How to be a Rock Star Teacher in a World of ‘CAVE’ Colleagues

Make This the Year you Make it Happen!

Have you let cynical peers and worn-down administrators get you down or hold you back? There's no doubt it's challenging being in education, having to defend your work and actions to parents, dealing with difficult students, and overcoming unsupportive administrators … but you can't let it keep you from putting your best foot forward!

And then there's the dreaded CAVE people – Colleagues Against Virtually Everything. Even your fellow educators can be obstacles at times. “That will never work”, they say, or, “We tried that before, it didn't work”. “Why should we change, we've always done it this way?”

Enough already! This is the year the impassioned teacher pushes back and screams from the rooftops – “Let's DO Something!” We may not know what works best, and there will always be stakeholders who are going to find fault. But for crying out loud, let's try something, learn from our mistakes, and keep building on our successes!

If you don't start somewhere, you'll never start at all.

So, how do you get started? Here's a bunch of great resources and ideas!

Check out these excellent Technology Integration Secrets of Award Winning Teachers

These teachers have made the effort and kept moving forward. They put themselves out there and offered their help to students and teachers alike. There are lots of great ideas here that can inspire you to learn new techniques and approaches, and have fun and inspire students (and colleagues) in the process!

Explore Powerful Free Tools with These Quick Introductory Video Tutorials

These brief videos offer quick introductions to some great free tools that will enable you to use instructional technology in a variety of meaningful ways. Better engage students, provide learning content that can be reviewed repeatedly with ease, facilitate critical thinking and require feedback while consuming learning materials, and more!

• Socrative (Free Student Response System using phones, tablets, computers)
• Create a Flipped Video Lesson with TedEd
• Create Powerful Lessons in Minutes with Blendspace

Click here to access the full 3 Minute Teaching With Technology Tutorial Series

Spend Some Quality Time With These Articles, Offering Dozens of Tools and Resources for Creating Engaging Lessons

This selection of popular articles focus on interactive, collaborative, and engaging tools and techniques. Many of these are also free!

• 10 of the Most Engaging Uses of Instructional Technology (with Dozens of Resources and Tools)
• 20 Fun Free Tools for Interactive Classroom Collaboration
• 5 Ways NOT to Teach Like a Dinosaur
• The Power of Digital Storytelling, With Kathy Schrock (plus a Zillion Resources!)

Sign up for our “Try a New Tool a Week” Challenge!

Coming soon, we will launch the “Try a New Tool a Week” Challenge from EmergingEdTech. Interested readers can sign up to receive an email with an introduction to a new free tech tool every week. Suggestions for approaches to using these tools in teaching and learning will be included. Participants will be encouraged to weigh in with feedback about their experiences.

At the end of 2015, a free eBook will be compiled that will feature feedback from participants like you! We'll share favorite uses of the tools, interesting (or funny) experiences, key takeaways, and so on. Several classroom technology grants will also be awarded. Keep an eye out for the Challenge announcement next week!

So let's get out there and introduce some new ideas and fun, engaging new techniques to your teaching tools arsenal this year. Go ahead and get excited, be a shining star, and inspire your students to head down the road to lifelong learning and success!

*Nelson Mandela Quote Creative Commons licensed image source.