10 Things Every Teacher Should Know About Technology

As previewed in my last post...

1. It’s never too late to start!
2. You don’t need to know everything…ask for help from others (students and teachers at your school, virtually, over social networks) that you know have successfully used a new technology
3. You don’t need to do everything all at once – make a goal to try one new thing each month (or semester, or year), while tweaking/optimizing the things you are already doing
4. Don’t introduce an app or technology just for the sake of doing something “technological”– (Alternative wording found from the original blog post we read: "Use technology only when it makes rich, real and relevant curriculum richer, more real and more relevant”)
5. Share what you do with other teachers – it’s the best way to get new ideas and get input to make your lessons even better. Corollary: Find a champion, that teacher who is most open to collaboration, and work together to create a knock-out finished product. Then, promote the heck out that success to encourage other teachers to utilize the library as a resource
6. Think about what your end goal is and then find the technology solution that will accomplish your goal (vs. asking yourself “How do I use this technology?”)
7. Have a backup plan (or two)
8. Think outside the teacher box – use the experiences of friends/family in other professions to uncover technologies you might not have otherwise thought of
9. Be organized! Create a system that will work for you to stay on top of new trends, tools, technologies, and best practices
10. Have fun!

What's Old Is New...

This is my last "assigned" blog post for this course...crazy how fast time flies! Overall, it's been a really great experience having this blog to organize my thoughts about what I've learned over the course of the semester, and one that I hope to continue as I make my way through the program.

Our very first assignment back in January was to provide our own list of the "10 Things Every Teacher Need to Know About Technology." For this final blog post, we've been asked to revisit our list and add/edit/update as we see fit, based on what we've learned in this course. As I look back at my list, there's not a huge change for my v2.0, mostly just a few tweaks here and there and some reordering.

I did take exchange one tip completely, replacing "Understand how to differentiate for all skill levels..." with "Be organized..." Not that I don't think differentiating is unimportant, but I think, for today's students especially, technology is a more level playing field than other subject areas, and so much of student learning comes from simply working with and experimenting with a new tool (much as we did in this class). So while I think having an understanding of how to introduce a new tool, provide tutorials, etc. for different types of learners, I don't think it cracks my top 10. On the contrary, without having some sort of mechanism for organizing your online "world," you will never have a chance of taking advantage of all the resources out there, or remembering, weeks or months down the road, something that you wanted to use in a certain setting. Using tools like Twitter and RSS to connect/learn from other LBS professionals and Diigo or Delicious to organize the useful links you do find are paramount to staying on top of the ever-changing world of technology in education.

In the spirit of not making this blog post too long, I'll give my v2.0 it's very own post, but here's my original version with the tracked changes.