What was your favorite part of ITSC?
Please post your favorite part of ITSC here. This would be something you would like to do with your staff in your own school or at the NTLB workshops in June.
posted by Boo Rayburn @ 8:37 PM
INstructional Technology Advisory Council ~ INTAC
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While both keynote speakers were motivating and I returned with me many practical applications from keynote speaker Hall Davidson, I found the knowledge presented by Dr. Thomas Dramer, EdD to be most enlightening in the areas of brain research and good teaching. His repeated examples of good teaching skills became apparent as he modeled them for us in an afternoon session on Sunday and the closing speech as well. How he captivated an audience of educators at the end of a conference to improve and energize our teaching skills was most impressive.
Dr. Dramer’s explanation of how concepts can be taught while skills must be physically learned was thought-provoking and most useful since we are teaching young children computer skills. An example of this would be to teach how to throw a baseball. One could explain for an extended period of time how to throw a baseball but until it is demonstrated and practiced by the student the intended result will not occur.
Repeatedly, Dr. Dramer modeled excellent examples of teaching as he first gave us the opportunity to know him briefly as an individual, allowed us appropriate time to work alone, time to discuss as a group, to report as a group and then repeated the process. In the first session, he demonstrated how imperative it is know learning targets and give our students the CORRECT CUES to enable them to be successful in exam situations. This can truly be the difference between success and failure. I appreciated Dr. Dramer’s example of working memory holding approximately 7 thoughts and lasting 30 seconds in time and then giving us the opportunity to learn how one can move information into one’s long term memory using the teaching examples listed above. Incidentally, once something is in the long term memory it is reality to that individual whether it is correct or not.
Other tips: When creating groups, mix high task oriented people with high relationship people.
Do not have too many visuals in the room to distract from the teacher.
Never inform your audience you will end a bit early but do.
As a member of the Technology Advisory Council who attended the ITSC conference in Portland, I was most pleased with the overall impression of how Salem Keizer Schools stood with regards to technology instruction. While speaking with many other teachers and technology staff from other schools, it was clear to me that we are above average in our approach to instruction and how well equipped most of our elementary labs have become. The conference provided me with information about the new technology of Blogging and Moodling, which changed my thinking about these tools as digital journals or chat pages of sorts to a means of engaging students in an informal forum where ideas and information can be easily shared. The jewel that I came home with, though, was Hall Davidson's approach of putting together instructional kits for multimedia instruction. The idea is to package a variety of music and video clips along with photos into themes such as Native Americans or space, for example, and students can learn a subject while creating multimedia presentations without getting bogged down in searching for the pieces. With this new idea, teaching Power Point or Movie Maker just got more manageable.
An aside to all that we learned, it was truly a pleasure to be able to spend time, that was not rushed, with all of the members of the council. Teachers rarely have more than limited staff meeting or team meeting time after school to generate ideas and information regarding the subject at hand. This often limits creativity and collegiality. Our time at the conference was productive, but relaxed. Too bad there are not more opportunities like this.
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