Our teachers deserve our support

I saw a good Dutch example of multimedia usage for future teachers. It was a Dutch presentation by Petra Fischer & Els Scheringa from the University of Amsterdam, who did a couple of projects. All of the projects involved collaboration and were quite interesting as well as successful.

The teachers were obiously the right participants for the experiment, as they quickly adopted the methods and techniques. The future projects will also involve measuring if the things they have learnt were actually put to use in the teachers practice.

It is an experience which spurs quite nicely with the one I had in the Toll-shop (a workshop organized by Toll-Net, Techonology enhanced (Ondersteund) Lifelong Learning) about the tools available to e-teachers. I talked to some of the participants quite extensively, and she experienced she would use online tools quite easily once she had gained some experience with e-learning. The usage in actual formal learning, however, depended on her receiving some support from a school facilitator.

So learning the techniques is a very necessary step, but receiving support within the organization is equally important. It is a lesson for all promotors of e-learning, and one which the success stories certainly make clear.