Professional ICT Skill Expectations

Secondary teacher professional ICT skill expectations are set by Australian AITSL and Australian Curriculum ICT general capabilities.

On a score of 1-10 with one being totally unprepared and ten being totally ready I rate myself at about a 5.  I base this score on past professional experience and an analysis of the Secondary teacher professional ICT skill expectations and the Australian Curriculum ICT general capabilities. 

As I work through each of the crieteria in the ICT skill expectations and the Australian Curriculum, I feel a little bit of pressure because ICT is my professional field, although it is a very wide field with many discipline specialisations.  In my teaching career I can see that I will be expected to have a more broad understanding rather than a very specialised field.  The field of ICT is moving very quickly.  I have a 12 year old son who is very computer literate and who spends many hours exploring technology.  Keeping abreast of technology is an ongoing task that can involve many different types of philosophies and ideals.  It also can be very time consuming, so I will need to develop strategies that allow me to keep abreast of the developments in ICT while still allowing time for other tasks.  I see how my son's teachers use his knowledge about ICT as an asset in the classroom to extend him further and also to teach the class more about ICT.  This can be a very useful strategy as these children are born in the era of not just the home computer and Internet, but also the smart phone.

I sympathise with anyone who is not under 30 years old, as the world is changing squickly, that people as they age will struggle to keep up with the innovation curve.  I also sympathise with anyone who does not have an interest in ICT as technology is becoming ubiquitous in classrooms and it is no longer seen as another subject such as biology but as a core skill alongside literacy or numeracy.

Useful links
http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/generalcapabilities/information-and-communication-technology-capability/continuum#layout=columns&page=5

Present Values and Beliefs About Education

In this reflection I am thinking about my present values and beliefs about education and about this course in ICT.  My present beliefs about ICT is that it is very important to our near future.  The level of automation in our society has begun with manufacturing and is now permeating through many other industries.  For example, I believe that almost all driving jobs will be soon automated beginning with regular freight routes and that many of our smaller deliveries will be done by drone.  Also, many of our customer service type jobs have been automated enough that clients can interact with a computer and not a real person.  Even while I was enrolling in my Graduate Diploma I have found that I many of the processes of enrolment are automated.  Humans fill much higher levels where human judgement is needed.  Therefore, our students of the future will need to be able to program and fix the robots.  We are moving away from our recent use once and throw away society and there will be more emphasis on repairing robots and robotic code. 

I am now thinking about how I will view myself as a teacher in the classroom.  I view the role of a teacher as a very democratic leader in that I have many responsibilities as a teacher and my students have just as many responsibilities as a student.  In the course materials, there is some discussion about how I feel about letting go some of the control over learning and I don't think I ever thought that I had much control over students.  If a teenage says to me, "You can't make me do it", I will always respond "You are right, no I can't make you do anything".  Teaching secondary is much better achieved through influence rather than any direct control.  Influence will always take us much further.

Now I am thinking about what experience I have with ICT in the classroom.  I have taught tutorials in the classroom of both productivity software and programming.  I have used CMC tests and created online surveys and quizes.  I am good at problem solving provided I can keep calm and so I will use a strategy of coming back to it later if I encounter an ICT problem in a class where pressure is on to complete the task.  One of my pet hates is students undertaking different tasks in class.  It is very easy for students to procrastinate about beginning on their task, particularly where they may have an open Internet connection in front of them.  Earlier in my career as an academic, we did not worry too much if student chose not to do task in class and susequently failed and students knew that they had to work hard to stay in the degree.  In the later part of my academic career, we were forced to view the student as a customer and completion statistics were tracked very closely.  Students knew that we were obliged to pass a certain percentage of the class and as a group they relied on this and they let their standard slip.  School is such a different environment and the Australian school policy says that no student will be left behind, and so we do have a leadership role to promote students completing work in class.  I will be using a democratic discipline approach to place responsibility on the student to complete their tasks and to keep track of their own work progress.