Using My Lessons Learned the Hard Way to Inform Teaching in the 21st Century: Recent Episodes
Dr. Howard Slepkov
It has now been five years since I last stood in front of a class of students. I have wanted to share my experiences with young people interested in their own career in the classroom. I loved being a teacher, an educator, but I didn't become an expert overnight although I thought at first it would be easy. Little did I know it would take me a lot of lessons learned the hard way how to be a successful classroom teacher. I want to help those interested in hearing my stories and learning from my experiences and I hope you will take me up on my offer to contact me at any time. Once a teacher, always a teacher.
From the beginning of my career, I had a real problem with classroom control. I was afraid of my older students. It took my almost my entire career until I realized that the secret of control was not to make everything a power struggle between the student and myself but to learn to understand the world through the eyes of the students I was having difficulties with and were having their own difficulties with the school environment. The secret to finding success with students, most of the time, is thinking of them as individuals and seeing them that way and responding to them that way. So much of what we do is related to emotional learning and with that comes the ability to help students get along.
I read the outline of an article on the idea of robograding which means using machine programmed intelligence to grade papers. It explained what robograding meant to imply and then it talked about why it is so far away from being realized. I remember when early adoption of computers in the classroom led to some believing they would eliminate teachers and I retorted that there would always be a need for teachers. Same thing applies with this concept. We can program machines to mark simple examples where there is no thinking involved, only choices. But as soon as thinking which means emotions become involved, it is much harder to do in the best interests of the students. Only a good teacher can see into the mind and thinking of a student and it is in that in between place where sometimes we have to assess fairly what a student is trying to say and show.
One of the most important developments that came along with the creation of the World Wide Web and its successor, the Internet, was the ability to reach a global audience. In those early days that was done through email and listserves and then came first web pages / web sites and social media. Now it is easy for a parent or a teacher or a student of any age to make contact with individuals and groups of almost any variety. We are witnessing the bad side of this in so many ways, but the good side is what I am focussing on. These developments have enabled us to help one another learn about the world around us and the peoples who inhabit our planet. There is a world out there waiting for our students to find in a positive way and we can accomplish that so easily but helping them find global collaborative projects and opportunities for them to chat and interact with others like them in classrooms and schools all over the world.
There is never an end to the positions that are being taken in various states and provinces concerning Education and far too often they are coming from a place of a lack of understanding about what we teach, how we teach and why we teach as well as how students learn and why they learn or don't learn. The latest headline is about teachers having to file their lesson plans a whole year ahead of their work so there will be an opportunity for parents to see and comment and criticize. In this podcast, I try to outline how we are now going back to where we were before I even began to teach and how that runs contrary to everything we now to be the case about success in teaching and learning. There are roles parents can play in this adventure we call school but it is not to be able to criticize and comment on lessons on a day to day basis.
Hearing folks from every walk of life attest to the fact that they are DONE with the pandemic, or demonstrate to end all the restrictions on personal freedom, it is easy to overlook a group of people who have more than enough reasons to want the pandemic to end. Teacher by definition spend their professional careers in a very high-stress environment, under assault from all directions to demand quality as well as quantity of educational experiences. However, it is well known that teachers don't last long in their classrooms. Five years is more than enough for most of them. Why is this so and what can we do to make things easier for them?
When we read the headlines in papers and follow the news carefully in the press or social media, we know that one of the biggest problems facing society as we emerge from the pandemic is that of jobs and where all these people who want to find better jobs are going to end up. So many young people begin their working lives though having absolutely no idea what they want to do for the rest of their lives. Career Education is a responsibility that has only become more important over time. It is not something that we set aside a period or two for in a timetable. It happens every time we get a chance to explore the world of work with out students, examine their skill sets, help them develop them and all the time think about what they would enjoy doing as they grow up. Then they can set their sights on that goal.
