As coordinator of a Adult Education program in northeastern CT ("the quiet
corner"), I happened upon this website as I was preparing for our fall
professional development workshops for teachers.  I tried it myself and very
much liked it, so I recommended to the staff. Hopefully some of them will
check it out and give me feedback.
Ginni Gorin

On 10/1/07, Marian Thacher <mthacher at otan.us> wrote:

>

>  Greetings to All on the NIFL Technology List,

>

> I appreciate the opportunity to communicate with all of you about the

> AdultEd Online self-assessment tool that went live in September, the

> Technology Integration Self-Assessment. I know some of you have had a chance

> to check it out, and I'm interested to receive your feedback.

>

> The idea behind this tool was to make it possible for any adult education

> teacher anywhere to get online and take the self-assessment in order to see

> what is involved in integrating technology in the classroom, and where their

> strengths and weaknesses might lie.

>

> In addition, completing the self-assessment leads to creating a

> professional development plan the contains competencies to focus on,

> learning strategies, online resources, and a timeline for completing tasks.

> I think this model is very promising for professional development in

> general, and I'm curious to see to what extent it gets used by teachers and

> programs.

>

> Just to give you a little background about the development, we started out

> by researching what technology integration standards already exist, and also

> looking at self-assessments. Most of these are from the K12 system and from

> teacher preparation programs. Some are very detailed, and some more minimal

> than ours. We tried to find a good balance between including all important

> skills and keeping the self-assessment short enough to complete in about 15

> minutes.

>

> http://cnets.iste.org/teachers/t_stands.html

> The ISTE Ed Tech Standards for Teachers are probably the best known set of

> standards. Although they are fairly general, there are many resources for

> K12 teachers attached to them, such as sample activities and lesson plans.

>

> http://21stcenturyschools.northcarolina.edu/technology/competencies.html

> Here is an example from North Carolina of a very detailed list of possible

> technology skills.

>

> You will see that for AdultEd Online we chose a middle path, covering 12

> competency areas, and addressing both personal and classroom skills where

> appropriate. We also tried to provide examples where we thought that a

> teacher might need to see an example of something like a class web site or

> the use of an assistive technology.

>

> Although the tool is designed for teachers, there is also an admin

> section. If you create an administrator account, you can invite teachers to

> take the self-assessment, keep track of who has completed it, and see

> aggregated results for your program.

>

> Do you think 15-20 minutes is reasonable for an online self-assessment? Do

> you think teachers will use this tool on their own, or mainly if requested

> by their program? What do you think are the best ways of letting people know

> about this tool?

>

> In my next messages I will address the 12 selected areas and reply to some

> of the questions you have already posed.

>

> Marian

> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

> Marian Thacher, OTAN

> P.O. Box 269003

> Sacramento, CA 95826-9003

> (916) 228-2597

> www.otan.us

>

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