What teachers want in digital tech: The video — by Frank Catalano, Principal, Intrinsic Strategy — via EdNetNews.com
As the session moderator and organizer, I saw every video several times. I also saw a number of themes that kept recurring whether the submission was from California or Georgia, Saskatchewan or Alberta (we received videos from 14 states and two provinces). Even though this was a tech-savvy, self-selecting group of teachers and not anything vaguely resembling a scientific sample, the common themes may be important to all providers of educational materials—because teachers who are willing to speak out, on video, in front of 300 educational publishing execs are also likely to be the greatest promoters, or detractors, of whatever the same companies have to offer their schools.
The top five themes, in no particular order:
1) All digital content should work with all classroom technology devices.
2) Provide collaboration and content creation tools for students to use.
3) Provide teacher training both for using and integrating technology tools and resources.
4) Make digital materials editable and searchable.
5) Include more video and music in digital resources.
——-
Videos from the Content in Context session are viewable on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/user/edpublishing in the Teacher Video Challenge playlist, and comments about the videos are online in the Classrooms in the Digital Age community on edWeb.net.