Ahhh… It’s Me!

Mmmm... Mexico I am a consultant and educator by education and trade. After spending 11 years in the technology/management consulting field, I underwent a major job and educational change and moved into the teaching realm. Overall, it was doing the same thing … taking someone fom one place to where they wanted and needed to go … After teaching for a number of years, I have experienced total convergence of all of my educational ad business and personal backgrounds, and I am curently a technology coordinator (tech director) for a high school in a large Illinois high school district. Yup, I am being intentionally vague… I have another blog that is more linked to my school and district, however, I really want to keep Vanishing Point separate from them as what is represented here are my own thought, concerns, challeges, fear, hopes and ponderences. Please feel free to comment here or contact me at any time at vpointconvergence @ gmail . com (yup, take the spaces out.)

Scott

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2 responses so far ↓

1 maggiev // Mar 20, 2008 at 12:02 am

Hi Scott,

I am from South Africa and have done things the other way round to you! I was a maths teacher for 20 years and is now consulting tryong to get schools here to realsie that they need to embrace web 2 tools!

We struggle with bandwidth and it is a hart slog to convice teachers to use web 2 tools in their classrooms. They ahve their blackboards…so why should they bother! I get a bit despondent sometimes…

My school blog is here http://www.school2.co.za

Maggie
2 vanishingpoint // Mar 27, 2008 at 9:31 pm

Maggie,

Thanks for stopping by. I am going to be posting a lot more… I can’t tell if I have been lazy or busy often they feel the same when you look at what you have not gotten done.

Honestly, I face similar things even here in the states in my district. One of the best things I like about zoho is the ability to take writer, sheet, and presentation offline so you do not have to fight over bandwidth.

I have a couple of other suggestions as well.

1. Encourage them to “create” offline, and then publish online. Then it becomes reviewing and analyzing then changes in possibilities for students that begins to encourage blackboard educators.
2. Get then thinking about what they CANNOT do in their classrooms… away from the “I am just replacing the blackboard with this” Then show them how only they can achieve what the blackboard cannot. One of the best ideas I have for this is google earth and streetview. Find a great book that someone b=may be teaching and talk to them about setting or location. Get them feeling that they would like to see those places as well… then introduce them to google earth and take them there!

I blogged about this a bit in January here: http://vanishingpoint.edublogs.org/2008/01/13/authentic-learning-making-a-story-come-to-life/

Also, David Jakes http://jakesonline.org has great resources on this idea. The big thing is don’t give up even when it feels hopeless. You are doing the right thing for students! Always remember that!

Scott