Opinion on the Assessment of Educator's Technology Knowledge and Skills

It is important to assess educator’s technology leadership knowledge and skills to ensure improvement over time. The first step for educator’s and educational leaders in the process of incorporating greater technology use into classroom instruction is to assess teacher’s current technology abilities. After a needs assessment has been conducted, then strategies for improvement can be designed and implemented. In my opinion, this is vital step in the continual improvement process. Also, technology is changing and growing rapidly, therefore assessments need to be conducted regularly to gauge how well educators are keeping up with the new technologies available.

Assessing educator’s technology skills is necessary for improvement in technology usage, which would lead to improved student performance. However, there are also some issues with assessing teachers in this manner. One issue is that not all teachers agree about their levels of technology literacy. For example, one teacher might rate themselves as using technology frequently because they make a power point lesson to go along with their lecture every day. This type of technology incorporation, which is monotonous and teacher driven, may not lead to increased student performance. Another teacher may use online simulations, as well as power points, and rate themselves lower in their abilities to use technology because they know about all the other technologies they could be using, but are not doing so. Therefore, the assessments can often be subjective to the teacher’s opinions of themselves and lack of knowledge about technology.