This fall, I will once again be teaching an online course for our School of Education on Instructional Strategies Using the Internet. The course I was given and taught last year was primarily a teaching-centered course that had little to do with the target audience, Masters students in Education Leadership. So, with the help and blessing of Jon Becker, we are redesigning the course this year to address Instructional Uses of the Internet from an administrator’s perspective…making it a much more relevant course.
The game plan Jon suggested is to introduce these graduate students (all K-12 teachers) to Web 2.0 first, and then explore tech planning, funding, legal issues, and faculty development. I am excited about this new direction for the course and look forward to its startup in a month.
Part of the course plan is to let the students research and share findings on Web 2.0 tools. However, having met last week with these students, Jon and I found that they are not very web literate, so I am nervous about just turning them loose. One thought would be to start with Jane Hart’s list, have each student develop a tutorial on a different tool and then share that with the class. But would that in and of itself help future administrators appreciate the possibilities and challenges associated with Web 2.0? I thought I would toss the idea out here in the edublogosphere and see what other thoughts you might have on ways to tackle this topic?
Got some ideas?
{Photo Credit: Steve Rhodes}
Start them off with rss readers. I like Google reader. You can create a list of sites and have them add them. I think that helping them understand the importance of a personal learning network will help them along the path of teaching themselves the tools. A majority of my learning related to web 2.0 tools has come from my own PLN and the links that I have collected from them over the years.