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A library and its collection of knowledge and references is not a curriculum. A selected course or flight path that would lead learners through a library's set of knowledge is. Not just any path will do. The best curriculum draws on library, media center, web and other resources of high quality, anticipates and acknowledges the differences in each student and between each instructional level, and builds instructional bridges to goals and learning experience hurdles that have value and relevance to the larger community and world. This chapter focuses on goals for curriculum and computer technology. 

North Carolina expects its preservice teachers to prepare a technology portfolio which provides evidence of their successful integration of what are labeled five advanced competencies. These topics are titled: curriculum; subject-specific knowledge; design and management of learning environments and resources; child development, learning and diversity; and social, legal and ethical issues. The primary distinction to be made is that the basic competencies put the emphasis on computer skills while the advanced competencies put the accent on teacher skills. As you have seen, the chapters of your online book have addressed integration issues with every chapter instead of waiting until these topics arrive. This chapter focuses on the first of these advanced competencies, on the concerns of technology and curriculum integration.

It is essential that teachers know 10.1, know the state's computer literacy curriculum, particularly at their grade level. Though state curriculum guidelines present such curriculum as a fact, it is wise to realize the long term fluid nature of curriculum. Reference to state guidelines could mistakenly be understood as the results of a kind of science about what should be taught. In reality what we teach is the result of a kind of professional vote by state committees on what we should teach. In fact, every state revises the curriculum for every content area every few years on a staggered basis so that all subjects are not being considered at the same time. These revisions can be minor or major. In the intervening years, educators run a kind of election in which they study and lobby for adding new items and eliminating others in preparation for the next committee vote. If you see new directions that curriculum should be taking or do not't like what must currently be taught, it is your professional obligation to become active in your professional organizations. From the national and state organizations come committee members and policy statements that influence state committees. This process is where the professional action is in curriculum development. Perhaps no where is there greater need to continually reassess curriculum goals than in the rapidly changing world of computer technologies and their educational integration.

The theme of this chapter is on curriculum integration of new technologies. Piaget long ago developed a simple set of terms for change: assimilation and accommodation. Long ago we made the decision that reading and writing needed priority in our curriculum. Much of current K-8 curriculum centers around this goal: assimilate (add) computer related technologies to what we are already doing in reading and writing. The technology of the "web" however is building an agenda that will require some accommodation. Accommodation means that fundamental models of what is important will have to change. The web has not made text unimportant, but it has changed much about the publication and the citation of text through uploading and linking. The web has also made many other forms of composition, calculation and communication very important, newer forms of intellectual activity that are not included or inadequately defined in most state curriculum guidelines.

So, when you plan and teach and you can see major changes that will be needed, it is not as easy as just looking up what the state requires. Yes, those requirements must be met. The activity of planning and teaching does put the teacher in a position to comment on what should not be taught or should be kept because you have tried it. However, it does not place teachers in the best position to argue for new ideas. If you can find time to experiment with teaching other concepts that go beyond state requirements, you are in a position to more effectively lobby about what students can do and what you and they have found or not found valuable. This evidence is essential in participating in the professional "election debates" about new curriculum. All of these online chapters seek to empower teachers to be critical thinkers in evaluating and lobbying others for change.

Teaching then is not just about teachers, curriculum and their students, it is also about the need for significant collaboration with others across school buildings, counties, states and the nation, a dialog with teachers that will seldom be actually seen or heard in your career. The linked reading "Problem Solving Teams: Intellectual Teamwork" is just as relevant to the needs of a classroom of students as it is to professional needs. The tools of the web allow us to model many ways to better handle this collaboration than annual state and national conferences that many cannot attend.

Curriculum - where does it come from and how are teachers adjusting to integrating curriculum with technology? This leads to an assignment to have a conversation with a K-12 educator (teacher or administrator). After reading all the links related to the question ambassador process, your goal is to print out the Question Ambassador form (#3 or #4.) that is made for collecting questions by University students and return it containing a question raised by this educator. It will then be your responsibility to write a response to their question. Find an educator off-campus that can provide you with a question. Bring in your signed Question Ambassador form in one week. You will have another following week to complete researching an answer. That is, I will expect the answer forms in this week following. 

Note that this activity is another form of service learning, a concept addressed further in the bibliography of the page providing an overview of the Questions Ambassador concept. Your weekly contribution of your own questions and responses to the questions of others on your team throughout this course is also a variation on this concept.

Whenever you take responsibility for your own learning or the learning of others, you become a Question Ambassador. Often a teacher cannot find an answer, but it is rare that one cannot make a contribution that moves the learner (question asker) closer to an answer. Sitting in a class does not make you a learner. But any question that you ask and especially any question that you pursue does raise the quality of your learning. Questions also play another interesting role. To the extent that learners (your students) learn to ask ever better and personally motivating questions and pursue them, they also become teachers. It turns out that learning and teaching are not two different coins, but two sides of the same coin. Like the concept of yin and yang, they are a highly connected continuum of methods for knowledge building. To teach is to learn and vice-versa. Educational methods that encourage a conceptual divorce between these concepts weaken the growth of knowledge.

This process in turn also answers a prior question stated above. Where does curriculum come from? Curriculum originates with problems (e.g., questions), shared among ever larger groups, until some consensus is reached as to the most important questions that can be addressed with the time available and the capacity of those inquiring. Curriculum must be connected with real needs in the culture around us. However, sometimes along the way, the connection with the driving question is lost, and the curriculum becomes exercises without meaning or purpose, mere responses to state mandates without a deeper understanding of how an element of curriculum emerged. It is your professional responsibility to exercise leadership. Know why something is taught, or work through your professional organizations and institutions to change what is taught as it is needed.

Also follow the links to the NC Computer Literacy competencies. It is impossible to address objective 10.4 without knowing them. Begin with the kindergarten requirements and read through them all up through the eighth grade requirements. Certain patterns will begin to appear. Pay particular attention to when different skills are introduced and in which later grade they are to have been completed.

As part of meeting the Advanced Competency 10.6, complete the study of the Instructional Software page that addresses how to Categorize, Find, Select and Evaluate Software. In addition to the reading material there, information on this page is needed to complete two assignments to find a small number of instructional software programs.

If you have not already started your teacher technology portfolio, this chapter provides a reminder that this is a good week to buy five dividers for a three ring binder and begin the process that will be completed during your final semester of full-time student teaching. Spend some time with the reading on "Teacher Technology Portfolio Requirements" and then start putting this together.

Continue to enhance and expand your web pages. Remember that your web site is your global representation of your professional image. Work to make it professional looking. As with any composition activity, keep your audiences in mind: children and parents; professional colleagues; participants in courses that you are taking or perhaps teaching; employers; and friends.