ISTE-Teachers #1 Facilitate and Inspire Learning and Creativity

After reading through ISTE-Standard #1 for Teachers has to deal with how to faciliate and inspire learning and creativity, I felt more assured about this standard. This standard is the backbone of teaching itself. The main difference is that the teacher is using technology in doing so. First and foremost the teacher must have the knowledge of their subject matter by teaching and learning. The use of technology helps the students to be creative and to think in situations that are in a face-to-face setting or virtual setting. The advancement of this type of thinking will come from several sources. Students will be engaged in real-life issues by the use of technology and to solve everyday problems by the same methods. The teacher will also be responsible for encouraging student reflection and how they preceive things, plan and carry out the process of problem solving and the creativity that was used in doing so. In order to acheive the collobrative thinking of the students, the teacher will have to engage in the learning process with the students, colleagues by either face-to-face or virtual environments.

To make this sound easier to understand, I explaned it to my wife so the text that I was interprating makes sense to me. Teachers must know their subject matter. They have to be able to teach the students the material. The material must get the students to think about what they are learning and it must lead them to thinking or discovering on their own. They are presented with a problem and they must figure it out by using technology. The teacher will stay in contact with the students while they are using the technology and to observe how they are interprating the material. The students should be able to use prior information they have learned along with their own free-thinking skills to solve a problem by using technology creatively whether it's face-to-face with someone or by a virtual situation. To me that is a little more easier to understand than what I orignially read. To me that's what teaching is, it's just adding technology to it. You want astudent to succed using the information that you have taught them and you want to be able to figure things our for themselves. TEACHING 101!!

The assigment that I would like to do in the future involves making a podcast. This past year I did an activity where I put students into groups and they had to create a lesson that they were going to teach to their class. They were to create a game or activity for the class to do, write a lesson plan and then teach it to the class. I think that what I would like to see in the future is having the kids film themselves to make a podcast. The core objective of the assignment would be the same, but instead of teaching infront of everyone, they would present their podcast to the class. They can take ideas from previous activities that we have done in class, build on them to get their own idea which forces them to be creative. What I could do as well is, have them teach the activity to the class while I film them. From their they can go through the steps of making a podcast. Yes that's the ticket!!

In closing I am including a video that I found which really demonstrates this standard. This teacher has the right idea as far as making things easier, but teaching kids to work and learn with the use of technology.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3PleTJoCMY