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her record a video of a stage production of the students’ story, upload it to
the web, and gather online comments
from the viewing community.
Just-in-Time Tech Training
The ISTE Standards for Coaches call
for coaches to help teachers select
technology that students can use for
research, collaboration, and development of creativity and higher-order
thinking skills ( iste.org/docs/pdfs/nets-c.pdf?sfvrsn= 2). Let’s explore what this
might mean in the classroom.
The second grade teacher who
wants to encourage her students to
use images, video, sounds, and nar-
ration to demonstrate their learning
may need help identifying relevant
tools to assist with this. The teacher
may feel it is important that her stu-
dents spend their time expressing
their ideas clearly instead of learn-
ing and manipulating complex video
editing software. The teacher may also
need help learning to use the tool. The
coach could suggest that this teacher
follow her students’ lead, or she could
provide some training.
Of course, at this point, coaches
face the same dilemma as teachers:
Technology changes so quickly that
they can’t possibly know how to use
all of the available tools. But they don’t
necessarily need to; they just need
to know where to find tutorials that
they, their peers, and students can use.
Internet4teachers.com, Microsoft,
Google, or Apple’s tutorials for educators are great starting places for commonly used software.
The strategy of identifying common
tasks in the learning activity focuses
on the core of teaching: How will
students learn and then demonstrate
what they have learned? When coach-
es ask if the task requires students to
gather information, collaborate with
others, present their findings, and
get feedback, they are asking teach-
ers to work in a realm they know
and understand. With learning and
teaching as the starting point, coaches
can emphasize how a specific piece of
technology might help students reach
their learning goals and perform the
tasks their teacher has defined.
And coaches who play this role help
us meet another valuable but largely
unmet need: encouraging teachers to
use technology routinely.
Les Foltos, PhD, is the founder
of Peer-Ed ( peer-ed.com). He
served as director of instructional technology for Seattle
Public Schools and helped
develop the ISTE Coaching
Academy, which launched in
March 2013. He is also a co-author of ISTE’s
coaching white paper ( iste.org/learn/coaching-white-paper). This article is adapted from his
book Peer Coaching: Unlocking the Power of
Collaboration (Corwin, 2013).
