There is a kimillionzillion readings on the potential impact of our kids not learning 21st Century survival skills, but what about our teachers? I am not talking about just the veterans. I mean all teachers, all subjects. I don’t see teachers desiring any change– how long would change even take if it was “forced.” How long would it take for a teacher to go from putting numbers on a board to a year’s worth of conceptual authentic learning that the kids could place in context? How long would it take for a teacher to go from making their kids memorize the capitals of all the countries they are studying to talking live with people in those countries? Most teachers I know have zero interest in 2.0 tools. I might be off here, but I can’t recall a single person in my building who has asked me even one question about any of the tools I use, why I use them, or the impact they have on instruction — which means there is no interest or I am just totally and completely wrong about hopping on the bandwagon, a thought which has seriously crossed my mind several times. A list of all of the “Teachers-of-the-year” for each of our schools was just released and I “googled” most of them and did not find one that had an online presence(only did the first two pages of google ; ). How many years until change starts shaking the foundation of my building? My guess….15 years.
2 Comments
on “Teachers?”
2 Comments on “Teachers?”
I agree that most teachers don’t have an interest in blogging but I think most are interested in having students create multimedia only they feel they don’t have time and they don’t think they know how.
Change whether forced or not is going to have involve giving teachers time for technology professional development and collaborative planning time.
You and I know that there’s so much more to a 2.0 classroom than simply blogging, for either the teacher or the student.
I’ve not been in a traditional school for the past 2 years, but when I was, I knew nothing. We were so choked down on the tech tools that I never felt any success at doing anything other than the Office Suite. *gah*
So when I’m talking to reg ed teachers now, they seem to know something should be going on. And in the past couple of months, they seem to be less ignoring me and more interested. But they’re afraid to be consumed 18+ hours a day as we are. We’ve somehow got to demonstrate balance too. And I don’t know how to do that.
But the good news? The local Teachers College (who’s been winning national awards) has taken notice of our school and has begun bringing in pre-service teachers for tours. nice. That where it begins?