Technology and Personal Skills

After each group presented and defended their theories and research, we felt like we had a good picture of what the educator of the future should look like.  It was evident that a lot of research had been done, but we still had several issues to break down as a group.  The first was the issue of technology.  Technology is obviously something that will be widely used in the future, as well as something that should be included in the classroom.  However, we debated on how much focus should be given to technology in our profile of an educator of the future.  On the one hand, it was argued that technology is one of many tools that should be used.  Teachers should choose the appropriate tools to teach, whether that tool be as simple as a handheld globe or as complex as google earth.  Some members argued that we should not specifically address technology because it is just one of many tools.  On the other hand, some group members argued that technology is here to stay and we need to specify it in our documents because we need teachers to realize that it is a kind of tool that future educators should be using.  There was even some discussion about whether or not technology should be a category by itself.  In the end, we decided that technology does need to be menioned but it should be embedded in the various attributes and their descriptions.  

The other issue that was brought up after the presentations was that of personal skills.  As educators we all know that building personal relationships with our students and the community around us, is a vital piece to student success.  We determined after some discussion, that a 6th group needed to form and research the importance of personal skills as they apply to the teaching world.  The following meeting would include a report from this new group and a group discussion on our combined research as a whole document.