Continuing the series of interviews with technology directors and integration specialists, who give their "state of the union," and their views on education technology in the future.
Renee Jesness, Info & Tech Literacy Integration Specialist at Minneapolis Public Schools“Now, technology is ubiquitous, easy and more portable. We teach how to have your iPod, iPad or laptop not pick up everybody else’s wireless, and how to protect your computer. And you don’t need to sit through a whole one hour lecture when you only need to know two minutes of how to do something. Besides, nobody has the attention span. If you look up the word teacher it means ‘to cause to know.’ Well, teachers no longer cause people to know things. People can know things by just looking for them from a variety of information sources. A teacher, in order to be valuable, has to help that student make meaning of the knowledge or ask them to demonstrate that they’ve made meaning.”
“Our online resource has grown over the years, incorporating content that talks about learning. They’ve got lesson unit starters that integrate technology into the content—a great approach that has some longevity because, while the technology is going to continue to change—everyone is still going to need to know how to research. I like using lesson accelerators, I also like workshops gauging toward actually speaking to professional development of teachers introducing them how to think about integrating technology into their content expertise. That will just continue to grow and it’s proof that this is a model of how training instruction should be delivered. Further, people are going to want to be mobile with technology and facile with it. Our online resource is poised to do that.”
P.D. Tips courtesy of Atomic Learning
