EdTechTrek

I recenlty read a great post by David on his blog and it struck me that in our efforts to help teachers see and discover the great learning potential in new technologies that we sometimes get frustrated with them for not seeing things our way… that integration is not good enough… that technology use must be integral to everything they teach. I totally agree with him that it should not be seen as an add-on and that really we should be learning specialists who understand the potential of technology rather than technology specialists who are helping teachers teach with it. However, sometimes I think we have been guilty of not understanding where teachers are in their pedagogical beliefs and have not brought those beliefs into the equation. What teachers believe about teaching and learning directly impacts how they will leverage new technologies. For example, does technology help facilitate collaboration or problem-solving? Does technology supply tools that help amplify thinking, spark creativity, or visualize ideas? Does technology empower students and facilitate self-directed learning or the pursuit of unique interests?

Or, in along more traditional lines: Does technology help me generate worksheets, create puzzles, assess quantitatively, present information, create displays, find resources for my lessons, communicate with parents…

We have to understand the pedagogical framework that teachers are working from rather than impose our ideas of how technology use should look if it is integral to learning. What kind of learning? I think that the real issue here that drives technology’s integral role is how we view learning. Because let’s face it - for some, technology is just a pain in the neck and they use it as if they were putting a square peg in a round hole. They use it to please their superiors. Or, they try their best to steer clear of it altogether. So, I think the work that still needs to be done is to help bring vision back to teachers who have lost it, to help teachers no longer excited about learning new things find that spark, to rekindle their desire to connect with students, to help teachers take risks and to make failure safe, to reward collaboration and innovativeness, to foster a community of practice… I think THIS is where technology becomes integral. Any less, and technology, at best, is integrated. At worst, tolerated.

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Here is yet more news report of frustrated professors having a difficult time figuring out what to do when technology enters the classroom. Often, the ’solution’ is to ban them from the classroom, as some professors at this particular university are doing. Other institutions have done the same thing. I struggle with this as well, as I teach college students, often in a computer lab full of computers. We talk about the arrangement and type of computers condusive to a collaborative community in the classrom. I like to be able to see everyone’s computer screen rather than have rows of monitors that serve as walls between me and the students. It just makes things easier for me. It also makes things easier for the students, who are able to share with their peers more easily and are able to group in flexible ways in the classroom. Laptops make this even easier to achieve. However, when desks are in rows and students are all facing the lecturer who is lecturing… and laptop screens are up, fingers are busy, and no eye contact is being made with the lecturer, I do think problems begin to emerge. Let’s be real here… there are so many distractions sitting on one’s desk with a laptop… IMing, emailing, shopping, browsing, games,…. If I was a bored student sitting in a boring lecture, then why not?

Eureka!

The proportion of distracted students drops off significantly when there is a challenging and engaging dialog going on as part of the lecture… when students are more than just scribes. The few that choose to tune out for whatever reason should experience fairly immediate natural reprecussions - bad grades. But, this is not a fair analysis when one is a lecturer in a hall of 100-200 students. Then what? Is it time to rethink this particular model of instruction? What drives it anyway? Is it economics and the dollar, or is it sound pedagogy? Why is it that somehow we can leave sound padagogy behind in higher education because ‘it has always been done that way’ or “I did just fine in my class of 150 students.” or “It separates those who can and those who can’t.”, or “It teaches discipline and memorization of your content.”, or is it some combination of all of the above? I have been thinking about this for some time now. Do we just accept that some institutions of higher education are businesses… Learning factories? Will students begin looking for other alternatives in the near future? And, if class size is not the issue here and laptops are not welcome in smaller classes, then what is the issue - really? If a lecturer wants a quality class discussion, free of clackity-clack on the keyboard, why not just say, “Close your lids.” Any thoughts?

After reading this article on why textbooks have not taken off in digital format as much as was projected, one line stuck out in my mind. It was this: “We have a lot of technology in our schools, but most is not in the classroom, where students are every day.” What a sad statement… but all too true, I’m afraid. I am struck every year as I teach my own preservice students about the fantastic opportunities and tools that technology and the Internet afford - that there is a digital divide within the school walls, not just out in the communities where students live. I am talking about the divide between what we show and teach as best practice when teaching and integrating technologies into the classroom context - and the reality that faces many of our beginning teachers when they actually get out into their own school and classroom - Filters, highly scheduled labs, few labs, poor tech support, aging computers, technology coordinator gods who feel that it is their job to “control” what teachers do with technology and in the end, limit their opportunities with red tape, slow reaction time, ‘it can’t be done’ mentality, few computers in the classroom… And this is not an exhaustive list by any means.

Now, I don’t want to come across as the pessimist here. I approach all of these opportunities with a high degree of optimism. But, this statement is just too true… that the very place technology needs to be - in the classroom - is often locked in rooms down the hall, locked to rolling carts, invested in district-wide infrastructure,… The ubiquity of technology in society is not often evident when students enter their classrooms. Some schools are more fortunate, of course. Many are not. We don’t require teachers to go down the hall to use textbooks in the ‘textbook lab’. Until we commonly see 1:1 computing in the classroom, I think our new teacher graduates will continue to experience this disparity and feel the frustration of unrealized learning potential.