I am a 1st year Tech Coordinator. I taught elementary school for the past 10 years. I need to get teachers to use technology daily in their classrooms to enhance their instruction and the curriculum. I have done staff development and provided resources. I need more! What are some successful strategies to get teachers using technology? Thanks!

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JDF, Have you seen the work of Andrew Church? He's rewritten Bloom's to relate to technology. nice stuff, his site is Educational Origami.
These ideas here are great! I'd also like to add that it's all about building relationships. We know this when we teach kids, but it's just the same with adults. Listening to problems, talking and getting to know them, and then hand picking ideas that match with their teaching style and units are great first steps. The more you build relationships with teachers, the more they are willing to admit when they need help, and ask for it. AND, the more they trust you with easier projects that match how they teach now, the more you can throw them more higher level tech projects that stretch their ideas about teaching. It's tough to get anywhere without a relationship, though.

I also really like the TPACK model for technology integration.
Search online for how other teachers are using it and the projects students have completed. Tell them to think back to their time in school or their kids time in school...especially high school. With technology the work can be put online and stored for life. How many of us REALLY still have a project or paper we did in high school? Not many. But put them online, and they are available forever. As teachers we are ALWAYS trying to find samples to show students how to do an assignment. With technology based projects, those samples will always be available.

Students used to use the Internet to GET information. Now students use the Internet to GIVE information
I use software and sites that do not require lots of additional work for the teachers .I have learned that they might embrace more willingly if they know there is not too much they need to prepare on their end. Below are some links I use with my teachers.

Spelling City: Free site for spelling

Learning Essential - Goes with Microsoft Office 2007-- make sure you go through your district approval/testing
for this. Has templates and tutorials for students to follow on their own or with support. There are also checklists built into many templates for students to use.

Starfall
- An ELA site for grades pre-k-Grade 1/2. A great tool to differentiate learning.

Scholastic- A free resource with activities, books, and articles.

Create a Graph

BrainPop
- A subscription based product that includes content related movies, quizzes, and activities. There is also a jr site for primary students.
While meeting with our TRT supervisor recently, we discussed this very topic. We discussed looking at school improvement plans if you school has them. If your school has them, more than likely technology integration is somewhere on those plans. Take a look at those plans and see where you can make things happen or even inject ideas that they might not have considered. If administration can view you as a valuable educator and not just “The Computer Person,” then they can encourage teachers to work with you.
To be sucessful, not only teachers, but students need to love it. My partners and I have developed a new community for teachers and students called StudyBuddyCampus. It is free and it represents our vision of the future for the use of technology in the classroom. Our goal is to revolutionize the delivery of education by combining an interactive game like experience with the latest educational content. We have several teachers and students testing our Beta site at http://www.studybuddycampus.com, and we are constantly releasing new features. Given the topic of your discussion, I thought you might be interesting in taking a look, and if you have the time, we would love to receive feedback from people with your kind of experience.

Best Regards.

I'm reading some of these replies by technology integration specialist and I'm envious to those who can even make "assignments"  --you have a good deal more backing than some of us.  On the other hand, in the past 8 days I've helped an art teacher create wiki pages for her students, and an English teacher creat blogs for hers.  My secret--we are offereing recertification points for working on an advanced technology certification.  They sign up to get the points, but when that English teacher saw what she could do with blogs it was "Hey, I like this."

I think this is great. My kids  just  loves the Wii and Ds, so I can imagine how much your students love it.....

Consider this new and free digital teaching resource. Children / students of all ages can practice english spelling and if they wish fundraise for their school, college or uni. I believe teachers will like the technology.

http://www.spellathon.net

 

I think the answer you're looking for is to cultivate a community of practice (Classroom 2.0 is an example of a CoP). Etienne Wenger is the goto guy for CoPs: http://www.ewenger.com/

I teach pre-service teachers technology integration and the feedback I get is that that learn best by seeing examples. You can explain to them all day long ways to do this but without a model, they are lost sheep. Find a few willing and brave teachers to try out various tools (maybe one in each grade level) and report back to the group. Also, try making a sample lesson that they can use to get the hang of the tool then they will see how it is used and be able to integrate it into their classrooms more. 

Good luck!

Hi Michelle,

If it's possible/practical, I'd recommend a peer observation programme, whereby teachers regularly share lesson plans, notes and theory, observe each others' classes and have discussion sessions. To expand such a programme department-wide, you could also introduce video recordings, made by the observing teacher, to bring to group teacher professional development sessions.

Just a thought.

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