Without a doubt, one of the single biggest issues facing governments and the world of education is how to see to it that schools return to some sense of normalcy as soon as and as quickly as possible. One thing is for sure though. It will be a long time before that really happens and we cannot assume we can just go back to the old way of doing things. Learning has to change. In this podcast I explore how continuous learning, individualized instruction, and active assessment of the subjective kind will go a long way to helping students overcome not only their major learning deficits but the issues of mental health and stability plaguing so many of them.
When the computer first appeared on desks in classrooms, there were those who knew instinctively that they would not make any fundamental difference in Education over-all until the form and function of the classroom changed to reflect the integration of technology. This did not happen at all, but as a result of the instability caused by the pandemic and teachers being forced to think outside of the box and use online learning, the door has even opened to fundamental transformations soon to be seen in schools around the world. Technology will play a huge role in these changes.
I thought about entitling this podcast episode It's All About Invitational Learning but thought the current title was more interesting. It does, however, get at a very important point. In an earlier age, students were told what to do and they were expected to follow instructions. Learning didn't always occur but what did occur was due to the internal motivation of the students and their innate abilities. Today, our schools are comprised of a very heterogenous body of students and not all of them are motivated to learn. But they need to learn if they are going to survive and thrive in the modern world. We need to learn how to invite our students to undertake a learning journey and to sustain that journey through all their years of school. Any one teacher can send negative vibes that will turn a student off of learning. It is all about being invitational all the time.
There is no handbook that any educator can consult that will itemize all the problems that could arise when using technology. If in the classroom, the best policy is to be walking around amongst the students and dialoguing with each and every one of them or each and every group so that you know what they are and are not doing. However, problems will always creep up and it is amazing how often my students have helped me solve the problems. I was never afraid to ask my students for advice or assistance. Not only does it provide them with a sense of agency in the classroom, but it cultivates a sense of belonging to a team rather than being in there on your own. When we talk about being a guide on the side, that works both ways, ie just as easily from student to teacher, as the other way around.
Over time, educators have come to advocate for the use of the computer in the act of creating something as in culminating performance tasks. I would be the last person to suggest that this is a wrong idea. However, there are times when creativity requires bouncing ideas around in one's head while doing other things. For example, being outside and walking or hiking or biking provides opportunities for thinking. I like to think about things when I am swimming in the pool. Any respite from sitting in front of a screen but still having to produce something or create something, will enable those creative juices to flow. Such is the way in which our minds work.
I confess to being a Type A personality. I drive myself pretty hard and have very high expectations of myself. Of course, it would be natural to assume that I would also demand perfection of my students. However, I learned early on that students become frustrated when expectations are too high. We know that every student has what is called a zone of proximal development, a place on a continuum of knowledge and skill development where students can successfully and comfortably work at tasks in the classroom. However, every student's zone of proximal development is different and so we have to adjust what we expect our students to do in any one period of time. We have to find that sweet spot between frustration, ease and challenge.
When I first started to teach I had a tendency to overreach in my lesson planning. I'd try to do too much in too short a period of time. I had an easy way with my students and tended to be very accommodating so that never got me into trouble when I goofed up with timing. But when I started to use technology in my classes, because I was very much a novice with the computer, I was not prone to over-reaching at all. I learned an important lesson about using technology though. You have to start small, make it simple, don't try accomplish too much because problems will arise and they will through you off your game in front of the students. Don't try to make it too difficult for you OR for your students and then add to your repertoire as they and you begin to gain confidence and efficacy.
When I was a graduate student, way back when, I decided to use a computer program to help with data analysis. Those were the days when I had to cross campus to go to the computer centre and feed in cards that constituted the program I wanted to run. When something didn't work, I made it my business to ask what happened and why. Little by little I began to learn how to master computer programming at a level that was enough for me. When I became a teacher librarian and had to manage all the desktops in my school, when something didn't work, I watched while the technicians worked to repair whatever was wrong. That is when I really began to understand what computers were and what they could do for me, for us. Asking questions was the way into this mysterious new universe. However, sometimes, the technicians couldn't help me or figure out what went wrong. Even they ran up against brick walls. Nothing has changed even now. When something goes wrong, don't automatically assume you have done something wrong. Some times, it is just the computers or the networks. And don't be afraid to ask for help and what needs to be done. That is how we all learn.
