Educational Technology Standards

When reading over the Oregon Educational Technology Standards (OETS), you will noticed that there are six primary categories. The six primary categories are Creativity and Innovation, Communication and Collaboration, Research and Information Fluency, Critical Thinking,Problem Solving and Decision Making, Digital Citizenship and Technology Operations and Concepts. Many of these concepts show that we need students to be well rounded and understand the different technologies. Many of these categories stood out to me but the three that stood out to me the most were the first one which was Creativity and Innovation. The next category that stood out me was also the Communication and Collaboration and the last that stood out to me was the Critical Thinking, Problem Solving and Decision making. Each of these categories can be incorporated into the classroom and even the outside of the classroom as well. Below I will explain how these categories can be used in the classroom and how they can improve the classroom setting.

Creativity and Innovation- Technology has become a very useful tools for the classroom and can be used in many different ways. This can help the students become more creative and use different technology tools to create more creative presentations, etc. This can also help the teacher create presentation using Google docs or PowerPoint's that can make the classroom more exciting and have more creative presentations. Students or teachers can use technology to also learn more information about the topic being taught or the teacher can show clips of movies that help create more meaning to what is being learned.

Communication and Collaboration- There are many ways that technology can be used to communicate with students, teachers and classmates. One of the ways they can do this is by using Google Docs this allows students and teachers to be able to write down their assignments and write comments on each others work. Also when you have a group assignment this allows each of the group members to participate and collaborate with each other to create one product using Google Docs. Another way students and teachers can communicate and collaborate with using technology is using Blogs. Blogs are great way for students to do assignments at home and be able to have your teacher see your work from their own personal home. This technology allows you to work on any computer and stores your work online which makes it easy accessible. This technology can be very useful for being able to communicate with your students and in the end really help them collaborate with their other classmates as well as the teacher.

Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making- Using the Internet can be very useful to find information on topics that students are researching. It can really help figure out problem solving by looking up different websites to figure out the end result. They can use technology like blogs or Google Docs to work on critical thinking. By having others implement their ideas and seeing different points of views on things can really help a student’s critical thinking by using this technology. Using technology can really help students work on their critical thinking and see different views of their classmates or the information provided on the Internet. Problem solving can be used by different activities that are provided online as well as using tools such as Google Docs that can help you figure out data information, percents, etc. Overall the Internet and technology can really help with the students critical thinking, problem and solving and decision making.

All of these categories can be incorporated somehow into the classroom setting. Each one of these can be used to help the students and the teacher. Although each of these can be very useful in the classroom there are still challenges that the teacher and the students will face with technology. Technology can be a very complicated tool to use for both the teacher and the student. Sometimes understanding everything about technology can be difficult. Not only is technology difficult to always understand but it is also always changing and trying to keep up with the new versions can be difficult especially if you are still trying to figure out the old version. Also technology can be expensive and trying to keep up with the updates can make it very expensive for the schools.Some schools have the funds for the new technology while others schools are not able to come up with the funds to provide this new technology for the teachers and students. Although funds can be limited for each school and technology is rapidly always changing, these challenges can be overcome. Some ways you can overcome these challenges is by one trying to get grants and do fundraisers that can provide more funds for the schools to be able to provide computers, new updates, and other sorts of technological tools. Another way we can overcome these challenges is by trying to keep updated on the new technology that way you are able to stay on track with everything. This will give you more time to figure out the new technology. You can also ask other teachers, students, parents to help you if you don’t understand the new technology because seeing different views on how to use something always can help you better understand how to use the new technology. Even though we may face challenges down the road with technology this something that is a big part of our society and we need to work through these challenges because the technology that we have now is very useful to provide a good experience in the classroom. In the end technology is only a benefit to the classroom and will always be useful for both teachers and students.