This article first appeared on eSchoolNews.

… I could start my workshops by showing teachers how to find and do everything. I could lead them through a step-by-step, do-what-I-do tutorial of various apps —“point here, click there”—and teachers could simply watch what I do and then repeat what I do. But the problem with that approach is, by the end of the workshop, it creates a culture of dependency. The instructor ends up the center of the learning, not the students, and disseminates information to a mostly passive audience. I’m simply not empowering them to learn if I’m at the center of learning.

Instead, I want teachers to tackle and succeed in challenges themselves, so they develop a measure of knowledge, comfort, and confidence going forward. It’s perceptible how teachers’ confidence improves in just the first minutes of a workshop when they can solve a problem…

By creating an experiential, active learning environment, where teachers are deriving knowledge and developing strategies by doing, I’m simulating an environment I hope teachers might emulate in their own classrooms. In other words, providing students with a challenge, giving them a time limit to complete it, and having them work in small groups is an ideal active and collaborative learning environment for using technology…

>> Read the full article on eSchoolNews.

Learn More from Tom Daccord this Summer!

• The iPad Classroom 
• Unleashing Student Creativity with iPads
• Teaching English with Technology
• Teaching Foreign Language with Technology
• Teaching History with Technology

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