Group items tagged

offer a safe environment

instructional know-how

o What do I have students do with them? o How do I grade them? o How do I monitor the barrage of posts and comments? o Where do they fit in my curriculum? o How do I manage class time? o How do I teach students how to be safe online? o What can I do to keep students from getting burned out on blogging?

If teachers had someone to work with, someone to guide them through the set-up and management of blogs, to show them how to implement them in their classrooms, with their students, with their curriculum—would more teachers be blogging? Would there be greater numbers experimenting with wikis, podcasts, video production?

what I’m describing is an Instructional Technologist

are adding these technology/curriculum specialists—educators who can work alongside teachers to support them and encourage them to undertake adventurous technology-rich activities, activities like those described by Clarence Fisch where students interact in “live blogging” to discuss Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind.

If more schools hired Instructional Technologists, would more teachers be clamoring to the keyboard, rushing to web 2.0 sites, designing activities that allow students to design, create, produce, evaluate, synthesize, publish?