Interactivity #5

link to my spreadsheet:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0An22K3Z1cQ9gdDRacFJoX09qcGFVTE1QUmw4Wk1TcVE&usp=sharing

For this Interactivity, I chose to interview a teacher in my content area.  The teacher I chose is actually my past Italian teacher from high school.  She teaches Italian at the 10th, 11th, and 12th grade levels in the Cliffside Park, NJ school district.  I chose to interview her because she was actually my inspiration for becoming an Italian teacher.  I always knew I wanted to be a teacher, but after taking her Italian classes for three years in a row I knew that Italian was the content area that I wanted to focus on.  When I called her and explained that I needed to interview a teacher, she was fully supportive and volunteered herself before I even asked.  I think she was expecting a different type of interview then the one I had had planned (for example, what's it like being a teacher type questions, etc).

When I mentioned that the interview was going to be on both the NETS-S or the NETS-T, she looked at me with a blank face.  The first questioned I asked was if she know what those acronyms meant and her answer was no.  So I went on to explain what they meant and how the standards should have a high technology based role on school curriculum.   Since she is an older teacher (I want to say late 50's), this may be the reason why she is not familiar with all of these new standards that include all of these new forms of technology, so I was not really that surprised. I was not expecting her to be fully knowledgeable about the NETS at all actually.  Since I wasn't sure if it was her age or her work environment that caused the lack of knowledge, I decided to check if the school district incorporated or taught their teachers about these standards at all.  After doing some research, I found that the district incorporates the use of technology into their curriculum according to state standards, but has not really been influenced by these NETS standards at all.

 I think that the district should really incorporate these standards into their curriculum.  I think it's important because technology has advanced so far and if used the right way, it can really have a positive impact on the way our students learn in the classroom.  This means that teachers need to have technology available to them in their schools and individual classrooms and should be taught how to use it before incorporating it into the curriculum and their lesson plans.  As a future educator, I would try to create workshops for teachers to become educated about these standards.  Technology is still going to advance and there is something new to learn with it everyday, so I think it's important for teachers to be up-to-date about what technological tools we can use to help foster the education of our students.