When outlining the skills I would like to learn in an earlier blog, I had listed building a web page for my technology club. Several years ago while taking a staff development class, I developed a web page for my homeroom class using Front Page. But, after moving grade levels and classrooms, I stopped keeping up with it and it disappeared, along with what I had learned about web page development. When my technology club students wanted to have a web page for the club, I thought it was a great idea, but somewhere along the way, I had become somewhat afraid of my ability to create a web page. When Charlie began teaching Dreamweaver some of what I vaguely remembered from Front Page came back, but I was still leery. After reading Clara’s blog about Microsoft Live, I began to feel a little more encouraged. Now I am even more hopeful. I went to a technology staff meeting on Thursday and was shown a new free web page developer that our school district is going to be using called Joomla (http://joomla.org/). It looks very user friendly, and I think the kids and I will love it. My other hope is that by using some reverse mentoring the students can help the teachers use it and create their own class web pages that students can help write.
While reading in Empowering Students with Technology, I found myself scribbling notes and nodding my head in agreement with Dr. November’s views. Teachers are definitely more challenged by the use of technology than their students. In my first blog, I talked about how interesting it is to see how excited kids get when they are given the opportunity to use technology. In my lab I have been trying to help students take this enthusiasm and build on it. I try to show them how to take the technology skills they are learning in computer class and apply them to what they are learning in their core classes. My fear is that these connections are not being made due to the classroom teacher’s reluctance to use technology in their classroom. When teachers (not all of course, but a majority) are shown new technology to use, they must be coerced, coddled, and sometimes pushed into using it due to their own fears. I know that some of this fear is due to several of the barriers that Dr. Romano sites in Empowering Teachers with Technology. In many instances teachers have not been shown convincingly how using technology can enhance their teaching and the student's learning. We have been told you must use technology, but have not been given examples of how it has empowered other businesses and teachers, or how it can be better than the status quo. Many unproved software programs have been thrust on us, usually because some administrator somewhere heard from some other administrator somewhere, that it is wonderful. But then the promised gains in student performance have not been realized. My hope is that I am able to dispel some of their fears and break down barriers by showing teachers that they do not have to be masters of the technology they want to use, but can learn it with their students. I hope to research and find new software that is course specific. I want to help teachers understand that if they give their students opportunities to use technology in a managed environment, they along with their students will grow. One small way I hope to help is by starting a blog for technology on our campus. Through this blog, I am going to encourage teachers, administrators, students, and parents to share ideas, best practices, lessons, questions, etc... I am also going to encourage teachers to video their best practice lessons and share them through the technology web page that the students and I are going to develop. Of course this will bring up more fears, but without facing our fears we won't grow.
