What's Wrong with the Train the Teacher Paradigm?

Posted By: Mitch Benson | Jun 20th, 2006 @ 2:20 PM
Maybe nothing.

Egypt is certainly undertaking a massive scale effort to equip teachers with necessary, potentially transformational, ICT skills.

From the article, "One shortcoming the EEI aims to overcome is the lack of communication among students, teachers, administrators, district managers and parents. Another is developing interactive educational material that services the learning objects in order to make an impact."

Egypt posits two challenges, no?  The first is to facilitate communication and community.  The second is a question of content production and delivery.  Both problems have dimensions that encompass skills and infrastructure.  The infrastructure challenges have many solutions.  The solutions of which I am fond are pretty good ones.  The skills question, however, is one where I'm less versed and certainly less qualified.

But... being unqualified rarely keeps me from talking.

I'd suggest that there are alternative approaches we should all be evaluating that might change our methods when equipping a nation's teachers with ICT skills.  But these other approaches create a whole new universe of questions... especially around the skills that a nation's students may or may not already possess.  

I don't have the answers.  I come with many questions.
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#Jun 20th, 2007 @ 8:33 AM
lajones
lajones

In looking at Microsoft's EMEA (I still need to know what that stands for...) I noticed that there doesn't seem to be anything happening in the USA with this initiative.  And I didn't really look at the costs, so maybe it is prohibitive, but I really liked the stated purpose and philosophy.

Regarding your interests in the skills piece, the Center for Educational Policy Reform (CEPR) has an interesting base of knowledge that they are developing called the Knowledge and Skills required for University Success (KSUS) that you might want to check out at:  http://www.s4s.org/cepr.uus.php

Hopefully you review this blog periodically...