Now that I have overcome my personal insecurities about blogging, I have decide that it is time to introduce my students to blogging. I am also determined to make 2008 the year that I get some of my colleagues more interested in integrating technology in their lessons.
In the past, I have presented a wide variety of technology integration ideas through mandated professional development. My colleagues have always been polite in participating in my professional development and have utilized some of the tools that the administration requested of them. But for the most part, the general consensus regarding technology is that classroom teachers are too overwhelmed with the requirements of the core curriculum and data collection to learn new technology skills to incorporate into their lessons. As a technology teacher and leader, this attitude was very frustrating because I felt that the technology and tools that our students had access to were a waste. I also felt like a failure because I couldn't change their attitude and opinion towards the benefits of technology integration and for a while I stopped pushing myself to improve my teaching.
Then earlier in this school year one of my former students, who is now a high school junior came to visit me. He showed me a website that he helped to design for the Mummers' Museum and his personal blog. He made me realize that what and how I teach matters most not to the adults that I am surrounded by, but to my students. I was very pleased to know that I may have inspired him to do more with technology after he left Vare. I am also a very competitive person and decided that I could not have a student showing me up ;-). That's when I started my own blog.
So now that my blog has been established, I started a blog for our students on David Warlick's classblogmeister. Their first blog posting is a response to an essay assignment that they did with their classroom teacher. After I post all of their comments and I share the blog with the rest of our staff, I'm hoping that other teachers will want their students to participate as well. If you have any tips on inspiring and motivating your colleagues to use more technology please share your ideas.
Friday, January 11, 2008
To Blog or Not to Blog
Posted by Tracey McGrath at 11:17 PM
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4 comments:
Hey Tracey! Thank You for writing about me on your blog. I really appreciate it. Ummmm... If you would look @ my blog and comment some of my stories and experiences in school life.
~Again Thanks Trace!
Hello! I am a kindergarten teacher and have begun using a lot more technology this year. For me, as a teacher, I can trace the changes I experienced. At the beginning of the school year the administration told us "computers" was no longer a resource. From now on we have to go into Tech Connect and stay with our kids. Oh yea, and we would be teaching. To help us we had a mandated time to plan with the Tech Connect facilitators every week. The first thought was great, one more thing they have taken away from us. Then the school year began and we began planning with our facilitators and it wasn’t so bad. I was learning as much as the kids. But it still wasn’t enough. Then Langwitches, our facilitator, taught a couple of us to use Google and she shared some edutech blogs with me. The light bulb finely went off and I understood the concept of teaching the kids how to use the Web 2.0 tools rather than teach them to be an end user on a piece of software.
So where has all of that left me?? I have a kindergarten class that writes my classroom blog with our AlphaSmarts Neo. They love to be the one who gets to do their journal writing on the Neo that day. We also have a classroom webkinz blog that the students write on instead of a journal for our class mascot. We have used Voice Thread to show what we have learned about a theme unit. We have learned our beginning sounds with pictures from around our own campus and Power Point. I have a lot to learn about what is available and how to use it, but one thing I am no longer afraid of is asking the question. I have so much more confidence to say, “I have an idea . . . what tool do I use to make it work?”
Bonjorno, www.mcgrathcafe.blogspot.com!
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