I have come across this blog post by Derek Wenmouth that comments on a report detailing the results of 3,100 teacher surveys and 1,250 student surveys on the kinds of digital instruction tools that are useful and effective. It is an interesting report that outlines what teachers felt and concluded that a lot of what we have in our schools is not used as effectively as it could be. I feel that in our school this could also be the case (IWB's for example) for a number of reasons including one Derek outlined in his post-that the teachers are often not involved in the purchasing decisions and are at times not getting the most effective ICT tool for their use. The other point he makes about this report is that there is no emphasis on the student's use of ICT's and how this can be used to enhance and improve their learning. The questions then are as we move forward:
- What tools do we need to become more effective in our use of ICT and how do we go about acquiring them.
- How much input should we give the staff and the students in our decision making?
Hopefully some of these questions were answered or at least discussed in our meeting during the holidays. If we go down the path of tablets, how do we get buy in from teachers? What has worked at other schools?
ReplyDeleteI have given a fun assignment to staff in the past where groups had to research different examples (in that case Thinking Skills) and then do a short presentation to staff with recommendations. A prize was given for the best presentation. Maybe something similar could be used to get our wider staff involved? Food for thought.