Yesterday I took the New York State Educational Technology Content Specialty Test (CST). In New York, every content area has a CST that you must pass in order to be certified. The test consists of 90 multiple choice questions and one written essay.
The essay question was not bad. It described an activity that a classroom teacher does with her students and asks you to suggest a way to integrate technology. This was a good exercise and, between planning and writing, took me about an hour to complete. I just hope they can read my handwriting. The multiple choice questions, as in any standardized test, were problematic. A few were pointless, such as the cause of monitor flicker; some were obvious, if not because of the answer choices then because of how the correct answer was worded. The most problematic were those questions where even like-minded people would agree to disagree, such as the order of doing something. In every case, two of the answers were easily dismissed, while the remaining two were equally valid. Getting these right has more to do with whether you think like the people who wrote the questions, as opposed to whether you understand the field. Another issue for me was the order of questions. Instead of grouping similar questions together, they are random, so in one you are answering about networks, in the next about professional development. It is not clear to me that any attention was paid to how many questions from each area are included, either. It seems like they are randomly selected from a question bank and randomly ordered.
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In 2008, Howard Gardner (of multiple intelligences fame) introduced an idea he called Five Minds for the Future (link). These include the disciplined mind, the synthesizing mind, the creative mind, the respectful mind, and the ethical mind. These last two point directly to what we commonly refer to as character education. If you Google "character education," you get a number of sites that offer resources, lesson plans, and definitions all aimed at helping educators provide character education.
But is character education really all that important? Isn't our job as educators to teach content and thinking skills? This is a potentially very long discussion, but the short answer is that we must educate the whole child; it is not enough to teach them content, study skills, thinking, etc. To be a valuable citizen of the world, character is required, and that means understanding the difference between right and wrong and acting accordingly, in all circumstances, not just when it is convenient. And we as teachers must lead by example. There is no point in teaching about copyright and fair use if we do not follow the rules ourselves. Gardner ends his paper thusly, "Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Intelligence plus character— that’s the goal of true education”. And philosopher Ralph Emerson said, “Character is more important than intellect”." How true. |
AuthorAfter teaching for 10 years and using lots of technology, I have decided to move into the technology side of education. Archives
December 2015
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