flynn089

There is an assumption that persists in the educational community that more mature teachers are much more difficult and reluctant to be trained on the effective use of educational technology. To some degree, I think this assumption has been built on by the digital native vs digital immigrant myth. But as someone who has trained teachers of all ages all over the world I would say that, from my own experience, this hasn’t been the case. What I have found to be the case is that more mature teachers are: Less likely to lured by the shiny hardware and the seemingly wonderful claims made to go along with it. More critical and sceptical about the way technology is used in the classroom. Less confident when using various apps and websites and less likely to explore the different features. More easily discouraged by failures. Less familiar with various tools, applications and services that have become part of every-day life for younger users. More likely to be able to see through “technology fo...

My New Years resolution this year was to start work on a series of ebooks for iPads, e-readers and other digital devices. This has been my ambition since I published my first book Web 2.0 Tools for Teachers back in 2009, but I’ve never felt that the time, the technology or the market was at the right place. Significant changes over the last couple of years though have led me to believe that now is the time to look at a new model of ELT publishing, at least for the realm of teacher development books. The changes I mention above include A proliferation of increasingly low cost e-reading devices and tablets. The development of powerful free software and applications such as iBooks Author for the development of media rich ebooks. The combination of these applications with secure and reliable marketing platforms, such as Lulu and iBookStore . The development of crowd-funding platforms such as KickStarter and Indigogo . I believe that the combination of these developments is now enabling...

Whilst in the process of designing a unit of online learning I started thinking about the qualities and skills that a good educational technology trainer should have. After thinking of a few myself I decided to draw on the wisdom of my PLN and crowd-source a few more ideas. Please feel free to add your ideas and to copy any of the ones you find here. I'd also like you to selectively vote for the ones you think are most important. You can also add some pros and cons to say why. You can add your ideas and comments without registering. powered by tricider Thank you for your help and participation. I hope you find this list useful. Related links My learning technology reading list My collection of tools for learners My Facebook page A Mural of my work online 10 Tech Tools for Teacher Training Courses   10 Tools for Increasing Engagement in Online Courses   Criteria for Evaluating Web Tools and Apps Best Nik Peachey

I've started this article with quite a bold statement, but it's a conclusion that I have been coming to over the course of quite a few years now. I should really put this into context though, as most of the teacher training I do deals with pedagogical training for the use of technology and is most often delivered during intensive face to face sessions, usually with groups of teachers working in a computer lab. Though, having said that, I do still believe that many of the reasons I have listed below do also apply to other kinds of more 'mainstream' teacher development too, especially intensive courses. So, here are my 15 reasons why I think developing your teaching online can be more effective. Learn while you teach - This gives you the opportunity to try things out with your own classes working in your own environment with your own students. Often when we take a face to face intensive course we leave our familiar teaching environment and come back with lots of new idea...

Over the summer I was running a number of two week ICT in language teaching courses for teachers from around the world. The courses were part of the Bell summer campus at Homerton College Cambridge. This was the first time in a while I had been asked to teach such long courses and i thought it was a great opportunity to see if I could fundamentally change the way the teachers related to technology, not just in the classroom as a tool for teaching learners, but as a tool within their everyday working practice. As sub goals I set out to run the course with absolutely no paper. That meant no photocopied handouts and no paper based note taking from trainees. I wanted to push these teachers to the point where they could work totally in the digital medium and where paper became totally unnecessary. I also wanted to use a form of loop input (using the technology to teach the technology) so that teachers were learning about the technologies they could use with students by actually using them ...