and by extension for their teachers.

The Teacher Educator Technology Competencies were developed with multiple stakeholders to identify how teacher preparation programs and teacher educators, in particular, can prepare teachers for classrooms of today.  These competencies can be used as an audit of what in-service teachers are currently doing in their classrooms.  The Teacher Educator Technology Competencies may also be considered an outline of professional development to provide training to current classroom teachers needing targeted support.

Skill Evolution

Teachers require differentiation in their technology competency learning plans.

The best options include teacher choice and administrator guidance (assuming Administrators are open to guidance also).  This can allow teachers to remain in control of what they value, want to learn, and are interested in while improving their technology skills at a steady rate.  This needs to be an expectation and monitored by the administration to remain important to all stakeholders.

Instead of app/platform-specific skills, these are broad, wide-reaching competencies.  The TETCs (Teacher Educator Technology Competencies) were developed for pre-service teachers, but can easily be applied to in-service teachers needing intervention through personalized professional development.

Based on TPACK

Content

Content-specific technologies are a great place to begin.  This may energize a teacher who simply had a lack of knowledge of how technology could “solve a problem” s/he was experiencing in the classroom.

Pedagogy

Practice approaches that prepare teachers to successfully work in a technology-rich classroom.  Role-play a variety of proven management techniques for 1:1 classrooms, blended learning classrooms, remote learning situations, online/asynchronous learning, and flipped learning.

Technology

Matching the proper application and/or device to the proper content is crucial and deserves much discussion and possibly policy examination.

Pre-Service Teachers

The baseline of technology use for those entering the profession is simple: build, teach, and assess in up to a fully virtual environment.  If teachers are hired without those skills it may be a human resources issue and not a teacher issue.  May a teacher has strengths in other areas and the technology can be mitigated?  That is a sound hire if the teacher goes directly into a differentiated technology competency learning plan.

Teacher Technology Competencies are

Mentor Teachers

According to Nelson (2017) “witnessing a mentor teacher utilizing technology in the field impacts an early preservice teacher’s intentions to use technology in future practice.”  To place a student teacher with a mentor teacher, or place a vulnerable teacher in need of coaching with someone less capable of using technology well is not a good practice.  Teachers with high TPACK competencies should be recruited for mentor teachers.

Urgency

Since the COVID-19 outbreak and the subsequent move to remote learning, this inconvenience between colleagues has escalated.  K-12 education is now literally broadcasting some of the inequities that previously been covered up through solid face-to-face instruction or the professional courtesy of colleagues.  Time not interfacing with students should be dedicated to catching up those educators we have willingly or unwillingly left behind.  The future of K12 education may depend on it.

What are your technology competencies as a teacher?

What should the technology competencies be of a teacher entering the profession?

And how do we catch some teachers up with other teachers?

References

Foulger, T.S., Graziano, K.J., Schmidt-Crawford, D. & Slykhuis, D.A. (2017). Teacher Educator Technology Competencies. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 25(4), 413-448. Waynesville, NC USA: Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education. Retrieved from https://www.learntechlib.org/p/181966/.

Nelson, M. (2017). The Role of a Mentor Teacher’s TPACK in Preservice Teachers’ Intentions to Integrate Technology. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 25(4), 449-473. Waynesville, NC USA: Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education. Retrieved April 20, 2020 from https://www.learntechlib.org/primary/p/178211/.

Teacher Educator Technology Competencies (TETCs). (2017). Retrieved January 25, 2020, from http://site.aace.org/tetc.