Blog Review of Adventures in Educational Blogging

I reviewed a number of comments from the author of this blog (is that correct terminology, Bryan? Do blogs have "authors" or is their another name/label for the
person who created the blog)? I have to be honest some of the information was over my head in terms of technology mentioned. However, being an intelligent graduate school student, I got the general gist of the person's comment. (I often kept reading the blog until I found something that was more relevant to my daily job in the elementary library setting. So I read much more than I have time to comment on---and probably more than Bryan would want to read!)

I found a comment, entitled "When is helping unhelpful?", that talked about a librarian's experience helping teachers use "new technology" and new software programs. Susan Sedro commented that her supervisor, who was awesome at answering questions in the library setting, commented (in coordinator meetings)that he didn't think we should give too much time to helping the teachers learn new software programs. Furthermore, he encouraged those he supervised to not invest time in helping teachers even get the software program started. At first, Susan Sedro didn't agree with her supervisor. After thinking about it though, she realized she was probably doing too much for the teachers and that this resulted in the teachers not learning technology and the software programs. Instead, they were relying on her knowledge and expertise----which, of course, didn't work because she had a very limited time to do all of her job----many, many tasks beyond just training teachers. She tried out her supervisor's suggested with a 3rd grade teacher. Her instinct was to stay with the teacher and help her create the template for her students. Instead, Susan Sedro showed her how to access the template and then let the teacher move on by herself. Susan showed by her actions that she was confident ion the teacher's ability. This experience made her realize that she did a much better job at "stretching" the children she works with than she does with the adults she works with. She routinely asks the children what they have tried and how they could figure the answer out. With teachers, who she knows are so busy, she often just wants to fix the problem for them. However, Susan realizes that if the teachers fixed the problem themselves without contacting her, that would be even quicker for them!
(Susan Sedro is a tech coordinator at an international school in Singapore, which is in SE Asia.)
Anyway, I related to her comments because I often help teachers too. I don't think I "overhelp" them to the point that they don't learn themselves. But this causes me to consider if the way I handle teachers questions (on technology flukes that come up or why something isn't working on their computer or software program) appropriately. It causes me to reflect on past experiences with staff....I think I want to think more about all of my library "helping" on technology.

The blogs (and comments) on this site cover a lot. The first comments were on technology in the music classroom (this thread was a bit technologically over my head). However, I thought the music teacher at our school might enjoy reading it, thinking about it, and conversing with me about it (he's very intelligent, up on a lot of technology that I'm inexperienced in, and he's a great conversationalist too!)

This blog does cover exactly what its title is - Adventures in Educational Blogging. There artmany topics covered, many threads to follow, and many teachers who commented (many commented with the practices they use in their own classroom). Thus, this site gives me a unique insight into what's happening in many classrooms. As a librarian, these teachers are teaching me about technology (as I read their posts)! Probably, other teachers are helped in the same ways. Furthermore, as a media teacher in training they effectively show me how I can best be of help to our building teachers and staff. They cause me to reflect on my practices with other adults on staff. (I generally have very close friendships with the teachers, and other staff, in our building. So if I stepped on anyone's toes by not helping enough, or maybe helping "too much", I know I would easily be forgiven. On the other hand, as a media teacher I'm still feeling out shich staff know what about technology---some know very little and others know lots more than I do! So, all this is to say, I'm learning quite a bit daily from my experiences in computer class and at work!)
This blog is directly written for teachers and serves their purposes of lesson planning and creatively using new technologies. This site does not directly serve students. Indirectly, it does serve students because it trains their teachers; and,
therefore, makes the students' classes more interesting and technologically updated
(and more fun)!

Signing off on this review,
Kathi McCorle, March 20th, 2007