WebedtecH

• Four Pillars of Technology Integration | nashworld – Annotated

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  • Support your teachers every step of the way as they slowly transform the classroom environments they create toward new and better approaches to learning…

    …and then hold them to it. Hold staff accountable for bringing their skills up to the present realities of the 21st Century.  We’ve been living passively in this century for almost ten years now.  It is time for all of us to sit up and take a direct and active role in the changes happening within the learning profession.

    • Accountability. That’s what it all comes down to, but not only for the teachers but for the administration as well. Both are accountable to the other for support and effort, and both are accountable for their own support and effort. Sword cuts two ways here. – post by artgelwicks
  • We are moving quickly toward the 1:1 environment everyone knows is inevitable in schools.
    • Don’t agree with this. Too many schools are still paralyzed with fear over mobile technology. Until this hurdle is leapt, true technology integration will be nothing more than a pipe dream. – post by artgelwicks

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

I had to chuckle a bit when I read this paragraph in The Chronicle of Higher Education written by an instructor:

“My experience with using Twitter and anything similar blogs, Facebook, etc. for academic purposes is that students just think it is weird, creepy, and geeky in the negative sense, one reader said. And they think that its inappropriate for me to be invading their space. Within two days of telling my students that I had a Facebook page, I was blocked from all of them.”

As ed-tech’s we’re always jumping up and down about the newest technologies and how they can be put to use in an educational setting. Is it possible that the students don’t want us treading in their spaces? Perhaps they’d like us to lag behind a bit so they can remain on the cutting edge. Think about it this way…when you were growing up how would you have felt if every time you went to someplace new and cool and bumped into one of your teachers?

Let’s think about concepts and approaches rather than the specific technologies. Rather than saying, “Can we use Twitter with students,” let’s say, “Can we use a group instant messaging system to help students?” Define how the type of technology can be used rather than the specific application and we gain two things:

1. A sound educational approach for the use of a process or system

1. An implementation that is not dependent on the technology-de-jour

As a bonus, we’re no longer the “creepy teachers.”

Donald Latumahina over at Life Optimizer wrote a great piece about the book Fire Them Up! by Carmine Gallo on becoming a company’s “Chief Inspiration Officer.” Coming off the energy and power of EduCon 2.0 I thought I’d try and take Donald’s ideas and focus them on how we can become “Inspirational Technology Teachers”.

1. Feed your enthusiasm. As technologists we’re already inspired to use technology in the classroom and appreciate the short term and long term benefits. Unfortunately we can be dragged down by the setbacks of administrative paralysis and challenge, apathy, and resistance to change. You need to constantly feed your enthusiasm with examples of people who are pushing the envelope and challenging the status quo.

2. Lead. Be a trail blazer. Show the people around you the path is not impossible, the bar is not too high, the obstacles not insurmountable. As Joyce Valenza says, “Be subversive.”

3. Sell the benefit. Gary Stager at EduCon 2.0 said, “Education should be shamelessly self-promoting.” I’m not going to go that far but I do agree with the idea that people cannot choose what they’re not aware of. (Another paraphrasing of Gary…man’s a quote machine.) Help people understand the problem what you’re about to suggest will solve or the direct educational benefit of the technology before you ever discuss the technology itself. For example, “So you want to have your students work on a document together? Excellent. Let’s talk Google Docs…”

4. Show them. Technology doesn’t often translate well to intangible descriptions. If you’re trying to motivate someone to try something, have an example of it similar to your end goal to put in front of them. If you want them to try podcasting, have some good podcasts handy to listen to.

5. Involve others. There’s no such thing as a parade of one. You need to find at least a couple of others who share your vision and can help you walk the walk and toot the horn.

6. Be happy. There will be challenges, difficulties, and obstacles. We recognize that. Don’t dwell on them. Reiterate the goals and benefits and celebrate the little successes as you move along. Watching your first self-produced UStream video can be a very cool moment.

7. Reinforce and repeat. Commit yourself to their successes and make sure the world knows when they win. Help them repeat those successes and over time it will become a self-fulfilling prophesy.

The world is full of nay-sayers and doubters. Take the other side. As Adam from Mythbusters says, “I reject your reality and substitute my own.”

How to Become a Chief Inspiration Officer | Life Optimizer