Questions to answer
I received an email from an Elementary Education major at Mississippi Valley State University. She had a class assignment to contact at least two individuals who are in a technology leadership position and interview them via e-mail regarding three main issues. Now I don’t know about a technology leadership position but apparently some elementary education majors are reading blogs and I think that’s a great thing. I really had to struggle to answer the questions.I thought I’d share my answers with you and invite input on what you think. That would be a good post to share with the student and each other. I’ve asked her to share other answers she receives, if that’s possible. Here are the questions and my answers:
1. What are the largest problems that you face in technology integrations?
The largest problem that we face in technology implementations is our outmoded paradigm of education. Traditional models of education are built around the teacher being the expert and the one that dispenses knowledge to students. Curriculum is delivered mainly through the lecture mode. We are teaching from textbooks that in many cases are outdated as they go to print. This has to change before technology can realize its promise. The fact that we are networked and connected to virtually all the written knowledge in the world and have it available in our classrooms and homes requires that we embrace and define a new definition of literacy in our digital age. We have to understand how to use it in our schools. The traditional teaching model must be revamped where the lecture mode is not predominant and critical thinking and application is the desired outcome, not regurgitation of facts. Educators need to be involved in designing this kind of learning. We need to work with colleagues, both in our school buildings and beyond. We need chances to learn from one another’s successes and failures and to share ideas and knowledge worldwide. Students need the same opportunities for learning through these connections. How we access, use, and communicate information is changing daily. We have to be stakeholders in that learning process.
Another major problem is our current high stakes testing requirements that are the main basis, really the only basis, currently for evaluation of learning and teaching. Teachers will never be motivated to embrace technology if their evaluation is based on test results that don≠t give any value on how to access, evaluate, analyze, and synthesize vast quantities of information. Yet, these literacy skills are the very ones we need to be teaching and learning in this informational age. An outdated educational system and a method of evaluation that promotes the continuation of that system haveto be changed before technology can ever begin to realize its potential.
In addition, the limited staff development available in schools has focused on the computer, not technology≠s role in learning and teaching. We do not have the support systems in place for educators to begin reconceptualizing their role to enable learning with the aid of technology. There is no priority in place to provide teachers the time to develop an understanding of how technology can transform the way we teach and learn.
2. How important is planning the overall picture of the environment in which they operate?
Learning can occur in every environment but what is important is that access is available for all. Being literate requires being part of the network.
3. What is the single best piece of advice you could me and others who are trying to provide leadership for teachnology use?
First and foremost, provide good models of actual use of technology with students. Be a part of the online community. Join in on the conversations. Keep your eye on creating a vision for education that will work for the new literacies we must achieve for the 21st century.
I would invite you to create a blog and begin discussing some of the questions you asked. Blog about what answers you received. Get in on the conversations about learning and technology. Read other educational blogs and respond to them. Share what you are learning. Share your thinking. Be open to the ideas and thoughts from others. We have to collaborate
and share so we can create learning environments that are meaningful to students and us. I can tell you that I have learned more from blogging than any other professional development I have had. Be in control of your own learning and then mirror that to your students.
November 13th, 2005 at 1:37 am
I’ve been doing a lot of conferences recently where I have been (perhaps unduly) surprised at the number of teachers proactively seeking to change the way they teach. They know their traditional ways are less relevant but are clearly not getting the guidance they require from their local support agencies or colleagues. Your point about reading blogs and responding to points in your own blog is an important one - the support networks we have relied upon thus far, including Local Authorities and national training programmes, provide untimely information that is out of date or lagging behind the times. They do tend to ignore new technologies that are easy to use - like blogging and podcasting - because they see them as a threat. The blogging community is one group who a) generally know what they’re trying to do, b) will always provide help to fellow bloggers in need, c) keep up-to-date in terms of “the tech and the teach”, the kit and the pedagogy.
November 14th, 2005 at 7:35 am
I think you have got it right with the comments that the way that learning is thought to happen best (in rows and assessed by exams that are not within the same context of the what is being assessed - MC for answers that require critical thought and synthesis) is now increasing showing it’s age.
The networked learning environment is where we should be heading - if for no other reason than it is also the way that business is going. Not that I’m a fan of following the business crowd, but it is easier to point to “the real world” to get parents and administrators to change things in schools than it is to point to theories from the Ivory Tower.
That being said, until education gets more priority, it is not likely that things will change as the status quo is cheap and for a generation fits to the mould of “that is how I was taught”.
The only thing that I would add to your piece of advice is that usually the simple solutions work best and if you start simple, success follows quickly and if there is a failure, it’s easy to recover. I would also add that in taking simple steps it’s even easier to beg forgiveness should the need for that arise as well.
November 14th, 2005 at 6:08 pm
What follows is definitely not from someone in a leadership position, but from someone who spent 35 years in a classroom setting. And I think my experience speaks to the eloquent answers you have written.
I left the classroom for 3 years in 1998 for a position in the instructional technology office of a large urban district because I thought at that time that technology had enhanced so much in my classroom. Three years later, I returned to the classroom; I had slowly become very aware that it was not the technology but the pedagogy that had altered the learning in my classroom. My mindset as an educator was been profoundly altered. In my classroom, my role was dramatically adjusted from “sage on the stage” to a “guide on the side,” from “giver of information” to designer of learning experiences. As my youngsters eagerly anticipated the new learning experiences I designed, I implemented more authentic, project-based lessons. I tried to change the face of the how I taught, what I taught, and how I requested evidence of student mastery. The technology had been a transparent tool. The transformation you speak of from „traditional‰ classrooms to those in which students „are regularly engaged in authentic, multidisciplinary learning tasks., where collaboration is a regular part of teaching, learning, and assessment, and collaborative relationships are common among students and staff, where students are flexibly grouped based on interest and need, and these groupings often cross grade-level boundaries, and where the teacher is the primary architect of the learning environment and purposefully facilitates student learning with overt strategies for nurturing student independence is critical if our children are to be productive citizens in our global world. (The last sentence adapted from http://www.ncrel.org/engauge/framewk/efp/environ/efpenvco.htm)
I would agree that learning occurs in any environment and I would add that a nurturing environment, one that recognizes and addresses the fears of those resistant to change, one that shapes new behaviors, one that provides significant, meaningful and effective professional development, one that supports with suggestions and “Teflon lessons,” one that sends the message to educators ‘you are valued, you are an educator’, will empower educators becoming the wind beneath their wings as they then seek to change the way children learn, what children learn, and how children share what they know using technology. That doesn‚t speak to how to plan the environment but perhaps a vision of??
Those many years ago, we all were very isolated as teachers. Had I had the opportunities for collaboration and learning, made possible with today‚s technology, I would have been a much better educator much sooner and my students would certainly have benefited from that collaboration. Your suggestion for blogging and collaboration, in my mind, is of such value. The sharing, thinking, and reflecting that comes from such collaboration may help us achieve that transformation of which you speak.