For this interactivity I interviewed my cooperating Fieldwork teacher, who teaches preschool through fifth grade art in the Rockaway Township district. She said she had heard of the NETS, but was not familiar with them herself. Her school has not yet implemented the NETS, and she did not know whether or not her district had begun to. She had no idea how the NETS would be used since she had not seen them prior to looking at the material I had provided for her, but she thought professional development would definitely be necessary for implementation.
While I was conducting the interview, an Assistive Educational Technologist (A.E.T.) for the district came into the room to fix my co-op's computer. She overheard our conversation, volunteered that she was familiar with NETS due to the nature of her job, and offered to be interviewed as well! She verified that NETS had neither been implemented in that school, nor anywhere the district, but she did not know whether or not implementation had begun in the state at that time. When I asked how she thought the NETS will be used when they are implemented, the A.E.T. said that the curriculum will have to be entirely rewritten to include them. The Rockaway district just finished rewriting their curriculum to reflect the newest NJCCC standards, so she said that resources needed to include the NETS will definitely be professional development, funding, access to necessary equipment, but mostly time. Since she has been involved in revamping curriculum at the district level, the A.E.T. said the time investment of the re-writing process and training educators is commonly underestimated. She did not expect her district to accomplish integrating the NETS until at least 2014 or 2015.
Rockaway school district does not offer technology initiatives for student media literacy at the elementary school level. Most of the technology that exists in the school supports teachers rather than students, with the exception of iPads for some students with learning disabilities, and those are used only in occupational therapy according to the A.E.T. I was not surprised at my cooperating teacher's responses to my questions, since I knew from spending time with her that she does not use much technology in her classes, with the exception of her computer and digital projection equipment. I was extremely grateful for the opportunity to speak with the A.E.T. about the NETS, and was surprised at her concern with the time required to implement major curricular changes. I never would have considered how long it takes to successfully integrate new standards if I had not spoken with her.
As a future educator, I would encourage my fellow staff members to become familiar with the NETS-S and NETS-T. Knowing that they will be implemented in the future, it makes sense to learn them now. I have seen faculty members organize mini workshops, for example, Rockaway elementary teachers held a workshop on Pinterest recently. I would look for a colleague to conduct a NETS workshop with me, so we could all look for ways to begin incorporating NETS sooner, using the link below as an example.
Click here to see my Interactivity #4 Spreadsheet with NETS-S included
I didn't get from the teachers that I interviewed how long it would take to integrate NETS into the curriculum, but after reading this, I'm both extremely surprised and not really too surprised. For them to be speculating that the integration of NETS would take two to three years seems absurd, but at the same time, it seems completely logical. Because of the teaching, learning, and funding that goes into the integration, the length of time seems almost too short. I know that in most districts, funding is ultimately what is holding them back from being able to have a technology initiative, and that's an unfortunate thing.
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