| Education in technology for teachers can
take on many different forms. Training can be tailored to fit the needs
of individuals or groups based on learning style or specific software
and hardware. There are many models for training so you can identify one
as your preference.
The
quickest training approach seems to be interjecting ideas for classroom
use while having teachers create tools to use with students while also
getting to know an application. I love to have people leave a training
with tangible things to use the next day. Since there are usually a
variety of people teaching many different grade levels and subject areas
in these classes, we all tend to leave with a wide assortment of
practical ideas for many different age groups.
As an instructor to pre-service teachers, I use many
of the same techniques as with practicing teachers but some of my
sessions tend to be more skills-based. We work a lot on designing
web pages for their future classrooms and even more on information
literacy.
In the past, as a consultant, I was often called in to
classrooms to help with a typical unit of study. The teacher and I used
plans for the unit that had been taught in the past but we added a twist
with technology. Often, we would actually co-teach the lessons in this
unit. This allowed a practicing teacher to watch someone teach lessons
using technology until they were ready to do it themselves. Usually,
these lessons were designed based on the hardware and software that the
classroom teacher wanted to learn.
The focus during training
should be curriculum...not
technology. Really, technology should be a tool for teaching, not
something outside of content that needs to get taught in addition to
everything else. Your
students will learn to use technology you just get to help
them think about how they use it.
Possible classes in the use of technology |
