April Benton - Digital Coach
About Me
Name: April BentonCurrent Position: I am currently the District Digital Coach for Perquimans County Schools. I have served as the digital coach for the last three years.
Previous Experience: I have been in education for 24 years with many different roles during this time. For the first seven years of my teaching career, I was in a self-contained classroom where I taught both fourth and fifth grades. I later spent 13 years as a media coordinator for an upper elementary school that served grades third thru fifth grade. Finally, I spent my last year as a school media coordinator at the high school level. I have a bachelor's degree in Elementary Education, a Master's in Library Science, AIG Certified, and I just renewed my National Board Certification.
Why EDTC?
I am currently seeking a Certificate for Special Endorsement in Computer Education to help me grow as an educator and to better serve my district as the digital coach. I enrolled in Integrating Technology into the Math, Science, and Healthful Living Curriculum because, as a coach, I would love to learn new ways and ideas on how to integrate technology with math that allows for creation beyond the substitution level.Learning Goals
During this course, I am excited about learning new ways to integrate technology. It is my hope to learn about new tools that I can share with the educators in my county. It is my goal to take a look at my current professional development pieces that I deliver to each school in my county and enhance them with the new ideas and tools learned throughout this course.Technology Integration Experience
As the digital coach in my district, my job is to help teachers integrate technology into the curriculum. We currently have a program called Digital Innovators. Each year I work with a new set of educators in our district on technology integration. It is the goal of the program for our teachers to look at lesson plans of the past and find ways to enhance them by allowing students to create, communicate, collaborate, and critically think.
In addition to the digital innovator program, I provide face to face professional development at each school in our small district monthly. I am very intentional to not only share tools that can be used in the classroom but model and show how those tools can be used to enhance the curriculum.
Since North Carolina requires teachers to receive two digital learning competencies for renewal, I have also created a self-paced Canvas Course for my district that allows these teachers to earn credit as needed. There are many topics including Pear Deck, Flip Grid, Green Screen, Maker Spaces, etc. I consider the Canvas Course like the Netflix of Professional Development. Educators are able to decide what professional development works best for their needs.
Questions and Concerns Related to Technology
Many times in my position, integration of technology often gets questioned. Administrators and teachers often see technology as something extra. It is my belief that we need to prepare our students for the future. Technology will be part of their future. With that being said, it is a concern that many times educators force technology into their lessons. A new tool is taught, and the educator pushes it into their lessons where it is not appropriate. Our district is completely 1:1, and I still don't expect students to always be found sitting in front of a piece of technology. Educators must blend their instruction and find ways to enhance their lessons with technology.Another concern I have for our students is digital citizenship. Students are making videos, blogging, and posting to the internet, but many times digital citizenship is not taught or overlooked. Educators can use these times to also integrate digital citizenship to protect our students.
Comments
Last semester I took a Digital Literacy class and learned about how to teach digital citizenship. I will admit, I am not sure how I would teach it fully in my math class. However, in my AVID class we had whole lessons on the different aspects of digital citizenship. It is so important for students to be taught these skills. I think we assume that since they are the "tech" generation, they know everything about technology. That is not the case. They need guidance, especially the younger students.
As for digital citizenship, at Charlotte-Mecklenburg, we require our students to go through a digital citizenship module at the beginning of the year. I frequently discussed digital citizenship in my computer science courses but I also feel that we can do more to encourage good citizenship online.
I enjoyed reading your post because you are currently in the position that I soon hope to be in within my district. I definitely agree with your comment about administrators and teachers often seeing technology as "extra" because that is so true, but it's the furthest thing from extra now. As a matter of fact it has become just as important as our core subjects. Once that is realized across the board, then and only then will proper blending of instruction and digital citizenship will take place.