Selling in Hawarden September 15, 2008
Posted by mrsuds in Uncategorized.trackback
Today I visited Hurunui College in Hawarden. For two reasons really. The first was to give some PD to two of the teachers using Moodle, and the second was to give the presentation on eLearning to the staff. The school is currently rebuilding it’s staff/admin block and it’s looking great (photo of staffroom above). They have a new VC room being developed as part of the refurbishment, so can’t wait to see it finished.
The two hours I spent with two teachers with only the most basic of ICT knowledge was interesting. We only really covered the set up of your course, using the editor and uploading files. It’s interesting, because I had a comment from a teacher using Moodle that for most teachers, it would be like climbing a ladder starting at the middle rung.
I have two responses to that. One – I don’t think Moodle is that hard to use. In fact it’s relatively easy. It’s just that it’s a totally different tool to what teachers have been using. Imagine picking up Microsoft Word for the first time again. It would take a long time to orientate yourself. That’s what teachers need – time to get familiar with the environment. Once you have that, the rest comes quite easily. Two – There is nothing wrong with learning to use something that is a bit more challenging. We seem to have this idea that we must learn the basics before we can move on, but that’s not the case. I worked with a teacher last year who really wanted to learn how to edit video so she could compile her own movies to use in class. She didn’t have many of the basic IT skills we advocate, but because she really wanted to learn this, she did. Within a couple of weeks she had made a video that consited of excerpts from three different versions of Macbeth, with questions that popped up overthe top.
I do think we tend to understimate our teachers in terms of ICT. So often we expect the least from them in terms of learning or using ICT. Now would that be acceptable with our students?
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I totally agree with you Darren – adopting ICT in teaching practise is not a sequential process. It’s not driven by the technology either but by the motivation of the teachers involved.
I worked with one teacher quite awhile ago who put herself in the ‘Digital Dinosaur’ category & was reluctant to use any ICT with her class of New Entrants but would quite happily go home & skype away to her son in Japan …. on her teacher laptop…..go figure