Looking for help

[Sharon Padget]

Hi,

Hello everyone, my name is Sharon Padget and I teach at Ottumwa High School in Ottumwa Iowa. I am asking for your help in moving my school forward into the 21st century and using Web 2.0 applications. You see, my school has many wonderful teachers that are afraid or are not seeing technology as an asset to their classroom instead of something to be feared. I am moving to a paperless classroom, using notebooks, using smartboards and many other pieces of technology and feel the rest of the staff is caught in a time warp that is leaving our students behind in the technology world. Please offer suggestions as to how to:

1. Get my administartion to give PD time to help teachers share what they already know.
2. Time to learn about how to effectively use what we have
3. To show that technology can enhance learning not inhibit it.


Thank you for your time
Sharon

[Craig Cummings]

Hi there Sharon, Firstly the challenge you face is universal! I'm from a school in Australia and while we have many teachers who are very progressive and innovative, it is often in "pockets" rather than across whole schools. As far as your administration is concerned, if they cant see the advantages and need of moving into a web 2.0 environment then asking them for support may disappoint you! You are probably getting together with one or two of your colleagues who are like minded and consolidate what you know and then share this with the rest of your schools teachers. I've found that the skeptics need to be shown as complete a picture as possible to be anywhere near convinced! At my school a group of us are very progressive and we work as a team to plan curriculum in an inquiry based way and we incorporate ICT and WEb 2.0 into it. This "pocket" of innovation is starting to infiltrate the rest of the school. But its a challenge. So the more comprehensive/sophisticated your classroom (and hopefully one or two others) is the less others can criticize it!
good luck
Craig