As a teacher, you DON'T have to be an expert in using technology before you allow your students to use it.
This is probably the greatest barrier to integrating new technologies in the classroom. Many teachers believe that they must master technologies before allowing students to use them. Teachers often feel that they must be their students' safety nets in case they fail. This is NOT the case. Teachers should be the instigators of thought and investigation, but they should allow their students to explore ways to express themselves through a plethora of new technologies.
This attitude is something that is explained through a slideshow created and displayed by Mike Fisher in the 1 Thing project that Clif Mims is running over at his blog, Clif's Notes.
JustOneThing
This is probably the greatest barrier to integrating new technologies in the classroom. Many teachers believe that they must master technologies before allowing students to use them. Teachers often feel that they must be their students' safety nets in case they fail. This is NOT the case. Teachers should be the instigators of thought and investigation, but they should allow their students to explore ways to express themselves through a plethora of new technologies.
This attitude is something that is explained through a slideshow created and displayed by Mike Fisher in the 1 Thing project that Clif Mims is running over at his blog, Clif's Notes.
JustOneThing
You might notice that Mike Fisher created this slideshow using MyPlick. This is a site where you can upload your slides, synch them with your voice and then share them with friends. It is REALLY easy to share them with friends. I just use their embed feature to transfer this file over to this blog posting - no muss, no fuss. You will probably see me begin to use this in the future. It is Tres Cool!!
Tags: Web2.0 classroom technology tools apps
I agree that this is probably the primary barrier facing those that work in educational technology professional development. I think you've added a really nice introduction to Mike's presentation, Dr. Z.
ReplyDelete