Friday 3 February 2006

The roleplay continues ... a letter from a teacher

Dear Mr. Doo,

I taught John Doo (year 11) Information Technology and I am also the Information Technology Co-ordinator in the school.

Mr. Doo, let me assure you that John is a very good student. He is smart, diligent and polite. He will be successful in life if he continues with his effort. Please also let me tell you that the school is putting a lot of effort in support Information Technology, that's why there is an Information Technology Co-ordinator post here.

My fellow teachers in the school, as our new Principal Mr. Ip points out are very enthusiastic about helping our kids learn. As a younger member of this great group, I have great respect to the professionalism and I truly learnt a lot from fellow teachers. However, I do recognise that, as is the same in the outer community, there are some people more keen to adopt new technology and there are some who want to wait to see and will only take that on board when clear advantages are demonstrated. This is true both for teachers AND students.

Our school benefits from a wide range of cultural background. Some hard-working family likes yours. Others have enjoyed a little more success earlier. I have noticed that this diverse background has actually offered good opportunity for us. I have spoken with Mr. Ip and have come up with the following plan.

We are going to form an Information Technology Brigade (ITB) comprising myself and a group of student volunteers who are proficient in Information Technology. The aim of ITB is to support our teachers and other students in their individual projects in using Information Technology. I already have a very enthusiastic response and have ITB set in motion.

The first activity, to be held next Monday after school, is to have a group of students teaching our teachers how to use PowerPoint - a software which we can use in our class daily. This is exciting stuff, Mr. Doo. It also demonstrates the professionalism of our teachers. I already have three teachers signed up!

As the teachers get more comfortable with Information Technology, the flow-on effect to our students population is huge.

Mr. Doo, we are working it.

We will not let John down. It has been a pleasure teaching him and I believe he will be able to learn all Information Technology skill here.

Yours sincerely,

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