Sharing the Addiction

Hello again. Yes, it has been awhile. I’ve been busy working with the data we’ve gathered from teachers to find out how we are measuring up as a cluster. The results have been mostly good but there are some pockets of teachers around our cluster for whom the sessions with me, as the facilitator, don’t seem to be hitting the mark. This has led to a fair amount of soul searching on my behalf. I have come to the conclusion that, while I do have some things that I hope to ‘tweak’ about the way I work, there are also factors that make my time more successful at school and teacher level.

1. Teachers will see my sessions as ‘one-offs’ unless what we look at together is part of a wider picture. Schools need to have spent time in teams discussing what ICT would best support the curriculum and the needs of the students (with support from their lead teacher or me as a facilitator). When this happens before I come to work with individual teachers, this focuses teachers on what they are working towards within their classroom programs.
2. If there are workshops run with all the teachers present who are working on that ICT integration, then teachers get a chance to talk about how well they see that technology will fit. Then sessions with myself can be used to consolidate or bring in children to work with the teachers. Everyone generally needs more than one ‘go’ at something to feel confident enough to try it with the kids. Nothing helps a teacher feel more confident than seeing first hand that children will cope with the demands we are asking of them.
3. The most successful sessions are ones where I have been told what teachers want to cover at least two days before the session. It can be hard to come up with ideas on what teachers could be doing with their classes AND do the PD for these ideas within the short time I have with teachers. That’s why it is better to generate the ideas at planning level beforehand. I am also able to more prepared this way. Too often, I am having to think ‘on my feet’ which, while I’m not TOO bad at it, is not the ideal situation for anyone.
4. Teachers need further support to be able to implement the use of ICT with their children. Too many teachers feel as if they are ‘drowning’ under the workload expected of them. Schools need to find a way to reduce other demands on teachers who are trying to bring authentic uses of ICT into the classroom. Not many schools are making use of the in-class support that I offer and yet, from the survey results, these are the sessions that teachers often find the most useful. Also, the ICT teacm in each school needs to look at ways to give teachers support such as the release Onieka is getting each week to go into classrooms of teacher to keep the ICT on track.
5. Finally, there are times when I come in to run sessions at the school and the gear hasn’t been checked and there are issues like batteries being flat or software not working. Spending time trying to sort out these problems before being able to get started eats into precious PD time.

I am not saying that there are not things that I need to improve on. I am looking forward to going to the two day ‘Effective Speaking’ course in the holidays as a way for me to present more effectively. I am also prone to trying to squeeze too much into the short sessions I have with teachers and need to be careful to not overwhelm them. Still, this contract is not all about me as a facilitator; it is also about the ways schools build in the use of ICT and manage this and it needs to go beyond the release sessions that teachers have with me. Between us, I hope that we can work to making the PD effective for all teachers in the cluster.

On a completely different note, here is a two second podcast that I have put up on a new tool I have found called Podcast People. I think this tool is really easy to use and could be great in the classroom.

My Podcast People Experience