Tuesday, April 13, 2010

A Little Help'd Be Nice

So why do districts have a staff full of IT people who are great at networking, troubleshooting hardware/software problems, etc. but don't have a single person to help teachers implement the technology in their classrooms?  Why are there  SmartBoards all over the place and many of them are used as the screen for the overhead projector?  Or maybe, just maybe they are being used as a glorified white boards whose markers don't run out of ink. 

Where is the person who can show a teacher how to use a SmartBoard in their specific content area? 
Where is the person who says, "what types of things would you like to do in your classroom and how can I help you find ways of doing that?"

Where is the person who can actually take the time to research different tools and help teachers use them to take their current lessons to a different level? 

Where is the person who has an understanding of the curriculum and can help teachers develop lessons that they never thought were possible?

I'm not upset or anything.  Just askin'.

2 comments:

Jerram Froese said...

Where are they? Irving, TX. We have one to two of 'these people' at each of our 30+ campuses. However, the position doesn't necessarily solve the problem. Being a change agent is challenging to say the least, not even considering how easy it is to get overwhelmed with tech related tasks...

David Cox said...

Not trying to say that they are the "answer." But it just strikes me as odd that we spend a bunch of money for the tech, but don't provide any support for it.