As I write this, schools are being faced, yet again, with shutdowns or restrictions on classroom learning. What two years of the Covid Pandemic has taught us in that future classroom learning will not look anywhere near what it did before March of 2020. Many of the practices put in place to meet the needs of classroom management and learning using technology to bring students and teachers will continue to be used and only become more prominent with time. In my mind, this is not a bad thing. But schools and districts are nowhere near ready to forge ahead into the future.
Mastering the use of technology is no different than mastering any new set of skills or body of knowledge. First you have to muck about or play. We are programmed to learn about the world around us by experimenting, by manipulating, by touching and so forth. When it comes to using the computer it is no different. But you also must be aiming for some end goal or destination. At some point, we need to know what exactly we want to accomplish and where we want to go. The play or exploration period helps us focus hopefully.
From the time that I first started to use technology in my teaching practices, there was a tendency to want to stay on top of all the new programs and to use them all in one classroom. There were some, like me, who could see how similar many of them were, but that didn't mean that using them with my students made them or me proficient in them or helped them in any way. I soon learned that it was better for my students and what I wanted to accomplish with them to aim for understanding and mastery in small steps. Today, it is no different. If we set about to dabble in everything at once, we become jacks of all trades and masters at none. Successful integration requires building up one's repertoire one step at a time.
There was a time when becoming a teacher meant learning how to stand and deliver lessons to a whole class sitting in rows facing the front. The teacher was the authority figure and either you listened and learned or you did not succeed. Teachers assumed it was up to the students to provide their own motivation and if they were uninterested, they failed or eventually aged out. Over time, this model of the sage on the stage became the guide on the side. Teachers learned that it was their responsibility to motivate their students and to lead them to new learning in whatever way possible. We became like the Pied Piper of Hamelin in our own classrooms. helping our students to master knowledge, skills and affect. Instead of being a figure of authority, only, we became leadership figures. And principles of effective leadership began to apply to the classroom and teaching practices.
From my earliest days as a classroom teacher, I tried to use elements of popular culture to reach and to teach my students. I admit to not being very good at it at the beginning, but over time I learned how to stay in tune with my students by staying in tune with what they were interested in. I used popular music, sports, movies, books to help me. Today, it is so much easier because we can use Google to help us gather information and then figure out how to capture the moment and teach essential skills using those interests. It doesn't matter what the tool is that we use. The important thing is figuring out how to use that stimulus to induce the learning of basic skills.
When I first began to teach, the idea of a class being divided into groups and working away one some project was not well-regarded. Parents worried about the student who did no work and yet got the same grade as the student who carried the group on his or h eer shoulders. I had a principal who was not happy with me when I had my students working all over the school on an integrated Art and Geography project. But, now, thanks to the work of people like Vygotsky, Gardner, and Piaget, we understand that deep learning only occurs when children are processing their new learning and given chance to apply it in another way. Hence we come to Problem Based Learning or Project Work. In this podcast, I explore in greater detail how projects done collaboratively contribute to deep learning and a sense of self-esteem and accomplishment in our students.
Thinking about and reflecting on the struggle which we all witnesses on TV over the censuring of Representative Paul Gossar in the U. S. Congress, reminded me of my own classroom and what was expected of me as a teacher and of my students and why we had public education in the first place. Public education existed because it was assumed that schools would shape young people into good citizens contributing to the well-being of society on the whole. Good public education stemmed from the concept of the Social Contract as advocated by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Locke. We cede some of our personal freedom in the world to government in exchange for peace, security, prosperity and good government. How does that concept square with the arguments today over what is allowable in society and what we ought to do as a society or as institutions to protect the rights of others and the greater good?
