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COPYRIGHT 2007 International Technology Education Association
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Teaching technology is awesome! I very rarely use the word awesome, but there are few words in the English language that can convey my feelings concerning my teaching experience during the past four years. This article describes my teaching experiences (good and bad), provides points that new teachers should take into consideration, and allows me to explain why I feel teaching technology is, well, you know, awesome.
Before becoming a technology teacher I served 27+ years in the US Navy. I feel that my service helped as well as hindered my ability to teach in a high school setting. In 2003, I graduated from Old Dominion University with a Virginia teaching license for technology education. I began a full-time teaching job in August 2003, which is when my teaching adventure began.
When I arrived at school I realized that my classroom was not in the "ship shape" that I had come to expect from my Navy training experiences. I instantly started cleaning up and organizing all my available equipment and materials. While I was getting everything squared away, I started to figure out the courses I was supposed to teach.
I found that I was to teach three sections of photography, two computing systems, and one section of graphic communications. During teacher-orientation week I realized that I would be responsible for lesson plans and student activities. Needless to say, I was very anxious concerning the amount of initial work a beginning teacher faces. I created a six-page "things to do" list and worked to complete items on my list each night after orientation (and on weekends). To build my lessons and student activities, I researched the course competency lists, Standards for Technological Literacy: Content for the Study of Technology (STL) (ITEA, 2000/2002), and relied on colleagues for help. I created long-range plans and daily lessons in order to meet my long-term goals. I know that this may seem elementary, but creating lesson plans and activities (from scratch) to meet state competencies and address STL consumed much of my free time that first year. My lesson planning and modification continues to this day. Due to the ever-changing nature of technology, effective teachers must realize that planning, creating, and modification of lesson plans and activities is a continuous...
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