Teachers are often asked by school districts to maintain a presence on the web. Which poses the question: Who is their primary audience? Meet Ima Parent, mother of fourth-grade Jimmy and seventh-grade Suzie. School has started and the kids are coming home with tales of woe of how much work they’re going to have this year. Ima decides to check out their teachers through the school websites they maintain. Firing up the ol’ browser she navigates to her daughter’s science teacher where she finds the class description and expectations. Surprisingly, it says nothing of the three hours of nightly homework and weekly exams Suzie has been describing. She also finds information on a more personal level which further dispels the image of barbed tail and horns painted by Suzie. Ima feels confident that Suzie will survive this seventh grade ordeal. She’s not so sure about herself.

Remember who your primary audience is: Ima Parent. She’ll visit your site frequently and sing your praises when it meets her needs. Update often!

A month into school and Jimmy casually mentions to mom that his teacher just sprung a project on him that’s due this Friday. It’s Wednesday. Jimmy also does not know much about the project as he has misplaced the sheet outlining the particulars. Thanks Jimmy. Read the rest of this entry »

Don’t get us wrong. At TeachClever, we’re all about using technology to make us better, more productive teachers. For the most part, we are faster, more efficient and effective due to technology. But Andrew Kantor from USA Today points out that technology can’t, or shouldn’t replace everything. Here are four things that technology doesn’t effectively replace and what it means for teachers:

Spelling. Sure spell check is a wonderful tool for editing, but it’s easy to become dependent on it. Rather than learn to spell words correctly, we just wait for the spell check to tell us we’re wrong. So we never learn to spell those challenging words, like dependent, which I spelled wrong typing this article and let spell check fix it. And I’ll probably spell it wrong again next time.

Teaching students spelling and word study are still valuable skills. Most students will create content digitally in their futures, but there will still be a place for writing by hand. And pausing to think about the correct spelling of a word is a waste of time.

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