In the early fall, many were witnesses to the bedlam on the streets of more than a few cities in honour of Homecoming Week on university campuses. There was universal disgust at the distruction and lack of common decency exhibited by the students. These same students then turn around and complain about feeling overwhelmed by their studies and educators have come to expect more than a few mental health issues as a result of the inability to look after themselves. These behaviours stem from a lack of learning how to control behaviour, be responsible for one's self from the time they are little and never having to really face the consequences of their behaviour. In this podcast, I expound on this and relate it back to the classroom and discipline in general.
Some of my best ideas for project work in the classroom with my students over the years has come from things I read in a magazine or book or seen elsewhere and have stolen the idea for teaching purposes. One such idea I saw recently involved the use of catapults made from found materials to eject candy pumpkins and see how far they can go. I use this example of a project-based classroom activity to stimulate some thoughts on maximizing student learning in a classroom and the why's and wherefores of problem-based learning.
Since the start of the pandemic, there is been little choice about learning would take place. It was all online. But since wireless technology enabled us to think about teaching online and remotely, those of us intimately involved in the use of the technology knew that one drawback of being online was the lack of contact in real time with students. So for a long time, we have felt that blended learning was the ideal. This means that while a lot can be accomplished online, it is also good to be together physically. I did my PhD that way....some courses were done online and others in real time, face-to-face. Blended learning probably will be the ultimate goal in education because it allows us to do what we need to when it works best for us, but also allows the development of a real personal relationship between teacher and student which is, at the crux, why good teaching happens anywhere and everywhere.
Teaching with technology has always meant knowing about all the knew advances out there and then figuring out how to use them in the classroom. Some of us were much better than others of us to adapt new technologies and run with them as educators. Sometimes that meant riding a wave and being a pioneer. Other times, it was hard to play catch up. Now the future seems to be pointing towards the greater use of Artificial Intelligence in the classroom. One can think of many positives that this could mean, but also many negatives. I look at how this technology might look in the classroom and what it might mean for our jobs.
There was a time when every time a student had to communicate new learning, it had to be using pens, papers, and written language. A research paper had to be written up. Project work meant a written report. End of a unit meant a written test. That is no longer the case thanks to among other reasons, the work of Howard Gardner on Multiple Intelligences. We now know there are many ways to demonstrate new learning. In order to enable those many different ways - speeches, drawings, diagrams, videos, interviews, dialogues, plays, music, poetry - we do our best, or we should do our best, to enable students to choose how they want to demonstrate their new learning. So now we call them culminating performance tasks and these can be narrowly defined so that students have to try create in different ways or they be left to the discretion of the student. I used to try and provide variety for students to choose from. One of the more recent tasks very popular with students is to create a video of some sort. Just think about YouTube, Tik Tok, and so forth. Students love to create and if they are able to be creative, you will get more from them than if you force them to struggle in the same way each and every time.
When we first started to use computers in the classroom, they were big clunky devices that were always against a wall, with the student screens hidden usually from view. Teachers complained about their students getting into racy or downright disgusting websites. The result was the use of filters on the desktops that eliminated access to sites as defined by the schools and administrators. But teachers most often did not walk around and work over the shoulders of their students to help them. So nothing much was accomplished. If we want our students to learn about the technology and at the same time, create or research or read specific bits of information, we have to anticipate the questions the students will need the answers to and then walk around and teach individually to the students struggling. The advent of wireless technology and the growing competency of students with their devices opens up a door to us to become guides on the side working intimately with students as they sit at their desks with their devices. We need to know what each student is able to do and where we want them to go with their technology. So we have an opportunity to be guides on the side directing students each on their own path just the same way coaches watch their players and work on the skills they need to enhance.
