{"id":59,"date":"2007-03-05T09:55:13","date_gmt":"2007-03-05T14:55:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.trustyetc.com\/trustyblog\/?p=59"},"modified":"2007-03-05T10:20:23","modified_gmt":"2007-03-05T15:20:23","slug":"the-magic-bullet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.trustyetc.com\/trustyblog\/2007\/03\/05\/the-magic-bullet\/","title":{"rendered":"The Magic Bullet – A Plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scott McLeod has a post about Blogging vs Life<\/a>.\u00a0 His main question – how do we learn all these new and incredible technologies without sacrificing our lives and families?<\/p>\n

Let me rephrase the question.\u00a0 How does a first grader learn to read when there are all those phonetic pronunciations, vocabulary words, punctuation and grammar rules?\u00a0 The answer isn\u2019t difficult.\u00a0 All our students learn to read.\u00a0 They learn a few new things each week and they practice these new things every day.\u00a0 First graders spend a lot of time reading books.\u00a0 As the years go by, they become proficient readers.<\/p>\n

Technology is no different.\u00a0 If you want to learn about new things, you should periodically learn something new and practice using that technology to make yourself a more effective or efficient teacher.\u00a0 As the years go by, you will become a proficient user of technology.<\/p>\n

Almost ten years ago, I worked for the state.\u00a0 Each year we went through an evaluation process that included the development of an action plan for our own growth.\u00a0 I was suffering from the same dilemma as most teachers today.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t keeping up with new technologies, and I felt it was impacting my effectiveness as an educational technology professional.\u00a0 During my annual review, I decided I should learn one new thing each week for a year.<\/p>\n

I had one advantage over other professionals.\u00a0 This learning process was part of my professional action plan, so I could learn new things at work.\u00a0 Normally, I would use thirty minutes at some point during each day and read about a new technology.\u00a0 If a ready about something that was interesting, I would spend more time on it.\u00a0 During the first year, I more than doubled my goal and I learned over 100 technologies.\u00a0 More importantly, I was using many of these new technologies in my day-to-day life.\u00a0 By exposing myself to so many different technologies, I was able to see advantages to using certain software\/hardware over other options in my work.<\/p>\n

Anyone can do this.\u00a0 We all have some time every day.\u00a0 Teachers have planning periods. I have office hours that aren\u2019t always utilized by my students.\u00a0 Everyone can listen to podcasts during the daily commute.\u00a0 I live fifteen minutes from my office.\u00a0 That amounts to half an hour of listening each day, or 2 and half hours each week.\u00a0 Most of the new things I have learned in the last two years have come from podcasts.<\/p>\n

Over a ten year period, learning one new technology each week will expose you to 500 new technologies.\u00a0 Here\u2019s the text from a PowerPoint slide I show my freshmen (click for larger image).<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Now look at the ISTE NETS for Teachers<\/a> standards.\u00a0 The first standard has two parts.\u00a0 The first basically says teachers must\u00a0understand the same technologies that the students are required to understand.\u00a0 Standard IB says teachers must:<\/p>\n

demonstrate continual growth in technology knowledge and skills to stay abreast of current and emerging technologies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Staying abreast of current and emerging technologies requires a plan.\u00a0 You should decide how you are going to approach learning new technologies.\u00a0 It may be one new technology per week or one new technology per month.\u00a0 The most important thing is to\u00a0write down\u00a0your plan.\u00a0 My list of Recent Technologies has doubled since I started it in 2001.\u00a0 It will double again.\u00a0 Without a plan, you will be farther and farther behind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scott McLeod has a post about Blogging vs Life.\u00a0 His main question – how do we learn all these new and incredible technologies without sacrificing our lives and families? Let me rephrase the question.\u00a0 How does a first grader learn … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[336],"class_list":["post-59","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-edtech","tag-edtech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trustyetc.com\/trustyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trustyetc.com\/trustyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trustyetc.com\/trustyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trustyetc.com\/trustyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trustyetc.com\/trustyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.trustyetc.com\/trustyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trustyetc.com\/trustyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trustyetc.com\/trustyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trustyetc.com\/trustyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}