Future of Education

My question is not why use web 2.0 in the classroom, but how do we get teachers to get on board? I was very frustrated by the fact that it wasn’t just happening. I am currently teaching an online professional development class centered around blogging and a few other technology topics (websites, inspiration, digital images). I have 11 teachers from my district in the one semester hour class. They posed a lot of questions and concerns about blogging in the classroom. They were concerned about; security, management, replying to 150 students post, rules and guidelines, tech skills, home access, and so on. I feel like I calmed the fears of the majority. Enough that two of the teachers have started a classroom blog and at least half of them will start one next school year.

So, how do we get teachers into the web 2.0 world? One at a time. We need to get our best, our most vocal, and our inovative teachers on board first. We have to help them out and make sure they are doing it the right way. We have to make sure they are successful. When they are successful and they see growth in their students due to the blogs (and wiki’s, podcast, ect…), we will see an exponetial growth.

If you are searching for the same answers I was, go out and find those few people. Focus on them. Make sure it is a success. Then make sure the entire administration, building, district or city sees the success.  The others will hop on board.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 3rd, 2007 at 1:28 pm and is filed under Blogroll, blog, education, future, issues, technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.