A position paper of the Vermont State Technology Council drafted during a symposium at the Sugarbush Inn, Warren, Vermont.
September 1990
Vermont educators continue to examine ways to better prepare today's students to be successful in a rapidly changing society. Preparing students to be successful adults for a future that is unpredictable and ever changing is a continual challenge. What are the constants in a world where change is a constant?
A constant in our society is the use of information technology. As educators, it is our responsibility to promote awareness, understanding, and use of information technology for learning and teaching
The Vermont State Technology Council (VSTC) believes the development of information technology skills and knowledge is essential in order for all students to attain the Vermont Education Goals. Information technology skills can no longer be considered a non-essential part of each Vermont student's education. The use of information technology tools (word processing, interactive television, telecommunication, hypermedia,etc.) should not be viewed as ends in and of themselves. Rather, they should be seen as a means of more efficiently and effectively achieving what Vermonters outline in the ambitious Vermont Education Goals.
The VSTC believes the development of information skills and knowledge cannot be left to chance. We believe that the state must provide direction to local school districts in the area of information technologies as they have in all curricular areas. With this in mind, VSTC, with the assistance of the State Department of Education, invited thirty educators* from throughout Vermont to a symposium at Sugarbush Inn, in Warren,VT in September to:
+ identify technological skills necessary for all students to possess when graduating from Vermont high schools;
+ Link the selected skills to the Vermont Education Goals; and,
+ create statements which identify a common core of technological knowledge for all students.
In addition, the group discussed the responsibilities of all Vermont educators in using information technology to make education more relevant in our rapidly changing world. The symposium participants focused upon eleven technological strands.
Information Technology Strands Word Processing Data Bases Spreadsheets Telecommunications Simulations DeskTop Publishing Input Devices Programming Visual- Audio- Output
As you read the paper, keep in mind the desire to link information technology skills with the Vermont Education Goals. Consider how these skills can help facilitate interdisciplinary teaching and learning. This paper is a beginning. It offers an opportunity for every school district and every teacher to help prepare Vermont students for an information society.
Upon graduation from high school all Vermont students will have achieved the essential information technology skills listed below.These essential skills allow all students to use information technology as a tool in all areas of the curriculum. These skills form a framework for the development of more specific skills that can be integrated across the curriculum. The expansion of the skills is the work of individual school districts.
A number of the essential skills relate to more than one strand or area. These are higher- level thinking skills such as analyzing, synthesizing and evaluating. These skills are recognized as basic to the effective use of information technology. We also recognize a core of knowledge necessary for students in the use of technological tools for learning and working This core includes: basic terminology, ethics, privacy, ownership, copyright, health issues, and vocational implications of technology.
All students will understand the functions, usefulness and limitations of:
Microcomputers, interactive television, telecommunications, hypermedia, and other information technologies can be powerful means and tools to accomplish the measures of success in the Vermont Education Goals. Information technologies can make possible new patterns of instruction inside and outside classrooms. These technologies must not be used to drive the education goals, but to achieve them.
GOAL 1: Vermonters will see to it that every child becomes a competent, caring, productive, responsible individual and citizen who is committed to continued learning throughout life.
Information Technology is a means for every learner to become a competent, caring, productive, responsible individual and citizen committed to life-long learning by providing:
1. Access to shared information through electronic telecommunications.
2. Tools for effective written communication.
3. An accessible information storage and retrieval system.
4. A tool for interpretation, manipulation, and expression of mathematical, scientific, literary, and artistic ideas.
5. A multimedia approach for research, creation, and presentation of information and ideas.
6. A supportive environment for self and group expression.
7. Opportunities to reason and solve problems individually and collectively.
8. Enabling devices to make possible or enhance the educational experience.
9. Models for future work, continued education, problem solving, and cooperative learning
GOAL 2: Vermonters will restructure their schools to support very high performance for all students.
Restructured schools which support very high performance for all students will have:
1. Placed the use of informational technologies in a central position in the core curriculum.
2. Redefined roles and relationships between teachers and students to take full advantage of information technologies.
3. Set specific goals using information technology by empowering students and teachers to achieve greater individualization.
4. Set staff development goals to integrate information technology into the learning process.
GOAL 3: Vermonters will attract, support and develop the most effective teachers and school leaders in the nation.
The effectiveness of Vermont's teachers and school leaders will be enhanced through staff development to demonstrate:
1. Awareness of:
2. Personal proficiency in:
3. Instructional proficiency in:
4. Personal and instructional proficiency in the use of:
Powerful school, parent, business and community partnerships will be enhanced by:
1. Sharing of information technology resources throughout the community.
2. The creation and use of databases of community resources and demographics.
3. Using telecommunication technologies to promote effective communication.
A common core of information technology knowledge exists across the strands. This core coupled with the essential information technology skills, and linked with the Vermont Education Goals, becomes a powerful framework--a framework that forms a structure for the use of information technologies as a tool to support a variety of learning and teaching styles; change the traditional lecture worksheet system; and expand teaching and learning beyond the walls of the classroom. A framework that reaches into the unpredictable future and also serves the present.
All Vermont students upon graduating from high school should be able to use the appropriate information technologies to:
1. Access, create, and manipulate information, products and services.
2. Understand the issues involving the use of information technologies including ethics, privacy, ownership, laws and health.
3. Access information from on-site or remote sources and reorganize that information in new forms.
4. Integrate learning in all areas.
5. Learn and express themselves in different ways and modes.
6. Gather, organize, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate ideas.
7. Creatively express themselves in visual arts, music, movement, science, mathematics, and writing
8. Understand the effects of current information technologies upon people, culture, and the environment.
9. Evaluate the appropriateness of data received from many sources.
10. Become active lifelong learners, seekers of information and creators of knowledge.
11. Find and solve problems, think and reason logically.
12. Assist learning and working on a lifelong basis.
This position paper is one small step in a major task that involves all Vermont educators. That is, providing Vermont students and teachers with an awareness, understanding, and knowledge of how to use information technology to meet the Vermont Education Goals. It is our goal that the position paper becomes an active paper. That it becomes a statement between local communities and the state to ensure that all Vermont students and educators are informed users of information technology.
Technology will continue to evolve rapidly. We must prepare our students for an information society based on what we know now as well as prepare them to be learners who readily adapt to new technologies. As we help our students, we must be willing to help each other. We cannot leave the instruction and use of technology to a select few.
There must be a common link between local school districts and the Vermont State Education Department in determining quality instruction in information technology, for students and teachers. Not only must we look at our individual responsibilities as technology learners, but we must look at a broader vision that connects local districts and the state.
The Vermont State Technology Council is willing to be a resource to schools and the State Education Department in establishing information technology links. As Vermont educators, the task is before us. When we set high expectations for our students and teachers as we have in the Ver nont Education Goals, we must be willing to provide the best tools possible to reach those expectations. Information technology must be included as a powerful best tool.
Sugarbush Conference Partitipants