One of the obstacles that some teachers face when trying to use technology in their classrooms for the first time is lack of comfort and or confidence with technology. That’s where folks like me can be helpful in getting teachers started on the path to comfort and confidence with technology tools to use in their classrooms. While it’s great to be able to get some one-on-one attention, a person new to using technology in the classroom often needs some handy digital or print resources to consult when an expert isn’t available. For those times here are three good places to look.
Think Tutorial is a site providing free, easy to follow tutorials on a variety of web services and software. On Think Tutorial you will find tutorials for taking advantage of the many features of popular email services like Gmail, Apple Mail, Hotmail, and Yahoo mail. You will also find tutorials for using iWork and Word. Want to learn how to use LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook? Think Tutorial has you covered there too. Need to know how to alter settings in your favorite web browser? Think Tutorial has tutorials for that too.
Learn It In 5 is a relatively a site authored by Mark Barnes that features short how-to videos for teachers. The videos are intended to help teachers quickly learn how to use some of the the web tools are essential to being a successful user of classroom technology. The videos cover tools like Skype, Diigo, VoiceThread, and more. The latest video from Learn It In 5 is embedded below.
If printable guides are more your speed, Make Use Of offers dozens of free downloadable ebooks and cheat sheets for a wide variety of software and web applications. You will find guides for making the most out of your iPad, guides for learning the ins and outs of computer hardware, and much much more. The cheat sheets are handy reference guides for shortcuts on Windows and Mac computers as well as on a handful of commonly used web tools.
One last resource that I have to point out is my own collection of helpful Google tools tutorials. You’ll find more than thirty tutorials on that page. Some of the tutorials were created by me and others were not.
