Comments on: edubloggercon 2009

By: Candace Hackett Shively

Candace Hackett Shively — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 11:59:47 +0000

Maureen,
Competition is always a great motivator, at least for middle and high school teachers. FOOD is remarkably effective. I guess we are all still little kids at heart: “I’ll eat the broccoli if you give me a cookie. Wait, broccoli doesn’t taste so bad…”

I just hope that the motivation carries on when no one else is there with cookies or get-out-of-lunch-duty-free passes. What makes teachers continue the effort is seeing the change in their students’ learning. That does get teachers fired up, even those who are quite set in their ways. So it is very important that that first “competitive” effort done in a setting as you describe be designed well and “set up” for success when tried with the kids. Otherwise, we don’t have enough cookies to go around:)

By: Maureen Brittingham

Maureen Brittingham — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 13:32:58 +0000

Another way that tech teachers and veteran teachers could learn from eachother is by teaming up for a type of “tech wars,” a type of collaboration that speaks to the competitive side of all of us. Perhaps every team could be assigned a tech project to complete and present for professional development. The team that makes the best presentation wins something (food is always good, or free time covered by someone else-like an administrator). The problem with this is that there has to be a “carrot” for doing it, a mandate, as I said above. I don’t know if the administration could just require this also, in a forced form of teaching/learning. I was thinking of the motivational things I use to get my students going even when they don’t want to do somethng, and competition works for many of them.

By: Maureen Brittingham

Maureen Brittingham — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 02:55:10 +0000

I can really relate to your blog posting. I am just finishing my second year of teaching and feel like I have been a member of the O group – Overwhelmed/Just Surviving until this past spring semester, when all of the ins and outs of daily teaching finally started to make real sense and come together. I am just starting to feel like I know how to teach well and can adjust my practices and consider adding in high tech ways of instructing.

The question that you pose about how to make those who are reluctant or opposed to learning new ways of instructing (using new tech tools) more inclined to learn is a tricky one. My thoughts on the subject are this. My principal wields a lot of weight and when he mandates something, even the old timers who have dusty lecture notes and stick with them, must comply. We have a tech coach who is a resource for teaching the teachers how to implement technology in the classroom. We are in school for 10 months, so what if the tech coach taught a different technology lesson right after school each month with 50% attendance required. In that way those who were interested could pick up 10 new skills and those who were opposed to learning would be required to choose 5 new technology skills to learn. This way there would be choice – you can choose when to attend and which 5 to attend and choose skills that would be most beneficial to your area, but no choice in that 5 sessions must be attended by the end of the year.

The principal made a tech requirement already that all staff be certified in basic computer skills (called the Tech Certificate) by the end of last school year. He assigned those who were no in compliance to a vice-principal who made sure that all their “charges” were in compliance by the end of school.

Being relatively new to the profession, I may be way off base or you may say that this has been tried and failed. It seems like a possible solution, let me know what you think.

By: Shelly Terrell

Shelly Terrell — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 13:10:08 +0000

Great post, which runs into my blog topic this week about teacher technology overload and deciding which technologies are the best to recommend to new teachers. If you don’t mind, I will add a link to this post for further reading!