With this in mind, the solution to the problem appears to be teacher education. Of course, there's the issue of getting the educator to buy in to this, but assuming we have open and willing participants, The School Library Learning 2.0 Website (http://schoollibrarylearning2.blogspot.com) appears to be a good place to start.
The site is a 9 week self-tutorial designed to get educators acquainted with some of the new web 2.0 softwares and capabilities. In some ways it reminds me of our class where each week adds a different layer to our knowledge base. Of course, the tutorial is not enough to make experts, but it is a start. Hopefully the simple awareness will help educators to be more open minded about their approach to teaching going forward.
Wow this seems like a really interesting site and quite similar to our own class like you said. Even though I've grown up with computers, I never felt a strong urge to learn about new social software. This class is definitely broadening my horizons and it's amazing to see how easy some of these tools are to use, not to mention useful! My mom is an elementary school teacher and I think she could really benefit from a site like this. Her school district just started making all the teachers have their own e-board, very similar to a wiki. I'd be curious to see how students reacted to teachers using various social software tools.
ReplyDeleteLaura - this would be a great site for school districts to utilize for 'Professional Development.' When I think about the 'activities' that many schools impose upon teachers on a monthly basis,(and sometimes even pay money for!)I get annoyed. I think this would be such a better way to utlize time, and people may even learn a thing or two..no matter what the subject matter...everyone could use and apply these '23 things' if given a time slot to learn them.....
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