In the world of failed school levies and 4 million dollars in cuts, union negotiations, and all the other “stuff” that negatively effects our schools, I need a positive moment. Here is my dream school.
Every student has a computing device with wireless access. To make this even more of a utopia, they have wireless access to the network from home also. Every teacher has a laptop, smartboard and projector. All of these teachers have spent days of professional development time preparing themselves to engage their students in a 1:1 environment. The teachers are also given 2 periods per day for planning and professional development.
Gone are the days of the teacher speaking at the students for 50 minutes about something they truly could care less about. The students are creating content: wikis, blogs, videos, podcast, social networking sites, etc… The assignments are project based, not memorize these facts based.
My roll in this classroom will be very similar to what it is now. Ongoing training and support of how to seamlessly embed the technology into their lessons. When a teacher needs help, I will plan with them and go into their classroom and help.
Hopefully one day soon I will live in this utopia. There will always be issues and problems, but I hope we solve the big ones that exist today (at least in my district and state) very soon.
My new motto (needs work)…”It’s not about the technology, it is about teaching and learning. The technology will allow us to change how we teach and improve the students learning.”
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March 19th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
I am taking a technology course right now and it is very facinating the many ways that we can connect our students to digital learning. My problem is that many of my students still do not have the ability to be on a computer at home.
October 16th, 2008 at 10:09 am
Students can participate in global technology lessons without having the ability to be on a computer at home. You just need to provide the opportunities at school.