At the NETA conference in Omaha last month I attended a session by Nicole Badgely of Arnold Public Schools. Nicole is great, I have listened to her talk a few times before and she always does a good job of distilling her experiences into useful information for others.
Her presentation was on what administrators should be looking for when observing a teacher’s tech integrated lesson. In it, she said a few things that sound so stinking obvious, but have just not been easy for me to translate to teachers. I need to try harder to get these messages through, and I will be borrowing her language when I do so.
For example:
- Who is doing the work in the lesson? The teacher or the students? Real learning comes through struggle. Teachers don’t need to learn the content – they already know it. They should not be slaving away over presentations, preparing content to hand to the students on a shiny silver platter (powerpoint.) Students should be doing the work – researching the websites, answering the essential questions, assembling their learning into a presentation. A teacher’s role should be in identifying the appropriate questions, and motivating the students to struggle to an answer.
- Collaboration with technology present is only truly “collaboration” if it allows you to interact with people that you would not be able to interact with WITHOUT the technology. People outside of your building, or students across wide vertical gaps in the building for example.
I share these ideas both as a shout out to Nicole, who may underestimate the power of her words out there “5 minutes from God” in Western Nebraska, and as a reminder to myself that these are very important topics, and I need to grow my vocabulary and language around how best to communicate these ideas to teachers, and peers.
