Technology Training
I am a huge advocate of the use of computers and technology in the classroom. I believe that technology must be ubiquitous in the classroom, and that it’s use must be part of the normal activity towards meeting curricular goals and encouraging student’s collaboration and higher order thinking skills. However, by-and-large, teachers today are not prepared for that type of a classroom. It is somewhat disillusioning the lack of computer skills teachers exhibit, and the fact that they don’t think this is a concern. As an advocate for the use of technology in the classroom I have done many trainings to teachers in my role as administrator as well as while I was a classroom teacher, to build teacher skills in hopes that they will use them in the classroom. Additionally, while in my first few years of teaching I had a second job at Landmark Staffing Resources, as a technology trainer. I worked with temporary staff people to help them build their computer skills, and was also on occasion hired out to large corporations to do more intense training, such as advanced features of Microsoft Excel.
My current focus is to try to create screen casts demonstrating and explaining how to do specific small tasks. I have created a Blog where I post these screen casts, and will continue to add to them as time goes on at http://PrincipalFuller.com.
Most of the trainings that I have done have been hands on, and do not have handouts. When I do these types of technology trainings, I try to limit them to small, short blasts of information that can be done in 20-30 minutes so as to not overwhelm the teachers. Here are a list of some of the types of trainings I have done in the past:
- Using Clip Art
- Using Digital Cameras
- Digital Video Cameras
- Excel Basics
- Excel Intermediate
- Excel Advanced
- Educational Internet Sites
- iPAC Terminal
- Using Scanners
- SyncronEyes
- Frontpage
- Google Apps
- Delicious as public bookmarks
- Outlook basics
- GMail basics
- Calendar Sharing in Google Calendar
- Updating a course in Moodle
- Sharing information with Gradebook Wizard
In addition in my weekly staff memos I will frequently highlight a website or educational technology that I find particularly helpful that others might be interested in. I’ve also started using delicious as a way to tag sites that might be helpful for teachers in specific subjects areas (i.e. http://www.delicious.com/Curtisf/Math/ are links for math teachers).