Reflection of Ed Tech Standards

As I've learned from the virtual discussion through Skype, the state of Oregon is creating a new standard for students to become technologically literate and even will be handing out new diplomas at the 8th grade and in high school as well. This is some very new information to me and I'm glad to have received it and will implement to the best of my ability in my future classroom.

How might I explain the big picture of what these standards are trying to accomplish.

Well, first of all, in my opinion, the big picture is relevant to every student in our schools because every step of the way that they are in our education system, we are preparing them for future jobs and opportunities to further themselves. There are tons of jobs that require their employees to be computer savvy and have some knowledge of using a computer and basic software. By creating a standard for all students, this allows each of them to have the tools they need to perform job functions wherever they go.

Describe some strategies I could implement at my grade levels in order to accomplish this huge task.

In my desired content areas of math and health, I could see myself using these technology standards to increase my students' knowledge and familiarity with literacy by constructing lesson plans surrounding the internet and computer software. For math, I could simply have my students create their own diagram of structures and create blueprints and figure out measurements like an architect would and by covering basic math formulas and measurements and creating shapes. In health class, if such a program exists, students could create a character online and have the options to give this person different kinds of diseases that have been learned in class and see the immediate effects of each right before their eyes in an interactive way rather than just looking at photos in a textbook of people having nasty diseases.

Analyzing Student Data in a Spreadsheet

For me, I was still getting used to the tools that Google docs has to offer, and the overall assignment was sort of frustrating to accomplish. It was seemingly tough to execute the tasks that were instructed solely because I was unfamiliar with the program and didn't know how to complete the graph. I realize I just need to play around with the tools and just experiment more and remember to publish my best work for the purposes of the class and the grade.

Student data spreadsheet:
https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=0AtllIov43TQmdHowNUhld2dOaE82REFiakhjdzhad1E&hl=en&output=html

Overall, the statistics of the class looked very similar and the growth of the scores gradually increased over the duration of the tests. After looking at all of the scores from all of the students, it seems that Katherine had a great improvement from test 6 to test 7 and gradually performed better through the other tests. There are some assumptions I can make about why she may have performed the way she did. One, the material that was presented to the class may have influenced her on a more deeper level than the other students so she expressed more interest and wanted to perform better. Second, she may have not done well in the past, and wanted to perform better for the rest of the year and might have received some pep talks to do well.
When it comes to the teacher giving effective direction for the class, I believe he/she did a very good job and is well reflective on the test scores. I haven't obviously seen the lesson plans by the teacher, but whatever this individual was doing, he/she was very mindful of the students' progress and made necessary adjustments to keep those scores increasing!