Empowering Teachers

One of my main goals in the job that I am in is to empower teachers to be the best that they can be. I believe that technology is an important part of that. It is not everything. To keep up with technology though is even tough for me... and I do it all the time. So, my school is doing what EVERY school needs to be doing which is providing support to teachers so that they CAN use technology well.

Recently I am seeing some big barriers to my goal of empowering teachers. Both of them have to do with well meaning and extremely hard working tech support people. The first is the adoption of huge expensive technologies that are challenging to use so that teachers need more and more training and because they are on the edge there are plenty of glitches.

Second, there is such an effort to keep everything secure (including students) that it prevents teachers from using some very simple things that could really enhance instruction.

Charlie Rose interviews Marc Andreessen

Last night my husband, the professor, who can stay up later than I can watched Charlie Rose. He said it was a fascinating interview with Marc Andreessen.  It is really worth listening to, so I searched for it.  It has not been posted yet, but here is where you will find it:

http://www.charlierose.com/guest/view/3157

He said that it was very interesting that he did not talk at all about education in this interview. He also said that Andreessen talked about "organic growth" of the Internet! This was in answer to why Facebook is not interested in making a profit now.  I am looking forward to watching it.

Technology Vision

I have spent some time in the last few weeks pondering the use of technology in my school. I want to have a vision for what I think should happen and I want that to inform what I should be doing. Sometimes I feel like days are just so scattered and so some direction seems helpful.

Here is what I have come up with.

1. I would like to see each and every teacher have a Personal Learning Network that goes beyond the school, beyond the district, maybe even beyond the USA. These are other teachers who are passionate about similar things, who can give mutual support and share ideas. The reason I think that this needs to happen for the teachers is that I think it will be even more important for the kids, but technology will not be used that way in the school until the teachers really understand that.

2. I would like to see each and every teacher become a life-long learner, which they will be forced to be if they really use technology. They cannot be afraid of passwords, glitches, trying new things….

3. There is TOO much technology to expect each teacher to do it ALL. They need to be wise designers selecting which new technologies meet the goals in their classrooms.

4. I would like the teachers to trust the students more. These are brilliant kids with really supportive families. They come with a WEALTH of technology knowledge and yet I have seen them in the lab treated like they only know whatever the teacher is comfortable with and so have to learn step by step to do anything more complicated.

5. Meaningful Global Connections-These kids will probably be the leaders of the future. Shouldn’t they have a bigger view of the world (especially in 4th or 5th grade and above) than just the local school district?

6. A willingess to learn from failure

7. More emphasis on collaboration. This is SUCH an important quality for every student’s future. This needs to happen among the teachers as well. In many schools there is so much isolation. Competition rather than collaboration is more emphasized. I think that this is exacerbated by departmentalization. When one teacher does only Math and Science for the whole grade level and another does ony language arts the students do not ever learn the connections between all knowledge. There cannot be a project that involves both Math and reading. WebQuests are irrelevant for the most part. This collaboration can still happen, but the teachers need to be designers and work together on planning

My thoughts today... who knows about tomorrow.

Discovery of a good blog read

This morning I came across a blog that is really worth reading. I have been uninspired lately and so it is always good to come across someone who is inspiring. Barbara Cohen works at Marin County Day School which is a dream school in California. I have only read the last few posts of her blog, but every one of them was interesting and inspiring.

http://barblcohen.edublogs.org/

Check it out!