Failures and Successes

I think many educators are scared, or at least skeptical, of changing their ways. This sentiment might be more prevalent among older teachers, but might also be more common based on the teacher’s cultural norms. These teachers desire to keep teaching the way that they are used to teaching, and maybe even used to learning — teaching to their own past. There can be good parts of this, both instructionally and in content. But there are also benefits to incorporating new ways of teaching, as well as changing content to be more skill- or process-oriented. These seek to teach more for the student’s future (in fact, everyone’s future) and naturally tend toward technology (hence the subject of these blogs and this course).

The biggest hurdle in implementing these new practices is implementing them — getting them set in place to begin with. I think a helpful aspect of this is seeing what works and what doesn’t work. I appreciated seeing both the failures and successes of technology use. Even beyond the ability to recognize the potential of a given method, these examples can give insight into the mindset and effort that can make or break a teacher’s efforts. Furthermore, teachers can determine for themselves whether one success might not be successful for them, or better yet, how a given failure could become a success given some modifications. No matter how or what the teachers implement, it is always helpful to see examples of it in action. Just as teachers model for the students, they can also see models from other teachers.