Long before we really had computers in our classrooms or I became a consultant, I had to teach science to my junior students. I came up with a program that I called A Science Celebration to replace the traditional science fair idea. I made up groups of students from all three grades, rather than one grade only, had packages of challenges for each group based upon one concept like gravity, or light, or colour, or magnetism, for a total of almost 40 different themes. Students had certain components that they had to cover, like an experiment, a research element, a display method and so forth. They met daily to work together and then we had a single display day when parents came in and viewed the results and the work was assessed by judges. It was a huge success but now with technology and the ability of students to collaborate across distances, this could be translated into a virtual science fair and, o. m. g., what technology makes possible that no school library could accommodate. Listen to this podcast with some of the basic ingredients to consider.
This week, there have been repeated references on some of the group distribution sites I get messages from about what needs to stay the same and what is going to change once we return to a real state of normalcy as the pandemic wanes. Frequently, these postings highlight or profile practices that have long been features of classrooms everywhere that need to now change as a result of the months spent online and working with students one-on-one. Many who have lived through the waves of change as we went from stand-alone computers to networks to wireless to personalized electronic devices know what will have to change and what will have to stay the same. This is what I explore in may podcast posted just now.
Long before I became involved in teacher education, I was a consultant for my school board with responsibility for helping teachers and administrators integrate technology into their classroom teaching and management practices. I was phoned one day by a teacher I knew who wondered about using a webcam in his classroom to help a house-bound student participate in classroom activities as a boost to her morale. Naturally, I said it was a great idea and from that day well over 20 years ago, I have been an advocate for using webcams to help bridge distances and isolation and forge emotional and physical links between teachers and students. Since then, the camera technology and software has only gotten better. However, I need to point out that this does not mean each classroom has to have its own studio. It can be a very simple camera that can be moved around to access different points in the classroom. I explore some of these things and look at what is in the future of classrooms with cameras enabled.
In this podcast, I briefly review the various interations of what came to be called the Internet from the mid '80s until now. I go back in time to AOL Online and CompuServe which then became the World Wide Web and eventually the Internet. I lay out how the changes came to be and why and what these differences made to their use in schools in Teaching and Learning.
In this episode, I review my history with the use of the computer. I declare up front that it never ceases to amaze me how I became so computer savvy. I trace it back to my days as a graduate student working for a professor who had a Canada Council grant to do social research and I became his assistant. I just seemed to intuitively understand what the technology required of me and almost changed direction and went into Computer Engineering, way back then in the late '60s. I didn't obviously but when the personal computer first started to make its way onto the desktops of labs in schools, I picked up where I left off and never looked back. I want my listeners to understand that, if I can feel confident with technology, any one can.
I made this podcast a couple of months ago. However, the importance of Open Source programming just becomes more obvious with every passing year. So much of what we ask our students to do and to think about are made possible because of the ability to share online and collaborate across huge distances. That would have been impossible before open source programming. I just read something on Wikipedia that had been updated to reflect something that happened last week. Having access to information that reflects recent research or new findings cannot be overemphasized in today's world.
From the earliest days of my teaching career, there used to be a unit I taught every year on the NEWSPAPER. Students would cut up papers I had delivered and do work on the Six Honest Serving Men that journalists had to answer the questions to - Who, What, When, Where, How, and Why. They would practice writing articles. They would do work on bias and point of view and talk about fact versus fiction. When the Internet came along, it was obvious that they had to learn about how to choose the sites they found their information on. Now, of course, all of this has become even more important. We all know now how easy It is to be led astray by conspiracy theories and forget all about bias and so forth. This video helps to focus on these thoughts and more.
It has become all the rage to talk about flipping classrooms. What that implies is having students read materials, or watch a video, or conduct some sort of an experiment, when they are alone, at home or in a work space of some kind. THEN, the class assembles and talks about or deconstructs or questions what has been read or watched or experienced. Technology has facilitated this in a huge way and the pandemic has made it an even more robust and constructive way to approach classroom learning. It follows from that, that there are steps to follow so that deep learning ensues. I talk about all of this in this podcast.
