A venture into the mindset of teachers

If you are a teacher that came to this site looking for information about technology, you're probably in the wrong place. This site is for just the opposite! It is written by a techie, but a techie who has found himself in the position of needing to understand the educational side of things better.

This is my venture into doing just that...

Some background on why -
I'm a techie that does web-based development on a program called EdWeb 2.0. It provides teachers with an easy way to create and maintain a web site, and it was designed primarily with K-12 level teachers in mind.

I got my B.S. in CIS long ago, and have been in the tech field for about 20 years, so I know tech pretty well I'd say.

But I'm finding myself more often talking with teachers who sometimes seem to use a different set of common words in everyday talk. Things like 'pedagogy', 'rubrics', 'constructivist learning theory', etc... These concepts are all very new to me, and I'm working towards understanding the meaning behind them better so that I can, in turn, both talk more intelligently with teachers talking their language, and also use some of the same terminology in my application and help system so that we have a common base of understanding of how to describe the types of problems they may need help in solving via technology.

There are plenty of sites, blogs, etc... out there to help teachers understand technology. This isn't another one of those. This site is more to help technology people better understand teachers.
Teachers are welcome here too, but you all probably already know this stuff, and have no need to learn about it from a techie. But if you find something useful - have at it!

I've even heard it said these teachers have not only a secret language they use, but a secret handshake as well. I haven't seen it yet, but am curiously watching, and will keep you posted if I hear any more about that...

gthomson