As more and more teachers start to understand the role that technology plays as a core component of a 21st century curriculum, the need grows for teachers to learn about how to best integrate the use of new technologies in their classrooms. Recognising this, many schools are now employing ICT savvy teachers as technology integration specialists whose role is to work with classroom teachers and show them what’s available, teach them how to use it, and help them make it work effectively with their students.

Kim Cofino from Thailand and Susan Sedro from Singapore are two such teachers. In their jobs they get to work with other teachers at their schools and assist them to successfully integrate technology in authentic and meaningful ways. Both American educators, they work at large international schools in Asia where technology integration is taken seriously and done well, and in this podcast we get to hear some of the success stories and wise advice that Kim and Susan have learned as they fulfill their demanding roles.

Links for this episode…

• About CST10 - Mandatory technology skills from the NSW Board of Studies
• Possible Interview Questions for Teachers - from Jeff Utecht’s blog
• Work with the Willing - Post from Kim’s blog
• The Perfect Match - Another post from Kim’s blog
• Projects at ISB - And you thought YOU were busy!
• Always Learning - Kim’s Blog
• Adventures in Education - Susan’s Blog

As always, your comments are more than welcome!

 Episode 21: Teaching Tech: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Thank you to whoever nominated the Virtual Staffroom for an Edublog Award in the Best Use of Educational Audio category.  It’s truly an honour to be nominated!  Thanks!

The Virtual Staffroom is all about teachers talking to teachers and sharing their ideas, opinions and stories. Our aim is to provide stimulating educational discussion that is easy to listen to and easy to access.

We really value your opinion. If you don’t mind, please take a few minutes and complete a short survey that will help us know what we are doing right and how we can improve it. If you don’t tell us, we won’t know!

Click Here to take survey

Thanks!

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

As we now have a few episodes recorded and the format of the podcast is hopefully becoming clearer (to me!) I thought I’d offer the invitation to any teachers out there who might be interested in being part of the project.

If you have ideas you’d like to share about what you’re doing in the classroom with ICT, please think about sharing it with the rest of us here on the Virtual Staffroom. Whether it’s about some good project you did with your students, or your stories about student wikis, blogs or podcasts, or how you’re using new technologies like IWBs or GPSes with students… if you’re doing something with technology in your classroom it will be of use to someone, somewhere. Please think about sharing it with us. Take a look the How to Participate link for details of how you can be involved.

I’ve got lots of stuff planned for future episodes, and based on the positive feedback we’ve gotten so far I think there’s a lot of scope to see this project expand over the coming months. It’d be great to have you be part of that.

Great news! The Virtual Staffroom is now available through the iTunes Store (it’s still free of course!)

Apple just approved it and you (along with the rest of the world) can now subscribe to it directly through the Podcast section of iTS. The nice thing about having people get the podcast via iTunes is we can track how many times it gets downloaded.

If you’ve got iTunes installed, click the link below and it will take you right to it.

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=199687512

Hello and welcome. The Virtual Staffroom educational podcasting project was born out of a desire to enable leading educators from Australia and around the world to get together and chat about the ways they integrate and use technology in their classrooms.

It’s a chance for classroom teachers to engage in reflection and dialogue about the things they do that work, the things they do that make a difference, and maybe some of the the things they never want to do again.

We plan to release a podcast every few weeks, although we are still sort of making this up as we go along. You can subscribe and let your software, such as iTunes, automatically grab the latest episode automatically.

Hopefully we can all learn something in the process. Stay tuned for more soon!

Oh, and we love to get your feedback so feel free to leave us a comment or an email with your thoughts.

Chris