Teachers Talking Tech: Creating Exceptional Classrooms with Technology (HEL Impact Series)

Someday soon, like the pencil, projector, and word processor before them, the smart board and smartphone will simply be things that teachers and students use on the way to learning. Until then, teachers will struggle to answer a myriad of difficult questions about a wide range of new digital tools that have burst forth on the educational landscape. What makes a new tool worth learning and adopting? How is it best learned? Who can help?

To answer these questions and more, Dave Saltman, an experienced education journalist and Tech Talk columnist for Harvard Education Letter, offers in-depth profiles of nine teachers who have become models of technology integration and excellent teaching in elementary, middle, and secondary schools across the country. By recounting their journeys and synthesizing their common experiences, Saltman provides a realistic and unique look at how teachers are adapting, adjusting, and succeeding in creating vibrant, productive learning environments.

Teachers Talking Tech offers support and guidance to all teachers who are interested in doing more with technology in their classrooms but lack the time to follow blogs devoted to this subject. School leaders, teacher trainers, and others interested in supporting teachers who use new technologies will also appreciate this engaging reference.

Dave Saltman is a journalist, teacher, and tutor. In his early newspaper career, he worked for the Washington Post, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, and States News Service; later, he worked as an online producer for America Online, and subsequently as a writer, producer, and editor for a number of Web sites. He received his BA from Clark University, an MBA from Marymount University, and a teaching credential, in English and social science, from California State University, Northridge, where he attended the Accelerated Collaborative Teacher Preparation Program (ACT), offered by the Eisner College of Education. He has volunteered as a tutor for a state-funded, free, library-based literacy program for adults and youth, in both Burbank, California, and Sonoma County, California, where he now lives. He was born in a New York City suburb, and raised outside Washington, DC, in Maryland, where he graduated high school.

He dedicates this book to his many teachers and professors, including Mrs. Keller, of Washington Avenue School, Hartsdale, New York, and Wren Abramo, Regis Boyle, and Ashby Bryson, who worked for Montgomery County (Maryland) Public Schools. They, and many others, encouraged learning, inspired achievement, and offered engagement with the world around students, and beyond school walls.