Tomorrow and Tuesday are the first meetings of the year for our new 10Tech teacher leaders. These are the teachers that have been identified in each of our buildings to support the use of technology by their colleagues. One from each building will become part of our Technology Summit, the staff committee that will support implementation of our Technology Plan and guide us into the future. I am excited about the potential of this model to support teacher use of technology to influence learning and by the enthusiasm that I see from Kimberly who will be guiding their work. The model is possible because of funding from the technology levy.
As the team starts the year, what would you tell them they must do if they are to be successful in supporting you? What one thing should they consider that would have the greatest influence on your capacity to use technology to support learning?
2 comments:
Sometimes I want help with how to be a better learner. Sometimes I want help with how to learn this specific thing. Sometimes I want someone to just show me how to do the thing. And sometimes I want someone to save me from seemingly impending doom. The tricky part is I usually don't know which of the above best describes what I want because I don't really think about the nature of my question...I just have a question.
The TTTLs can help me become a better learner and better consumer of their services if they prompt me to think about what it is I really want by offering a few alternatives and asking me which I would prefer.I get to be reminded of where we would all like me to get to and yet, if I'm not there, I get to feel supported.
Ethan, I think one of that hardest things to deal with as an educator is trying to teach students that we need to move away from the notion "Sometimes I want someone to just show me how to do the thing. "
I mean, we all want to save time sometimes and just get an influx of knowledge, but I think we (as students too) should also be aware that this isn't the best way for us to learn.
Right now in my advanced computer science class I gave students an assignment that I was sure they did not have all the knowledge to complete (but did have a solid foundation for finding the answer). I explained to them that the purpose of the assignment was specifically for me to be as hands-off as possible and for them to learn how to research and find the answers they needed. It helped that the assignment was something fun that all the kids wanted to learn, but that didn't mean that they didn't encounter problems.
One kid repeatedly kept asking me to just give him the answer and told me that he didn't like having "to think it out himself". I tried to assure them that it was ok to be frustrated, it was ok if they didn't completely understand the first tutorial they read, it was ok to just copy and paste code and then modify it to figure out what it did.
Eventually, they've all got it. A little guidance here some encouraging words there, and a little tough love showed them that they could indeed figure it out themselves even if it took awhile.
It helped that a student of mine got an internship over the summer at MS and when I was trying to convince kids that they're not always going to have someone pointing to all the answers, that they would in fact be asked to do things they didn't already know how to do in their jobs, and that if they asked their boss too many questions they would look incompetent and probably get fired... that kid that interned at MS this summer was able to confirm that he was asked to do things he didn't know and he did have to teach himself a bunch of new things and that is the way it really is in the world. I think it dawned a whole new light on the assignment to the kids.
OK--that was a lot of writing. Basically I'm saying I believe it's our duty to be life long learners and it's our duty to teach kids how to do the same.
Post a Comment