Another Week Gone

It is flying by, this EDU 255 course.

I was speaking to one of our library aides at the high school today. We were talking about my class blog and how some students have really taken a liking to it. If I post the assignments and lesson plans early, I have students who have their work turned in before class starts. (Should I penalize them by making them listen to my lectures while in class, or reward them by letting them play games on the computers in class?)


The gist of our conversation, however, was about the lack of tech savoir-faire among our teachers. The aide has much more interfacing with the staff because many of the teachers bring classes to the library for various projects. She told me that most the educators at the school have a borderline phobia toward the computers, projectors, laptops, web-searches, etc. She also said that this was true across all age groups: young to old.

On the high school campus, there is a good deal of talk about collaboration among teachers. Usually this means that computer apps teachers are supposed to find ways to integrate math, English, and science into our curriculum--somehow, sometime. Maybe, if the winds of change are blowing the way I believe they are, collaboration should mean the teachers of math, English, and science should find ways to get their students to embrace technology. All teachers on campus should have their own blogs, wikis, and collaborative web sites set up for students. And those teachers should promote them in their classes so that when those students go to a computer lab or apps class it's not to play video games.