Getting on the Tech Train

Our tech training started this morning with the first session of "techie breakies". I had planned on training 6 teachers, one for each grade level from Kindergarten to Grade 5, but in the event 2 of the teachers were unable to attend because of illness. We were also joined by our PYP Coordinator. At the end of last week I had sent out a link to teachers with the VoiceThread made by Steven Anderson called "Why a Personal Learning Network?" where members of his PLN had contributed their stories and reasons for finding a PLN valuable. I wanted to start on a really positive note, therefore I decided to play the YouTube video A Vision of 21st Century Teachers. I like the way this movie gives the message "we can do more with technology" and "we can make it happen".

We went on to talk about why this year at school we have changed the IT lessons - in part this is because the nature of information is changing and we need to teach students new ways of finding and validating this information and new ways to communicate it. We talked about what 21st century skills are, how we are preparing our students for the world of work and the benefits of us developing our own PLNs to help us with this, as we are not just teachers but also learners. Finally we talked a little bit about Twitter and everyone set up a Twitter account.

Time seemed to fly. I had been planning to get onto blogging too, but all too soon it was time for the teachers to go to their classes for the start of the day. Blogging will have to wait until next time, but I'm hoping in the meantime the teachers will start to see the benefits of using Twitter and start to make some connections with other educators through using it.