Many (most?) of us in the country are preparing for the implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Students will all utilize technology to take the SBAC. We are submitting data about our readiness in terms of the technology twice a year in preparation for implementing the actual assessment in the 2014-2015 school year.
At a recent in-service in our supervisory union devoted to work on the Common Core, one sample task from the SBAC was shared with educators. In that task, students need to click on a link that takes them to a video. Once there, they should watch the video, pausing it when necessary to navigate back to the assessment to respond in their own words to various questions. They would then continue as often as needed to go back and forth between the open-ended questions and the video.
To me, the embedded basic technology skills include navigating between windows and tabs, starting, stopping, and pausing video, and typing their responses directly on the computer without drafting on paper first. That means a comfort level with keyboarding or at least knowing where the letters are on the keyboard, so that the response they’re typing is not stymied by the act of typing.
Teachers who saw this example task worried about our youngest students (3rd/4th graders) being comfortable enough with the technology so that it didn’t impede their completion of the assessment task. What do we need to do to help prepare them and when do we start? In kindergarten?
I ask, how do we help all of our students gain comfort with these basic technology skills, in addition to those I don’t know about yet, in an authentic manner? We don’t want to have students practice these skills in isolation, just to prepare them for the assessment. That feels like teaching to the test.
Suggestions?
Image credit, Creative Commons/flickr http://flic.kr/p/41xp8a by cc511
How? That is a tough question to answer. Why is actually much easier.
As you point out, keyboarding is the foundation for students engaging with technology in proficient and purposeful ways.
Physically, the keyboard is the primary and most direct connection between students and most forms of technology. More importantly, however, it is also their intellectual and creative connection to technology; it is how students’ thoughts and ideas make it out of their minds and into the world.
Considering the latter as the goal of #EdTech, keyboarding need to be so ingrained that it is done instinctively and without effort.
The importance of this comes down to a choice between having a school full of struggling students whose mental energies end at their fingertips as they try to figure out how to get a thought onto the page, or a school where students are able to spend those mental energies fully on the creation and expression of thoughts and ideas.
@finleyjd