Comment Re:What advice can I offer? (Score 1) 96
I work in IT in a school, and the biggest problem I find is that those who teach, can't (or won't?) be taught. Teachers really do make the worst students.
In our environment:
5-10% of teachers are able to take the vendor's training and apply it close to its full potential,
20% explore with some of the tools but tend to use the very simple tools (i.e. writing).
40% use the basic tools only and are blissfully ignorant of the rest
and 30% of them forget what button to press to do X, which is something they've been shown ten times - though they insist you've never shown them and it's your fault you're holding up the class because of the #%@!%#@! technology that "doesn't work".
The software actually has more features on here than people seem to indicate. The libraries of static images is nice, but there are non-static items such as counters, video, other flash gadgets. One of the coolest things is the 3d cube with the document camera - you can load up a sample such as the human heart - and when you hold the cube under the document camera the heart rotates as well. Great for inspecting and showing things that are 3D.
I see other complaints on here about lack or training materials - but that's plastered all over their site, as well as a community of other teachers who share their saved files of lessons and notes.
At our school, every couple years we also get a trainer to come in to do a two day session with a few of our teachers who are more tech-literate. They are then responsible for holding a training session with the other teachers during a PD day.