Tip of the Week #5 (TOTW#5): Model, Model Model.
This is a concept that is familiar to us as educators. You quickly learn in teaching that the best way to teach your students how to be responsible and care about their work is to model that behavior in the classroom. I have sat in on many classes throughout my career as a student where the class very quickly takes on the personality of the teacher. And yet this point somehow seems missed when implementing technology in the classroom.
If you are not sure how to use podcasts, blogs or wikis in the classroom start using them yourself. Start listening to podcasts and share what you find with your students. Write a blog. This is just a journal with a public audience. You could easily keep record of assignments and upcoming events in a blog and have the class visit it regularly. Create a wiki within your department. Start collecting lesson resources/assessments that can be shared by other staff. Reflect on what did and didn’t work and how you can do it better next time around.
All of these things we do, but for whatever reason – time, comfort level, anxiety, other – we don’t make the leap to translate these practices to technology. Modeling and immersing yourself into technology is the best way to spark ideas for the classroom. In a recent article for BusinessWeek Thomas Glocer, CEO of Reuters, said “Unless one interacts with and plays with the leading technology of the age, it is impossible to dream the big dreams, and difficult to create an environment in which creative individuals will feel at home.”
Tags: education, Glocer, imerssion, modeling, Reuters, technology
