Technology Professional Development

Teacher's always struggle with professional development that takes them outside of the classroom and then sends them back alone to integrate. How many times have we all attended workshops or conferences and came home with a bag of fliers and information that gets put in a pile, until you have time to revisit it and figure out how you can use it in your class? I always try to walk away from a workshop with one thing I can go into my classroom and use the next day.

Sylvia Martinez presents research that technology professional development as it exists today is not working for our schools and its students. I think a lot of us can see that. But what is the solution? She presents the idea of students mentoring teachers. Although it takes an open minded, unthreatened teacher to participate in this, I do believe we have many such teachers. In her presentation, Sylvia gives examples and shows footage of the success of this idea. Why not have students work with teachers to plan lessons and activities, while helping teachers become comfortable integrating technology into their classrooms?

The way I see it, this is one effective way to begin breaking down the barriers in schools and catching up with the invisible boundaries that exist in today's world.

Disappearing Boundaries

David Warlick is a keynote speaker at an online k12 conference. He talks about the boundaries that have always existed in our cultures and our classrooms, but are now becoming invisible in the 21st century. I found it interesting to hear him speak about watching his father get ready for work each day and that he always had a sense of what his future held, something similar to his father. He says that he was probably the last generation that could see his future in his parents, our kids know it will be different.

Our students are connected constantly, we as educators, should not fight that, but embrace it. There is so much information available to us if we are only paying attention. The difficulty is that it involves so much change, as a classroom teacher, our education did not prepare us for a career in education, that preparation must continue on a daily basis. At this point it is feasible to have students who are more literate than their teachers. It has become a flat world where we are all working together to gain information, share it and learn form it.

As Mr Warwick said, "It is the first time in history we are preparing our kids for a future we cannot predict, we must teach kids to teach themselves."