The Complexities of Creating a Tech Curriculum from Scratch

     This has been something that has caused me a great deal of time and stress this school year.  When the year began, I was told I would be teaching technology to 6th and 7th graders.  "Great," I said, so what foundation has been laid that I can modify to meet my skills?  Then I found out that there were none.  The previous teacher had not had a curriculum that the students worked from.  This caused a great deal of stress for my beginning of the year.  Having never explicitly taught technology I was worried about the realization that this curriculum would come exclusively from me.  However, I was given the opportunity to join the E2T2 grant and this provided me with a framework for what and how I could create the class' work. 
     Through this class I was introduced, in greater detail, to the world of ISTE and its resources in helping build curriculum and skills that students would need to succeed in the future world.  So, I began the journey of creating a full trimester worth of assignments that my students could create and use to show a beginning level of computer competency.  The first trimester was somewhat successful, but there were major problems in some of my assignments.  Whether it was sentence agreements, or answers that were taken off the databases, or assignments that did not make sense I began the process of editing and "bettering" my curriculum.  I found after the second trimester that there were fewer changes to make, but the changes were more profound.  In this round of editing, questions were asked in more detail, questions required a deeper search using online resources and the skills necessary to complete the assignments were ramped up a bit.  I began to create lessons that required students to search the help and use online tools to help them with the software; just like I would do if I were learning on my own. 
     In the end I feel that my current curriculum is streamlined and very user friendly.  This trimester I have not had hardly any questions from my students concerning how to do any of the projects.  With the combination of the rubrics, explanations, examples and jing videos my students have had great success in working independently this trimester.