I currently work in a small rural school with approximately 200 students. Our staff works very hard to meet the needs of our students, and my school was awarded the Blue Ribbon School Award of Excellence last year. Even though my peers do an excellent job in their classroom, very few teachers incorporate technology skills into their lessons. Recently each classroom was given a Qomo pad, and only a few teachers have embraced this technology.
Each teacher received one day of training to use the Qomo pad. I believe the training was well organized and provided ample opportunities to use the technology. I actually provided this training. After my student teaching, the principal hired me to train all of the teachers to use the recently purchased Qomo pads. I provided teachers with printed notes and a predesigned online tutorial. The training took place in the computer lab where I was able to demonstrate using the multimedia projector, and teachers were able to use their Qomo pads on individual computers. I loaded each computer with a custom made tutorial. As teachers worked through this tutorial, they were given the opportunity to use many of the popular functions. I allotted one hour at the end of the day for teachers to develop their own application to be used in their classroom.
The biggest problem was that the teachers had a great deal of difficulty thinking of ways to incorporate this technology into the classroom. Every teacher completed the training, demonstrated their skills in class, and previewed upcoming lessons. But as soon as they left the computer lab they were overwhelmed with daily demands and issues. This left them with little to no time to explore the possibilities of this technology. As a result, many teachers are not utilizing this technology today.
For this process to be a true success I believe some follow up support and training is needed. I do not totally blame the teachers with the limited success of this implementation. I work in a classroom and realize how precious time is to a teacher. If someone was able to follow up and provide additional assistance, I cannot think of a single teacher that would not welcome the support. I then believe once the teacher becomes familiar with the technology, the additional support will no longer be needed.
I completely agree that it is hard for teachers to find time to implement the technology they learn about. I went to a training on Maps 101 a few weeks ago, but have not used it yet. I think it is a great resource, the problem is just finding ways to use it based on the standards and creating activities around it. I do have more luck with activ boards because there are so many ready made lessons on Promethean Planet. I think the key for a media specialist when teaching technology is to have lessons made up the use the technology. That way, teachers can have something immediately to use in the classroom. Of course, time is still a factor for the media specialist, since she/he serves 6 grade levels! I also think it is a good idea for teachers to observe the Media Specialist teaching a lesson using the technology.
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ReplyDeleteI agree. I think that allowing teachers to have follow up workshops or being allowed to ask questions about individual classroom issues would be an effective approach to encourage teachers to fuse new technology into the classroom.
ReplyDeleteI also like your writing about how teachers lack the opportunity to design new activities that use these technologies. I think that this is correct. The teachers must educate students, grade assignments, and build curriculum activities. They often lack the opportunity to install new resources, review the new technology, and build classroom activities that use these tools.
I also imply that the teachers must obey the curriculum and achieve the educational standards; therefore, I think that many teachers argue that they have less freedom to use these innovative activities in the classroom. The teachers must educate students for the curriculum tests; therefore, their motivation to achieve adequate test scores often reduces their use of new innovative activities. I also think that the media specialist should encourage the teachers to ask questions. The media specialist can provide suggestions for software issues and work with the teacher to fuse the technology into the classroom.
I allege that teachers will be more inclined to use technology if the media specialist provides a handout with possible activities that emphasize how the tool can be used in the classroom. He or she could also inform the teacher how these programs achieve educational standards.
I also argue that the media specialist should use the tool in the library. This tactic allows the media specialist to learn about the resource and provides teachers with potential techniques for using the tool in the classroom.
Excellent post. Your personal experience with training teachers provides us with valuable lessons. The most important being the importance of adequeate post-training support. I have attended many conferences where I learn about a great new technology that I think would be just wonderful to use in an educational setting. But when I return to reality (a completely overbooked schedule) I never seem to get around to trying out what I learned. Focusing on follow-up support is an important for successful technology training to occur.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the other posters that the technology needs to be relevant to a classroom teacher. Even as I work on assignments for my media classes I realize that technology ideas that sound great in class (in theory) are not really practical for a classroom teacher. Either it does not support their goal of teaching a very specific curriculum or it is too time-consuming to use effectively. I guess the goal is to focus on technologies that will acutally help teachers accomplish their goals and not just the technologies that seem cool and are fun. Understanding a teacher's true needs is crucial to providing effective technology training.
We have many technology opportunities and when something new is available, we are offered training. Most recently, we were trained on SMART Boards and SMART Response clickers. The issue is as you have mentioned, once we leave training, we don’t get back to “playing” with it and then it is more work to figure it out than to just keep doing what you were doing. I totally agree with the follow up training process, whether it is to refresh or share some more ideas this would help keep new technology fresh and in the forefront rather than the back burner.
ReplyDeleteIn reading your post, I sense your frustration at teachers neglecting a new technological tool at their disposal because they don't have "time" to learn what it can do for them and their students. It sounds as though they got the basic idea of how to use the Qomo pads, but they never conceptualized how it could be a great learning tool for their students.
ReplyDeleteI think this happens too often. Teachers don't want to consider incorporating new technology into their instruction because they are set in a routine and new technologies are foreign and scary, or they simply don't have time to learn how a new tool could used for class lessons...there seem to be a number of elements that compound the challenge of integrating technology into instructional settings.
I think, in presenting new technological tools for student instruction, it's important to emphasize to teachers the digital environment that so many students find themselves in today. In order to maintain relevance for students, it can be helpful to teach with technology. Students these days are a generation of "digital natives", and the use of technology in classroom instruction goes a long way in gaining their interest.