‘Falling rocks [teachers]’

Veteran tech educator David Jakes seems to have struck a chord in his blog post about technophobe teachers labeled as “falling rocks” by colleagues and students in many schools. There are a number of very substantive posts from other educators underneath his article in TechLearning.com. “They’re called rocks because they won’t budge, and you just can’t get them into new things, things like technology…. So,” Jakes writes, “the most appropriate thing for people to do is to move on to those who are more open, more willing, more capable.” *Wrong*, he says, then explains why. Then he offers five ways to “get these teachers on board. One commenter says there are good teachers who integrate technology and there are bad one who do, and vice versa, which makes a lot of sense. In our family’s experience, one really fine language arts teacher didn’t teach much with technology but used it as a peripheral tool to enrich communication with students, which they really appreciated. Her bottom line was to respect her students and do whatever it took to support learning and communication that worked for them; it was a very effective strategy.