Technology Skills Assessment

In my current Master’s Course, Instructional Leadership, we were asked to take two assessments regarding our current knowledge and use of technology.

The first assessment was divided into four domains, 1) Foundations, 2) Information Acquisition, 3) Solving Problems, and 4) Communication. Before completing this assessment, I thought that my areas of strength would be Domain 1 and Domain 4 because I understand the foundations of technology to be the basics of computers and using other software on the computer and feel that I have strong communication skills. After completing this assessment I found my self responding “YES” to 13 out of 18 questions from Domain 1 (Foundations), “YES” to 5 out of 5 questions in Domain 2 (Information Acquisition), “YES” to 11 out of 18 questions in Domain 3 (Solving Problems), and “YES” to 6 out of 12 questions in Domain 4
(Communication). With this as a result, my area of strength would be the first Domain-Foundations, I can create basic documents, am aware of editing tools, and other basic software application functions.

My responses show that my greatest areas for improvement are both Domain 2-Information Acquisition and Domain 4-Communcation. Under the second domain, I need to acquire more information on LANs and WANs, Boolean search engines, and methods to evaluate accuracy and validity of electronic information. In the fourth domain, I need to be able to present the information in varied amount of ways. I am able to create and design different products for assignments, but I should also set up that expectation for my students as well.

The second technology assessment was the SETDA (State Educational Technology Directors Association) Teacher Survey. This survey focused toward technology that our school currently uses. Our school has a written plan of where we are going, but I see that, at times, with budget and limited resources, we, like most districts, have difficulties and concerns when it does come to integrating technology. There are some teachers that will implement the use of technology more than others in the classroom, but it might be due to lack of resources or lack of professional development. What I did find interesting during the assessment was the directed question of thinking about technology when planning a lesson, I think that this can help teachers shift gradually to the use of technology by simply adding a “Technology Equipment Needed” column to the lesson plan template that teachers are already completing and submitting.