Teacher Doing Great Things With Technology
Janet Ilko of the San Diego Writing Project is a teacher doing great things with technology for her students. Here’s her thoughtful post on this, written on the National Writing Project blog after she gave a presentation in Washington D.C. on the national Digital Learning Day. And now watch the video she made, which she also links to in the post.
I think you’ll agree that both the writing & the video are excellent windows into the work of an outstanding teacher. Now, if I could just convince her to send these to her local newspaper or online news medium, so they could be seen by a wider public, rather than just the teachers with whom she’s now communicating. People everywhere need to realize that teachers are doing this kind of powerful work.
You know, when I see and hear a teacher like Janet, I think how can I ever do that? be that good — not just at the craft of working with students but the moral goodness, the generosity? She is absolutely overcome — well, that’s not the right word, perhaps — with the pleasures of her work, of her students and of the reception by her new audience.
I never had one computer w/a stand in my room. We did have a few first in the reading center, and we bought Bank Street Writer to use with them. In a grad evening class I took the disk to the university lab and actually had the nerve to install it and give them time to inker. I KNEW NOTHING!!!! sometimes that’s a good thing.
For awhile, no one in education mentioned B.F. Skinner except to make fun, but there have been several references to him here and there recently. Perhaps because our machines/computers/robots (other selves?) can do so many things that we do. One phrase that used to accompany Skinner’s name was “teaching machines.” I believe his daughter has written about growing up as part of his experiments.
Long way from Janet? I don’t know. Skinner’s way off to the left of me, and I stand here, and Janet is to my right, and her third graders . . .