Please contact me if you have any questions. 

Sincerely,
Kelli Etheredge
Teaching & Learning Resources Director
ketheredge@stpaulsmobile.net

Some thoughts on technology:

The world we live in is changing exponentially.  Currently, our students have access to more information in one week than people in the 18th century had in a lifetime.  The top 10 in demand jobs for 2010 did not exist six years ago.  For our youngest students, we are currently preparing them for jobs that do not exist, using technologies that have not been invented.  The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that our students will have 10 to 14 jobs by the time they are 38 years old.  The amount of new technical information is doubling every two years; in other words, for students starting a four-year technical degree this year, half of what they learn their first year will be outdated by their third-year of study. 

Furthermore, advancements in technology over the last ten years have made it possible for companies to move into a global market. Advancements in automation will permit these same companies to make many well-paying jobs now in existence obsolete.  According to the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE), the technologies of today will drastically change America’s economy in the near future. NCEE asserts that the change will cause a decline in America’s standard of living, unless ... educators make our students more competitive and invaluable to corporations. In short, NCEE asserts, “[t]he best employers the world over will be looking for the most competent, most creative, and most innovative people on the face of the earth and will be willing to pay them top dollar for their services.”

In addition to a more competitive job market with higher standards of entry level employees, graduates entering the work force must be well versed in emerging technologies.  Recently, Best Buy posted a job opening for a senior manager position which required applicants with Bachelor’s degrees to have at least 250 followers on Twitter, a micro-blogging social networking system, and at least one year of active blogging experience.  Similarly, newspapers and networks alike are requiring journalists to participate in and research trends through social networking sites.  Bottom line, our students must be prepared for a job market that expects applicants to be the best and the brightest according to 21st century standards of collaboration, creativity, innovation, and technological expertise.

Preparing our students for their future must begin with us.  We are dedicated to creating innovative lessons that not only cover key concepts we feel our students should learn but that will also require students to use their knowledge in a new way.  Many teachers have worked diligently this summer improving their existing lessons in ways that require students to think critically, to create, to collaborate, to design.  All of these lessons are enhanced with the use of technology in the classroom.  Students are, for example, able to collaborate on OneNote, respond to other’s work on Voicethread, and create their own masterpiece with MovieMaker.  Our students’ learning will be richer and deeper because of their experiences in the classroom.  Our innovative lesson design makes these experiences possible.