Integrating Your IT Representative Into IT Integration In Your Classroom!
Have you ever wondered if an electronic forum wouldn’t help your students to better meet your course objectives? Ever heard about software to allow students to work together on the same Word document? Has a colleague told you about a virtual group project with students from different cegeps working together? Did you know that you can develop a data bank of course specific information that can be accessed by your students in a theme or subject based search using the CCDMD software Interprète?
There’s more…
- Teachers are increasinglylooking to sharpen the on-line research skills of their students;
- Electronic plagiarism has become a pressing concern;
- More teachers are responding to the need to know more about the world of information technology.
If you feel overwhelmed, real support is nearer than you would imagine! To help you one on one with our increasingly important technopedagogy or to suggest effective continuing education options, turn to the IT Representative (generally a pedagogical counsellor) of your college.
The IT Representative of your school is your link to a vast user network that extends to every corner of the province, the IT Representatives’ Network. Members are working to design resources and tools to support teachers like you working to make IT a part of their classrooms. IT Reps, as they are called, share their knowledge, their contacts, their experiences and are informed of all the latest activities of Quebec’s IT partners (APOP, AQPC, CCDMD, CDC, Cégep à distance, DECclic, Profweb, Vitrine Technologie-Éducation). You are cordially invited to consult them as a way of staying at the avant garde of academic IT integration in your field.
At the next meeting of the IT Reps network, which is on September 27 and 28, the topic will be establishing strategies to help make IT a part of your college’s orientations. There will be sessions discussing new IT developments in colleges from around the province and a chance to learn more about on-line teamworking tools. These sessions are just one of the ways that your IT Rep works to be ready to help you with your IT projects, big and small.
Let’s end this column with your $64,000 (Canadian!) question! Now that you’ve learned what the IT Representatives’ Network is, what question would you ask your college’s IT Rep? Would it relate to software, to classroom activities, to continuing education or to available resources? Use our reader response feature to let readers and IT Reps alike discover questions about IT that they didn’t even know could exist!
To learn the name of your IT Representative, consult the Directory.