2. Point #1 People think that teachers fresh out of school are ready to use technology in their classrooms. They are not, for three reasons: Colleges do not have the equipment for teachers to learn with, some college professors do not like to use technology in their courses, and teacher education programs do not sprinkle technology learning throughout the whole curriculum. And when technology is taught, it is not with learning facilitation in mind.
3. Relevance Do not assume teachers know how to use technology. If we want to know why that is, look at the teacher preparation programs.
4. Point #2 College professors ignoring technology in their courses causes teachers to ignore it in the classroom, all the while everyone is complaining about the barriers to teaching technology. The only thing we can do about it is to change how we choose to teach as individuals, and demand the education that will help us do that successfully.
5. Relevance If you are unhappy as a teacher that you aren’t able to use technology meaningfully in the classroom, do something about it.
6. Point #3 Alignment is the idea that everyone involved in the school process, from the teachers to the textbook writers to the community, have the same ideas about what and how they are going to teach.
7. Relevance Teachers are often going to be asked to alter the way they do things in order to work toward this common vision. They should be prepared to handle this.
8. Point #4 Even though teachers are way different from each other, they teach much the same way because they don’t have the resources or they don’t know any other ways.
9. Relevance As a teacher, if you feel like you could be doing better or that you are getting stale or boring, realize that there are more than a few ways to do things out there and learn about them.
10. Point #5 Some experts have asserted that producing specialists is not as valuable as teaching how to think and apply general skills to a multitude of tasks.
11. Relevance Preparing students to deal with a job market which doesn’t yet exist means educators must be willing to teach more how than what. The days of teaching specific vocational skills may be waning as many schools will not have the resources to target specific technologically advanced job skills.
