Lack of Training & Maintaining technology manageable

Lack of Training & Maintaining technology manageable

“The few moments that we can steal for professional development are usually spent in sessions with experts pitching the latest silver bullet. Teachers rarely get to self-select learning opportunities, pursue professional passions, or engage in meaningful, ongoing conversations about instruction.”

These two sentences summarize a bit of the frustrations teachers face when presented with technology options for the classroom. Often professional development is a “horse and pony show” that fails to provide teachers with real hands on experiences. Schools hire professionals to bring these high quality technologies but some how these professionals fail to provide teachers with that meaningful training.

If educators were to have real hands-on experiences with technology there would be less apprehension. Teachers are constantly inundating with a huge amount of mandates and pressures and if we add the poor training and the urgency to use technology is surely an overwhelming equation.

If the idea of using technology were made simple, manageable and in a time efficient manner then many would embrace the idea with open arms. Freriter proposes a manageable way to use technology; the Really Simple Syndication feed reader seems a very efficient way of using a blog for teaching. This is truly a powerful tool, this forum could open a space for students to engage not only by reading what others might post but also be inclined to share information they find useful or that relates from reliable sources.

In guess that it would all come down to teaching students and training teachers how to use these forums (Wiki & Blogs) in a academic setting. Teaching students how to filter information. I cannot help but ask how can we keep the use of Wiki or Blogs manageable? What are ways to monitor students’ input? Although I am an advocate of with peer learning and creating strong academic communities; my question is how can we maintain a grasp on what can potentially become unmanageable?