Getting Other Teachers On Board

In my final project paper I talked about reaching out to my fellow GT teachers to show them some of the great stuff on the web such as delicious and Wikipages. However, there is the concern of how to get the teachers excited about these wonderful new tools. And then beyond the excitement comes getting them to actually use it and try it out! A lot of times the new technology scares off some people who think it will take too much time to learn, they won't be able to do it, or they are just plain scared of thinking outside of the box. At one of my schools there are now 2 grade levels that use Wikis in their classroom, I think it would be great if it was the norm and was used in every classroom. The things those two grade levels have done with the Wiki are amazing!

I think to combat this issue of fear teachers need to provided with a couple of things. Teachers need to be given the opportunity to see how the resource can be used in their classroom- if they are shown some easy examples or ideas I think that can go along way in getting them excited about using the technology. However, the most important thing I think is time- time to really check into the resource- time to mess around with it and really see the ins and outs of the resource, time to plan and see how it might be implemented in their classroom, and time to share with others all the different ways this can be used/ is being used in the classroom. I think teachers also need to see that although at first it may take some time to learn and use, in the end many of these tools can actually help save time and energy and provide a great resource for kids to use in the classroom.