Last night, I attended a webinar offered by Edweek, entitled “Forging the Technology-Curriculum Link”. It was described as “a webinar exploring the need for educators to be thoughtful and deliberate in aligning both technology and curriculum to develop the most successful programs for students.” The speakers were Noreen M. Walton, director of learning support services for the 33,000-student Poway Unified School District in San Diego; and Mark Hofer, associate professor of educational technology, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Va. In a few days time, a link will be available to the archived webinar and I will send that out to interested parties.
I found the speakers and the questions, which followed to be very helpful in my own deliberations on how to help teachers integrate information technology into their curricula. I have been offering workshops on various applications, which I have been using and which I felt would be of use to certain teachers in certain subject areas. The difficulty has always been to avoid becoming so enthused by the application or the technology that you try to find a place to use it, whether or not it is the best solution. In other words, one can end up layering the technology on top of the curriculum, rather than embedding it. One needs to learn to see each technology or application as one of a series of tools, which may or may not be appropriate to the task at hand. It is a sobering reminder of how carried away one can become when one offers a high-tech solution to a task, which only required a whiteboard and marker pen. I find myself guilty of this at times.
Noreen Walton talked of the need to have members of her IT department go into the classroom to see how technologies are being used and to meet regularly with teachers to discuss their needs and problems. Mark Hofer discussed his work with identifying the activity types in each subject area and the possible technologies, which could be used for each. You might like to have a look at: http://activitytypes.wmwikis.net/HOME)
When the archived webinar becomes available, I will post a link. I think that any librarian or teacher, involved in the integration of technology would benefit from it.
