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| I always feel busy, so this is a fun picture that gives me an attitude adjustment. I am very lucky to be so busy... |
Last week some of my teachers attended a three day institute on technology integration. On the final day they had to plan a sustainability plan for technology use for the year. I had to talk one of them (let us call her Mary) off the ledge because she could not believe that she was going to use this document during the year. She was convinced that she would never open it again because that is not the way she works. Mary's orientation to learning demanded that she have a real-life application for her time spent on this project. Since she did not participate in the the planning of this activity, she couldn't see the connection to her own classroom and would rather have spent her day on something that was important to her. Although Mary learned how to use google docs and wikis on this day- skills she can carry back with her, this teacher would have benefitted from being involved in planning the learning objectives and activities. The next day, as we worked at our school on projects we had all planned together- there were no ledges or cliffs. I could tell that every teacher appreciated being in charge of their own learning, and were more oriented to learning. I see this trend in adult learners and do not see it as much in the pedagogical model. I think younger learners may be more conditioned to work on projects they did not select than older students.
When you work in tech in industry you are almost never working with a project you have a hand in selecting. I'm glad to hear younger learners don't have that barrier because modern worklife has very, very few autuer level positions and most work is shared, agile or collaborative. If teachers don't work that way they can't teach effective strategies to cope with working that way.
ReplyDeleteI hope she finds a way to implement, things that she didn't create, the trick is finding then way to improve or adapt to the things that were your goals.
I think we have all talked a "Mary" off a ledge. I work with teachers that embrace technology and ones that run for the hills and hide from it! We just have to work a little harder with those that hide from it. Like I've said in class before, I have one teacher, I'll call her Susie, that I still need to show EVERY September how to add an attachment to her email.....and I remind myself... patience is a virture :)
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