R/D7

Cindy Thelen
R/D7

I think the idea about the communicative paradigm which “emphasizes reaching consensus among these parties throughout the design process (Reiser & Dempsey, p. 175) definitely applies to school districts who think superintendents and schools boards and the best ones to make decisions that directly effect teachers. Some times people not involved in the actual education process are the ones who decide on curriculum development and scheduling choices. For obvious reasons this removes the most important people from the process! Many (perhaps most) school boards are made up of parents, not educators. This is not to say that I don’t think parents should have any say or be involved, but rather that those who will actually use new curricula or have to deal with new schedules (block scheduling for instance) should have a say in those choices. Whenever the people involved in the effects of decisions are involved in the process of making those decisions, they tend to ‘own’ the decision. They are not as reactive to the change. Superintendents and school boards should actively involve educators in these choices if they want to improve employee performance and solve organizational problems.

I could see how technology-based training delivery could lower costs and increase learning and product outcomes for profession development. Frequently, professional development workshops are expensive, boring, or without enough focus for the needs of individual educators, therefore minimizing the benefits and outcomes. How often has the school brought in someone to help all teachers cover the topic of writing, and yet have not been able to suggest applications for various teachers: math, science, and English?

Imagine being able to choose the best team, course, or workshop that could work with your high school’s math department. Thanks to the internet, the school would not need to pay for housing and food for people to come in and work with innovations in math instruction. Instead, they would receive live interactive instruction at its best.

This summer I received group training for the use of webex. It was a ‘virtual team’ situation, with educators from all over lower Michigan. Webex is a web-conferencing tool used for on-line instruction. Last year’s training was on an individual basis and not very effective. This year we used webex for our training with the use of webex. All staff members were on-line at the same time, getting the same training. This saved time and money for our employers and actually saved us some time, too! The best thing was that we learned more working together because we learned from each other. If someone was having a problem they had a group of people who could respond, instead of looking to the trainer (our employer, who was new to the program, too) for all of the answers. Sometimes one of the staff figured out something that the trainer didn’t even know how to use. By using technology to train an entire group of teachers, we saved money and time. We also learned more by exploring the product together and helping each other figure out the different applications within the product.