Google is a very robust tool. There is no doubt about it. However, it still requires a thoughtful approach to what we want to find out and how we are going to use the answers we find. The skills of doing good research are still the same and ought to be approached the same way they were approached in ages past. However, today, the danger is that information will be used that could be biased, distorted, untrue or misconstrued. So we need to TEACH our students how to approach Google the same way we were taught how to approach a card catalogue. Mastery of media skills is more important than ever given the proliferation of conspiracy theories and calls about false news. If we don't teach these skills when they are doing research in school, they will never acquire them later in life, to the detriment of society.
A few weeks ago, in the New York Times, there was a flurry of articles reporting on the move in New York City to cancel all its gifted education programs. Naturally, this led to the rest of the country and parts of Canada looking at their own gifted education programs and wondering whether NYC is right or wrong. In this podcast, I take a look at my own experiences as a student and as a teacher with regards to gifted education programs. I was in such a program when they first emerged and today, there are reasons why we ought not to call them gifted education at all but see them in light of individualized instruction. And individualized instruction takes us as educators back to the fundamentals of what it means to teach and students to learn. Listen to my podcast to understand why.
From the earliest movement of computers into classrooms and school administrative offices, there have been companies and individuals at the heads of those companies, who have been looking for ways to use software applications to make teaching and learning easier. There is no doubt that many of these companies were driven by the entrepreneurial spirit. There was huge money to be made in the educational marketplace. But there were also insightful individuals who knew enough to find areas of education where technology could find a niche and be useful not just for the business but also for teaching and learning. I explore several of these companies and their products in light of what we now know about the pandemic and how online learning has driven the marketplace for technological solutions to the administrative problems of teachers and schools and school jurisdictions.
Whether we call them Work Habits, as they were referred to back in the '50s and '60s OR Attitudes to Learning as the were then called in the '70s or '80s OR Social Skills or Dispositions as they became in the '90s OR Social and Emotional Learning and Mindfulness as we think of them today, everything points to the covert curriculum in any home or classroom which needs to be addressed just as much as the knowledge and skills everyone needs to get ahead in the world and in society so that we ALL succeed. But how do we cultivate them in our students and how do we know when what we are trying to do is working?
As my expertise with computers in the classroom expanded, I found myself teaching staff development in-services and additional qualifications courses for teachers on the skills that I had acquired. From almost the beginning, I used online discussions on various topics related to the courses to enable students to understand how the discussions worked and to make it possible for interactions asynchronously throughout the course. I always used to tell my students that the time would come when they would have to use these skills in their careers as teachers and sure enough, that time has come along, BIG TIME! But there are skills involved in helping students to find their voices online and then sharing those voices with others. Listen to my podcast to learn more.
In the early years of computer technology, everything done on the computer required knowledge of special programming languages. Websites were designed by people who knew how to program in html code, or hypertext markup language. With the advent of Java scripting, it became possible to acquire applications or programs that made making websites easy. I soon learned how to enable the creation of websites as a tool to display new knowledge acquired by students instead of oral presentations or written projects or similar such hand-ins. Over the years since those early days, this has only become easier. When we ask students to create in the classroom, they automatically become engaged. What better focus of their creativity than a website required to inform others in some way on some topic.
An article in the New York Times earlier this fall prompted me to sound off on the central issue of our times........small versus big government. But this also is reflected in the divide between urban and rural school districts and federal versus provincial jurisdictions. Sadly, our systems of government have not kept up with the changes in society. Nothing today can be solved easily unless we come to grips with the jurisdictional issue. As long as there are these huge divides, problems will remain intractable.
