Taking A Tech Walk

I’m really excited to move from the classroom to being Vice Principal at my elementary school next year. As I read through the ISTE Standards for Administrators I see a lot of work ahead of me to bring together classroom teachers, specials teachers and the technology teacher together to look at the ISTE Standards for Teachers and how we can work collectively to implement a shared vision of technology in our school.  Currently, our school has a laptop cart in the library for the third and fourth grade classes to use, a laptop cart in the fifth grade that all four classes must share and a computer lab. The lower elementary grades don’t use technology outside of their weekly technology class. With just one technology teacher for the whole elementary school, technology lessons seem haphazard and separate from the classroom curriculum. Not being particularly comfortable with technology myself, though fully understanding the importance of digital literacy, the road ahead seems

This week’s reading highlighted the similarities and differences between personalized learning and adaptive learning. Both of these approaches provide students with the opportunity to learn what they need in order to move their thinking forward. These systems take into account the student’s background understanding and build upon this prior knowledge to fill in gaps in understanding or extend into new learning. Technology can be used to support both of these approaches and to tailor learning to each student’s unique needs. However, personalized learning and adaptive learning are not the same. Personalized learning is a broader category of which adaptive learning is one aspect. In both cases, personalized learning and adaptive learning aim for students to learn in their “zone of optimized learning” (Lemke 2013). Personalized learning can take many different forms. One-on-one tutoring is one form of personalized learning. Small group instruction that is focused on a particular skill