{"id":3218,"date":"2019-12-31T07:30:10","date_gmt":"2019-12-31T12:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/teachersfirst.com\/blog\/?p=3218"},"modified":"2019-12-30T11:20:49","modified_gmt":"2019-12-30T16:20:49","slug":"lets-talk-about-keeping-on-track-with-tech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/teachersfirst.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/lets-talk-about-keeping-on-track-with-tech\/","title":{"rendered":"Let\u2019s Talk About: Keeping on Track with Tech"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was fortunate to attend the <\/span>2019 VSTE conference<\/span><\/a> in early December in dual capacities: the Source for Learning is a sponsor for the conference, and I was representing the ISTE Board of Directors. It\u2019s always nice to see what is happening in edtech in various places, and this was no exception. From <\/span>Micheal Bonner<\/span><\/a>\u2019s keynote to interactions with individual teachers, I took three major ideas away from the conference that will help me \u201cKeep on Track with Tech\u201d…<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \"\"<\/a>The heart of education is still our relationship with our students<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 As Micheal Bonner urged us to \u201cBe Better,\u201d he also reminded us that you can\u2019t withdraw something from students that you haven\u2019t deposited.\u00a0 It\u2019s a lesson that all teachers learn sooner or later: relationships are everything. As Mr. Bonner pointed out, we come back to this over and over in different ways because it remains a truth throughout the education system – students to teachers, teachers to coaches and administrators, administrators to central office.\u00a0 Without trust, we don\u2019t make progress. Technology can\u2019t be used to replace relationship.<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. One of the best ways to help teachers understand a concept is to let them \u201cplay\u201d with it.\u00a0 Some of the best-attended sessions were those that promised to \u201cbreak things down\u201d or have hands-on experiences – like <\/span>our makerspace session<\/span><\/a>. While we all want to do our best by our students, we simply don\u2019t have time to figure out how everything works on our own.\u00a0 Sessions that give us basic knowledge, and some starting points are the most helpful. As a coach, I\u2019ll need to keep this in mind as I plan PD;\u00a0 Teachers need to play, so I need to plan that time in my sessions.<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. Our students still struggle with basic literacy skills. Whether we teach students whose primary language is English or not, teaching English language skills is still a focal point for us. About one-third of the sessions had some literacy component. I\u2019ll plan to incorporate strategies for ELA while I teach how to use tech tools.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    How do you plan to \u201cKeep on track with tech\u201d next year?\u00a0 Let us know by commenting below.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I was fortunate to attend the 2019 VSTE conference in early December in dual capacities: the Source for Learning is a sponsor for the conference, and I was representing the ISTE Board of Directors. It\u2019s always nice to see what is happening in edtech in various places, and this was no exception. From Micheal Bonner\u2019s … read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[170],"tags":[9],"class_list":["post-3218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lets-talk-about","tag-professional-development"],"modified_by":"Karen Streeter","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachersfirst.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachersfirst.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachersfirst.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachersfirst.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachersfirst.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3218"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/teachersfirst.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3223,"href":"https:\/\/teachersfirst.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3218\/revisions\/3223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachersfirst.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachersfirst.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachersfirst.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}