The word technology does not have to always mean computers. Something as simple as baking cookies can lead to an activity with students where they integrate technology into their lessons. Think about using Google to find recipes, using a conversion application to convert Imperial weights to litres, millilitres and so forth. Think about taking pictures of the process and the finished product and sending them as emails to parents. Think about researching where all the ingredients came from and how they made their way to a supermarket. Think about what happens to the ingredients under heat and what the baking process is all about. Think about how much per unit it costs to make cookies and how much per unit it costs to buy those same cookies. All of those steps use technology in authentic ways. My video explains all of this in greater detail.
One of the biggest fears my students learning to be teachers worried about was implementing the use of technology into their classroom teaching practices. There are still a lot of teachers who are well into their careers afraid of using technology. What I have tried to convey to both kinds of teachers is that no one expects you to be able to turn on a switch and be expert at technology and all of the kinds of technology from the beginning. Just like learning a sport or how to play an instrument, you always start small, in this case, one or two applications or tools and practice with them until you feel confident enough to expand your repertoire. Becoming an expert means learning one skillset at a time and expanding from there.
From the dawn of the computer age, meaning way back before there was such a thing as the Internet and Java Scripting, educators and parents have obsessed about the impact of the technology on the Language Arts. First it was typing, then it was grammar and spelling and now it is reading itself that is under assault. I happen to believe that it is up to the teacher to use the technology wisely and it is still possible to teach literacy skills, especially things like point of view and bias, using podcasting for instance or writing skills using social networking sites. I explore various ways to accomplish this essential learning in this podcast and truthfully, in light of all that is happening today, nothing is more important to our collective futures in a democratic society.
There is a skillset involved in taking a picture book which you read to a child or a group of children and encouraging them to then think, write, speak, or create. I used to read the Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf to my teachers - in - training and show them how to use the words, pictures and elements of the story to encourage reading and geography and social and emotional learning skills and that was always a big success with my students. The same can be accomplished using almost any storybook and with any group of students, or with your own child or children at home. The intimacy of sitting around an adult reader provides one of those teachable moments to allow us to talk and learn.
One of the fundamental building blocks of democracy over time has been a publicly funded educational system. It has ensured that every student graduates with the same body of knowledge, toolkit of skills and attitudes about society which has contributed greatly to its success. Too often now, there are groups who believe that education should be privatized and that parents should be able to decide who teaches their children and what they are made to learn. While that might sound good in theory, what it results in is a lack of harmony binding the citizenry to one another and a lack of shared goals and purposes and understandings of what it means to live in a democracy. The Public has a right to share in the education of their children but society needs more not less public education resources to ensure a cohesive social polity.
I know that a lot of individual educators and parents still struggle with distance education and the use of Zoom to connect teachers and students or students with other students. Many have expressed Zoom Fatigue, but Zoom is on the most recent iteration of what began as teleconferencing and now has only blossomed and extended its reach. This short podcast is designed to help you overcome some of your hesitancy and become more comfortable with it. I hope you can see that Zoom can continue to play a valuable role in our teacher's kitbag of learning skills. In my books, it is a welcome addition to our repertoire.
One of the most important elements in a teacher's toolkit today is the ability to use technology effectively and meaningfully to advance teaching and learning goals. Technology refers to any tool, but now that has to include anything driven by the use of microchips in its functioning. Such tools and their use is something I learned early and like to think that I learned well. In this episode, I share just how I got started with using technology, which in the earliest days, meant computers which later became ICT (informational and computational technologies) and now is so much more than that. In the early days it was restricted to a single stand-alone computer or hand-held and today it is everywhere and in every aspect of the home and school. We educators have an obligation to be the masters of this technology and in this podcast, I give you some pointers on how to get started and what to do after you have taken those first steps.
In this, my first podcast, I am going to try and give some background about myself and what lead me into the classroom to begin with. I talk about how I had major problems when I first began to teach and how I overcame them.. I introduce the term grit as it applies to a successful life as a classroom teacher. I hope I convince you to want to listen to more podcasts by me about my "Lessons Learned the Hard Way."