C4T Summary for October

Ms. Mary Worrell is a teacher at an international school in The Netherlands.  In her post "Embracing the Grey Area", she discusses the changes she has made in her teaching technique. In her first year of teaching the Middle Years Programme, she was very excited that she had the freedom to pick and choose without worrying about state standards. However, as she began gathering material, she found the work to be very labor-intensive, especially because she had not ordered a MYP textbook. The following three reasons accounted for this: she had to write the curriculum, she is not very experienced, and searching for online resources is not easy. So, this year she ordered a textbook and found that she is liking what the textbook has to offer without feeling guilty. I commented by saying that I am a IB diplomat, and found my IB teachers to be very creative in what they taught. The would pick and choose from our textbooks similar to Ms. Worrell. I think that it is not a bad idea to have a textbook. It provides a study tool for students as well as great guiding questions for the teacher. The time saved from searching for resources can now by incorporated into the planning and execution.

In another blog post titled "Finding Time for Tech", Ms. Worrell states that she wants to teach some tech skills to her students. Her students have laptops, but she is asked questions like "how do I change my background?". When faced with these questions she has a plan of action. First, she tries to save some questions for her technology class. Second, by telling her students to google or ask the neighbor, she encourages them to use YouTube tutorials and build the skill of problem-solving. Third, she plans a "Get to Know Your Laptop Day", for which the students are asked to make a list of questions about their laptop. Then, she answers these questions by demonstrating. Fourth, she has tech-tip Fridays, which is when students show the class something "cool", such as keyboard shortcuts. In addition to this, Ms. Worrell discusses how she wants to start a tech help team with students. In my comment, I said that it was great that she was teaching students tech skills because they will surely need it in their future. Since I really liked the idea of Get to Know Your Laptop Day, I may even use it as a teacher. Last, I discussed how I was in some kind of tech team when I was in elementary school and helped with the school website. I suggested that she could use the idea herself.