Thursday, June 26, 2008

Moving Skyscrapers, Moving Pedagogy


If Dubai can plan a moving skyscraper (thanks to Jim Gates for this link) then we can plan for moving pedagogy. How do we do this? We begin by having discussions that focus on what some might call "out of the box" thinking. In a technology meeting today my team asked me how we would support PowerPoint from school to home if we were moving to Macs, iWork and Open Office. I suggested that we talk about using SlideShare and other Web 2.0 tools with students.

It was a new thought process for them, using the web to present. If we don't start having the discussions, we can't start changing the thinking or moving the pedagogy. A school district near mine has communicated to it's teachers that it is moving to Office 2007 so that they can take advantage of the additional 1500 features available in this new software. WHAT??? I would be willing to be that most people can't even list 50 features that they use now! So, to that I say...let's look at Google Docs. Thinking out of the box...what do you think??!!

1 comment:

Fred Sharpsteen said...

I am a technology director from Michigan and I have created a wage survey that so far 66 of the Michigan directors have taken. We would like to compare to some other states, so if you can get this out to some people that you know that are in K-12 technology education support that would be great.
http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB226MZUW4DYD