This webinar was about teachers, administrators or anyone in the school district who is Techphobic. Techphobia is a common phobia for new and old teachers. If you are reading this, than you must know someone who is techphobic in the school/classroom or you, yourself may be techphobic. This blog will give you ideas and ways to overcome your fears. After reading this blog, I hope you listen to the great webinar to learn more about the cures of techphoia.
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There are three ways a teacher learning community will help transition and adapt technology into the classroom: webinars and online learning programs, global resource sharing and social networking and collaboration.
#1 - Demonstrate the understanding of how technologies can effectively promote student learning.
Technology is a hands on, interactive way to engage students in learning. In today's society, there are many ways to integrate technology into the classroom. Bringing technology into the classroom can seem overwhelming to teachers in this day and age. Teachers that use technology in their classrooms can have the attention of their student they never knew was possible.
Techphoic teachers, listen up!
During this webinar, teachers listening along on the live broadcast were able to tweet ideas/or questions.
This tweet was the last symptom of the webinar on answering; why start using technology now?
"We ask our students to become life long learners, and we as teachers should model what we speak." Susan
Everyone reading understands that bringing technology into your classroom/school is a drastic change, but technology is a new way of learning for our students.
#2 - Evaluate and use a variety of current technologies to enhance content instruction and to advance students' technological literacy.
In this Techphobic webinar, the speakers identified seven different symptoms of Techphobia. These symptoms were: too time consuming, what if something goes wrong? It's too hard to get started! What if it breaks? I don't have access (it's blocked, It's too expensive, and why change now? All of these symptoms are true to Techphobic teachers, and each symptom has a cure, along with a free and easy access website to interact, assess and help students adapt to the technology little by little, in steps with the teacher.
Some ideas this webinar gave me were: Vocaroo, a free, easy voice recording service that can help with grading (using the teachers voice to give in-depth reasoning's), substitute teachers (have them know exactly what to do by hearing your voice), or exercises for public speakers or storytelling.
Another idea was Screencast-O-Matic which gives teachers the ability to take screen shots and save them to their computer just in case something goes wrong with the Internet. Another use for Screencast-O-Matic is taking snapshots for tests reviews, giving students the screen shots if they missed school.
Technology is very broad. If you are nervous about starting to use technology in the classroom, it is important to start out slow, and talk with other teachers who may be having the same difficulties as you are. You are not alone! Technology will come to you, and when it does you will be able to enhance your content instruction to advance your students as well as your own technological literacy!
#5 - Demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of safe, ethical, legal and moral practices related to digital information and technology.
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Technology stretches to many boundaries. It is important as the teacher that you choose developmentally appropriate websites and teach the students how to learn correctly. This webinar had an interesting example. This example had a teacher using Twitter with both students and parents in his class. The site was blocked, but after thinking of interactive ways to have the parents know what the students did that day, or what was coming in the future, he brought his Twitter ideas to the principle and got Twitter passed. Everything on Twitter was private between the teacher and the parents. After seeing the impact Twitter had on the student's parents, he wanted to see how the students would interact using ethical and moral practices in a private Twitter account with the teachers and other students.
This example is a perfect way to have students, parents AND teachers comprehensively understand safe, ethical, legal and moral practices using technology in AND out of the classroom!
#7 - Demonstrate an understanding of the use of adaptive technologies and other digital resources to personalize and differentiate learning activities for every student.
More great educational resources that would personalize and differentiate learning to other students are:
QWiki is a fun and free resource for visual and auditory learners. QWiki is a little bit like google, but an easier and more colorful way to cruise through and find interesting pictures and articles.
Another resource that can be for both teachers and students is Glogster or Glogster.EDU. This tool is an interactive tool for students working independently or group activities. There are so many pictures to choose from, along with different style fonts, colors and so much more.
#8 - Evaluate, adapt and reflect upon emerging tools and trends by participating in local and global learning communities and by reviewing current research and professional literature.
This webinar gave me a lot to think about and many new and exciting ideas. I honestly did not know there was a phobia called Techphobic, but I definitely understand why there are many Techphoic teachers out there today. Technology has creeped up and expanded tremendously since the mid-90s. I am a twenty-four year old student and feel very behind on my technological ways!
It's so so so important that as life long learners and teachers to our students that we take it slow, understand that we are not in it alone and ASK FOR HELP. Students would love to help a fellow teacher in need.
The new upcoming technology in schools is the iPad. I think this is wonderful, but I know some of you may be a little nervous or intimidated. There are teachers and resource tools out there to help you learn!
Take a deep breath, Techphobic teachers! We will get through this together! It is also important that I reiterate this quote from the webinar as you move forward:
"We ask our students to become life long learners, and we as teachers should model what we speak." Susan
You know, I think its interesting that we have to think about whether or not we are "technophobic." There are a lot of teachers (even professors I had in college) that I remember having who were technophobic. Teachers should not be afraid of technology. Technology is something will help students and teachers to succeed and help others to learn material in new and fun ways. Teachers should learn what they can as students so that they can be ready for whatever technology they may face in the future. This does not matter whether or not it is learning how to use a VHS player or a piece of software like PowerPoint.
ReplyDeleteMarissa, I think that the quote you pointed out from Susan really provides an irrefutable argument in favor of teachers embracing technology. We are consistently told that teachers must model the behavior we want to see in our students; so how will it look if we, out of fear, reject technology and refuse to use it in our classes? This philosophy can also be extended to all types of learning. We don't know what the future holds, but what we do know is that, whatever it is, we'll be responsible for teaching it, so we better get on board!
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ReplyDeleteMarissa,
ReplyDeleteI do not think I have Techphobia but I do think I have another condition call Tech-Awe. As I was reading your blog I stopped and went to the Screencast-O-Matic site and created a screencast for a YouTube video. The day I wanted to show this video to my health class the Internet went down at school no Internet, no video. Problem solved you showed me how to do a 15 minute screencast. Thank you. I agree with what you said bringing technology into the classroom could seem overwhelming to teachers in this day and age. I have to pick a few new pieces of technology that we are learning about and practice because it’s easy to get overwhelmed we are learning so much so fast.
Marissa,
ReplyDeleteI thought that your comments on Technophobia were very interesting. I believe that many teachers are technophobes because they did not grow up with the technologies that their students are using today. The biggest obstacle is thinking that using the new technology will be more time consuming then doing things the old ways. Teachers need education in technology so that it will truly make their lives easier.
I also liked some of the suggestions made in the webinar. I like the idea of using technology to involve parents in what their children are doing in class everyday. Parents will have an easier time helping their children if they know exactly what is expected of them.