Doug Johnson

What Does It Look Like? Part II: Rubrics for Restructuring
Technology Connection, an 1998
(Continuation of “The CODE 77 Rubrics”)

Is technology being used in your school to accomplish anything that would be impossible without using technology? Other professions have used technology to make possible:

• banking services from home
• medical CAT scans
• custom-fitted blue jeans at a mass-production cost
• full text searching for information in national databases
• the globalization of industries
• astronomical data from unimaginable distances
• customized news and information services
• distance training and customer support services

Yet education is primarily using technology only to reinforce traditional educational practices.

Most teacher training classes are designed to give teachers a familiarity with the computer skills that help them improve their professional productivity: basic computer operation, word processing, telecommunication, record keeping, etc.. (See “The CODE 77 Rubrics” in last month’s issue.) But if technology is realize its powerful potential for improving education, it must be used for more than just automating the traditional methods and practices of teaching.

The rubrics below are designed to help teachers move to a second (and final?) level of professional computer use. Rather than the computer simply being a tool which allows a common task to be done more efficiently, these skills fundamentally change how instruction is delivered, how student performance is measured, and how teachers view themselves as professionals. The technology is used to actually restructure the educational process to allow it to do things it has never been able to do before. These include using technology to assure:

• all students master the basic skills of writing, reading and computation
• all students practice authentic information literacy and research skills, and the higher order thinking skills inherent in them
• all students have access to top quality resources, including human resources, regardless of location
• all teachers can use technology to provide students and parents
•     individual education plans
•     continuous feedback on how well students are meeting their learning goals
•     opportunities for virtual student performance assessments
• all teachers have the tools and ability:
•     to locate the research findings that will guide their use of technology
•     to collect the data that measures the effectiveness of their practices.

 

These advanced rubrics are designed for the same purposes as the beginning CODE 77 rubrics: to help schools measure the effectiveness of their teacher training efforts, and to help guide teachers on their own learning paths.

Most recent version of Rubrics for Restructuring is here.