Teacher Practice Online: Sharing Wisdom, Opening Doors

Teachers know how complicated their work is. They constantly balance considerations of individual students with those of the group; they think about how past events affect today’s lessons; and they constantly adapt and revise for future lessons. But few people ever get to see teachers’ work in this way. The most energizing, relational, complicated, inspiring, disheartening parts of teaching remain largely invisible. Over nearly a decade at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Desiree Pointer Mace worked with dozens of teachers across the country to ‘open their doors’ by creating multimedia, web-based representations of teaching practice. This book describes how such multimedia representations are envisioned, documented, created, and shared and how others might engage in this process. This practical book: examines the cutting edge of electronic-media documentation of teaching practice; features cases studies that represent diverse grades, cultures, and contexts with both novice and veteran teachers; provides clear examples of how multimedia representations of teaching can be used as alternative texts in teacher learning environments; describes the positive outcomes for teachers and learners when teaching is made public; and, includes screen images of teachers’ websites, as well as classrooms and children participating in projects.