Al Hammel's List: Teaching Tech

• I haven't used it yet, but it looks awesome. - Al Hammel on 2008-12-15

• Direct instruction methods are easier to align with content standards, and they are easier to manage in the classroom. Much of the teacher’s work is in the preparation, when mistakes and dead-ends are invisible to students. There are fewer in-the-moment decisions to make during class. That’s not to say that the method is superior, but there is little doubt that these methods are easier for teachers to execute, a point made by Dewey and by many observers since. When direct instruction goes wrong, it’s usually not because it is light in content but because the lesson has become an exercise in the memorization of trivia. One might say that you could hardly blames students for inattention to a lesson that is so far removed from their interests and passions, an attitude I detect in Wesch’s contribution.
• If that’s true, then the question is really whether Web  2.0 makes the student project more likely to succeed than project-based  learning did before Web 2.0 .
• Why has technology not revolutionized teaching, but rather been a series of “computer fads,” in Hargadon’s term, and an all-around disappointment?
• The wisest course may not be to find “best practices” with the expectation that they will apply across the board, but rather to expect that teachers will select pedagogical practices based on their own strengths and the material they teach, and to support them in that choice.

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