While I have been using technology for the past year and a half to work with teachers, Jenn is more intuitively techie than I. Often - I wait to see what Jenn had discovered and then ride her wake to make it applicable to what I do.
I count it as a major triumph that we led a Skype revolution this past week - getting virtually all of our C4L Fellows ready to go and my one colleague who doesn't necessarily have her laptop glued to her fingertips at all times seeing its power.
But in working with teachers on using technology, I bring up the three roadblocks that I continue to encounter:
1. Lack of technology comfort - note, I didn't say knowledge. We know how to do these things - the new technology tools are extremely logical. It is our comfort level with the tools, clicking on a button with confidence that we will not change the course of history, that seems to be a bigger issue.
2. Lack of school support - I can't tell you how many trainings I am asked to do where I have to email my list of links a week in advance to get them "temporarily" unblocked for the training, only to have the teachers then not be able to access the tools they were trained on a mere 24 hours later. If you want the training, trust the teachers!!
3. Lack of transparency - in other words, we don't want to publish our work, our questions, our classrooms. While we will talk about it with colleagues in the abstract, putting ourselves "out there" will make us transparent - and open to comment, critique, criticism. Who wants that?
We do!! Jenn showed in the previous post the tools that our students are using and asked (begged? pleaded? implored?) you to try at least one. Did you? Why not? If her post didn't compel you to do so - maybe this video will:
How will you find information in the future if you can't use these tools?
2 comments:
Nice. . . the video almost lost me in the beginning as I was getting a little dizzy but I felt connected once we got away from the card catalogue. I especially liked the use of quotation marks around the traditional concepts.
I'm thinking about a post where we offer small step suggestions. What should come first? If you're stepping into world that is "this", what can you do first to avoid feeling overwhelmed?
Del.icio.us girlfriend, del.icio.us!!
Seriously - what better way to start "social networking" then having your favorite sites travel with you (a big complaint for traditional web users) and then grow to tagging for others? The possibilities are endless!
Post a Comment