Standards… Mapping… Technology…
by Heather Ross
As the 2001-2002 school year is getting under way, it is being impressed upon the teachers to be sure that their lessons are meeting the educational standards. This can become quite confusing, as there are the national standards, the state standards, and the district standards. There are standards for administrators, standards for teachers and standards for students. There are even standards for conducting professional development. One would like to believe that the people who planned these standards looked at this as a hierarchy, meaning that the district standards are based on the state standards, are based on the national standards. Yes, they are similar, but if they are based on each other, why do we need all of these standards? Isn’t teaching to the national standards enough? Or should we be focusing on the state standards? Or is it the district stands that we should hold in the highest regard?
As a result of this influx, or renewed interest in these standards, curriculum mapping has taken the forefront of many school districts. The primary purpose of mapping seemed to make sense: to ensure that multiple grade levels are not teaching duplicate information and to make certain that standards are being taught. This appeared to be a simple enough task. Though once the mapping began, it became apparent that there were whole new issues to face. There were essential questions to define, overarching questions to be answered, and focus questions on which to concentrate. The content of the unit must be identified, as well as the skills to be learned. The assured experiences must be completed. Finally assessment tools, preferably in PBLA (Performance Based Learning Assessment) format must be created and optional activities must be produced.
New problems arise. What is an essential question? How is an essential question different from an overarching question, different from a focus question? How about an assured experience? Does this mean that all teachers are teaching the same activity from the same lesson plan? Is there any assurance that there is learning taking place from this assured experience? Or is it the responsibility of each teacher to assure that the students are exposed to the content provided in the assured experience or the activity itself? At a recent mapping workshop, both teachers and administrators asked many of these same questions. Unfortunately, there seemed to be no clear-cut answers, but as a group these definitions must be agreed upon before mapping, can be completed.
The most important of these definitions is the assured experience. The reason being, based on name assured experience, it is implied that this is an activity that all students will participate in and therefore would be information that all students would at least be exposed to. This does not necessarily seem to ensure that learning has taken place, but that students would at the very minimum have vague recollection of the experience. The assured experience then becomes a very important tool for the teachers of the following grades, especially when students are combined from a variety of classes and often a variety of schools. This allows, for example, a grade four teacher to know that ideally students from the third grade will have basic knowledge of space. They can, however, count on the fact that all students have completed space assured experience, whatever that may be.
Integrating Technology Into Mapping:
Technology is often viewed an independent entity. It has it’s own standards and it’s own maps. The only problem is that technology cannot be effectively taught without being integrated into the core content curriculum. It is often forgotten that technology is merely a tool with which to learn, practice, and reinforce other sources of information and skills. Yet, now the core content curriculum maps have been created, overlapping curriculums revised, standards are met, but where is the technology component? As a technology educator/coordinator, it is essential, at this point, to create awareness that now is the time and here is the place to integrate technology. We have adopted units of study for the classroom, but we are missing one of the key opportunities to provide activities, possibly even assured experiences, for integrating and meeting the needs of the technology standards.
Seize the day and take full advantage of the curriculum changes taking place and marry it with the need for technology in the everyday activities. Assist in the smooth transition of curriculum changes in the curriculum map; create technology activities in places where there are currently no activities at the appropriate grade level. Look for places where content was added to a grade level where it has previously not existed. These are primary places to focus – where there is the most need for activities.
While creating activities that are to be included in the final curriculum map:
1. Start small. Create activities that will not take up too much time or will be too difficult for teachers of all technology comfort levels and abilities.
2. Focus on one curriculum area at a time. If the curriculum mapping is starting with Science, create accompanying Science projects. When Science is completed, then focus on Language Arts or Social Studies. This way you are sure that there is an appropriate project for each unit of study.
3. Work towards assured experiences. Teachers may be resistant, but if technology activities are considered assured experiences, then you can be sure of some of the skills students will receive will incorporate computer skills.
4. Be patient. It is important for the activities included in the curriculum map to be tested and approved by the teachers required to teach both the content and skills. The included activities may have to be taught and revised several times before they are worthy of an assured experience that is required to be taught by all grade appropriate teachers, and learned by all grade appropriate students.
5. Remember maps can be changed. If the comfort level of your staff and students rises over the years, activities can be edited to meet the new needs and challenges that the staff and students are ready to face.
6. If at first you don’t succeed… well, you know the rest.
Standards Links:
National Council for Teachers of English: http://www.ncte.org/standards/
National Council for the Social Studies: http://www.ncss.org/standards/toc.html
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics: http://standards.nctm.org/index.htm
National Educational Technology Standards: http://cnets.iste.org/
National Science Education Standards: http://books.nap.edu/html/nses/html/index.html
<To share your thoughts or reactions with Heather Ross contact her at heather@edtechnot.com or the webmaster of our site webmaster@edtechnot.com.>