The OTEN Conference basically made me feel much better about my technological deficiencies. All three speakers I saw stressed that we as educators do not need to know everything about all technology to bring it into the classroom. Instead, we should bring technology into our classrooms and have students teach us how to use it better. We should experiment with new technology and look at that as a way to play.
This got me thinking about the question...why do some teachers balk at the idea of learning new technology? Is it because it's unfamiliar territory that is hard? If that is the case, then we should want to learn it in order to be good models. We ask our students to willingly tackle hard unfamiliar material, and we should be doing the same thing. If they see us eagerly learning in the same way we ask them to learn, that may be a skill that they will take more seriously.
To check out my Yodio review of the keynote and the 2 sessions I attended:
Thanks for the thorough reflection.
ReplyDeleteWe'll be embedding these (discussion in class). So, if you what to experiment a little -> copy the EMBED coding from Yodio -> open/edit this blog post -> hit the EditHTML tab (not Compose), and PASTE the coding. You'll be smiling from ear to ear.