I recently attended a 1:1 technology summit on a Saturday morning. It was one of the best conference-type events I've been to in a while - very specialized and specific, with teachers as presenters that were experts on using this technology in education. Because they're actually in the classroom, they were able to talk to their success and failures and make the training sessions very real and applicable.
Being on a Professional Development sub-committee (as part of our technology committee) I went to a session about making PD work in 1:1 districts. It wasn't what I expected. We talked a little bit about what we do in our own school districts for professional development - what seems to work, what the challenges are, etc., but most of the hour-long session was dedicated to talking about how to build your PLN, or your personal learning network. Most of the information that was presented wasn't all that new to me. I'm familiar with building a PLN and have been really focused on my own PLN since this past summer. I feel like I've really grown as an educator through my own explorations and connections with other educators by developing my own PLN. Even though I was familiar with a lot of the tools, strategies, and applications, the session left me with kind of an epiphany moment for how I think we should be approaching PD in our own school district.
Here's when the moment happened: Halfway through the session, a woman, in charge of the tech PD in her whole district, raised her hand and said, "this is all great, but it's so frustrating when I prepare videos of trainings and spend so much time training staff how to use things, and then technology changes and it's all basically obsolete. I just did a bunch of training over the summer for both staff and students and created my own training videos, and then iOS7 was released and all that work I did was pretty much for nothing."
I think that if you have that viewpoint on educating your staff, you're inevitably going to run into problems. If you always focus on the device, or the app, you'll never be able to keep up. There is just way too much out there and it changes so rapidly that it's impossible to train everyone on everything available all the time. In our journey towards becoming 1:1, I've heard a lot of negativity. I've heard from a lot of teachers that are nervous about having to learn all of that technology. In trainings that I've gone to, teachers want someone to show them every click and how to "work" a website, app, or device, rather than focus on how to use it in education. For many, if they aren't shown explicitly how to do something, they won't do it, or are afraid to try to experiment and learn it.
Instead of trying to teach our staff how to navigate through the more technical aspect of technology, wouldn't our time be better spent focusing on teaching staff how to develop their own PLNs? If educators learned how to use Twitter and Feedly, combined with a social bookmarking site like Diigo, they would be exposed to so much information that would directly benefit them in their teaching. And that's just a couple of apps. The "P" in PLN stands for "personalized" - I use my PLN to garner information about things that I am interested in, and things that I want to learn more about. Used the right way, it allows educators to really connect with each other, collaborate, support, give ideas, and help each other out. The online community of teachers that actively participate in these communities is incredibly supportive and motivated.
There's not a whole that I could teach others in an hour-long session that isn't out there on the internet somewhere. I know that some do better with face-to-face interaction, or that some may have difficulty navigating the immense wealth of information available on the net. However, if we wait for our couple of institute days a year to go to a district-provided and mandatory tech training, are we really going to be able to keep up with technology and it's ever-changing landscape? Will we be able to keep up with the students, who use it every day? I know that teachers have a lot to do and time can be a constraint. I've come to realize, though, that while learning technology may initially take some time, it always ends up saving me time in the long run. About the woman that I mentioned earlier: if she had focused on building PLNs for her staff, and told them how to get connected in the right places to be notified when updates happen, or where to go for good resources on navigating things when our tech changes, her staff may have felt a little more prepared. Technology will change no matter what. We need to teach our teachers how to stay involved and to learn about it themselves, rather than try to train them on every new thing that comes out. That's just not feasible or practical in today's world.
Don't get me wrong. I think that doing trainings on specific tools is fine. I just think that it can't be the ONLY training we do. We have to help train people to be able to help themselves, not just to rely on someone else giving them the information necessary to do their jobs.
What do you think? Is this just "one more thing" that teachers have to learn and do? Should teachers be expected to be proficient in technology to be an educator in today's society? Should teachers be expected to learn these things outside of the school day, or only if provided a training?
Al, I totally just had a lesson in my Environmental Education class today about using technology and the pro's and con's of it. We all had "micro" teaching sessions a few weeks ago and we evaluated them, seeing as some of us used technology and some didn't. At the end of the discussion/evaluation, we all kind of decided that it wasn't the technology or the props or even the information that made us remember specific lessons; it was the enthusiasm of the educator. Technology didn't really have a part in it at all. I feel like students should be offered the opportunity to learn using some technology, but it shouldn't be a requirement of the educator. That's just my professional opinion.
ReplyDeleteHey, Molly. Thanks for the comment. I tried to comment before but it deleted my really long post and I was too discouraged to retype it all!
ReplyDeleteAnyways, I agree with you that not all lessons need to use technology, and that an enthusiastic teacher can be much more effective than good tools used poorly. However, I think that in today's world, teachers almost have to be technology-literate to be effective educators.
I've done a lot of reading and research about today's learners, our digital natives. There is a lot of data out there that shows that their brain are literally "wired" differently from students of the past. The traditional lecture-style of teaching just isn't very effective with these students anymore. There's so many more engaging ways to teach that work much better with students today.
Also, at the elementary level, parent communication is huge. I think about many parents that prefer to get information through email, Facebook, Twitter, or text messages, but hardly pick up a piece of paper. Who is going to have better lines of communication with families - the teacher that only sends home notes, or the teacher that will send notes, but also has a classroom website to post daily homework, uses a course management system where parents can message, check grades, calendars, and assignments, posts updates on the classroom facebook page, and sends reminders through text message using remind101?
Also, data-driven instruction is very important. A teacher that doesn't use technology is going to have a very hard time analyzing large amounts of data. The more I've used technology for my assessments, the more effectively I've been able to able to evaluate my students' progress, strengths and weaknesses, and to plan for more effective instruction. This is something that is near impossible to do well without technology.
It's also important to be teaching our students about these technologies. Chances are, they're going to be using it in their jobs as adults. We should be teaching them real world skills that will help prepare them for "college and career." We have to promote digital literacy. This isn't something that comes naturally to students, and learning how to gather information and read and evaluate sources digitally is a discrete skill that has to be taught explicitly. A teacher that is technology-illiterate likely won't be helping students with this.
I think that part of the reason for our different viewpoints is that I'm coming from an elementary perspective and you're coming from a college perspective. Do you instructors use technology effectively in your classes? Are you taking mostly traditional-style lecture classes? What do you think?