Thursday, May 31, 2007

Comment on Warlick's post on teachers teaching themselves

I still have not caught up with reading all of the interesting reactions and comments resulting from the Times story on one-to-one computing. Even those who have criticized the author should acknowledge that she incited some interesting conversations.

In David Warlick's weblog post Of Course I think it Matters, which is a reply to comments on the story, he raises an occasional frustration with teachers who are not prepared teach themselves and mentions it may be that they are from a generation that learned how to be taught more than how to learn independently. Some comments on that post and the original about the Times story say teachers should be teaching themselves new technology skills.

As a provider of professional development to teachers, I had never thought about PD in that way. However, now that I have, I am thinking that argument provides another reason to developing training resources that can be made available to teachers as they want them. I've been thinking that at D-E we need more resources such as written tutorials and short recorded demonstrations available to teachers asynchronously. While I am not ready to put the entire responsibility of learning new technology skills onto teachers by themselves, I believe we should make the resources available for independent learning and review of new skills.

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