This article first appeared on eSchoolNews.
… I could start my workshops by showing teachers how to find and do everything. I could lead them through a step-by-step, do-what-I-do tutorial of various apps —“point here, click there”—and teachers could simply watch what I do and then repeat what I do. But the problem with that approach is, by the end of the workshop, it creates a culture of dependency. The instructor ends up the center of the learning, not the students, and disseminates information to a mostly passive audience. I’m simply not empowering them to learn if I’m at the center of learning.
Instead, I want teachers to tackle and succeed in challenges themselves, so they develop a measure of knowledge, comfort, and confidence going forward. It’s perceptible how teachers’ confidence improves in just the first minutes of a workshop when they can solve a problem…
By creating an experiential, active learning environment, where teachers are deriving knowledge and developing strategies by doing, I’m simulating an environment I hope teachers might emulate in their own classrooms. In other words, providing students with a challenge, giving them a time limit to complete it, and having them work in small groups is an ideal active and collaborative learning environment for using technology…
>> Read the full article on eSchoolNews.
Learn More from Tom Daccord this Summer!
- The iPad Classroom
- Unleashing Student Creativity with iPads
- Teaching English with Technology
- Teaching Foreign Language with Technology
- Teaching History with Technology
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