By Tracey
Have you seen new technology standards? They're not actually "new". They've been around since December, 2008; but most teachers I talk to don't know about them. They're pretty remarkable. They emphasize collaboration, innovation, investigating, problem solving, creativity, and responsible digital citizenship. The picture you see is a Wordle I made from the standards, which takes all the words and displays them, with their size relative to the frequency they occur in the document. Digital, learning, and technology certainly do stand out. But so do the words use and district. What are your districts doing to encourage the use of technology? I'm curious because in my district we're lucky in that we have technology, the problem is that we don't use it.
We've been very fortunate in our community. School bonds have been passing and as a result, we have replaced 14 old school buildings with brand new beautiful buildings filled with some of the latest technology including document cameras, projectors, student response systems, and in some cases, interactive white boards, or the cheaper version, the wireless slate or Airliner. (It feels great to say that I have not cleaned an overhead or touched a Vis-a-Vis marker in almost three years!) Our technology department made the decision to purchase equipment – nice equipment – but they are not teachers. They can update our hardware and software, but they cannot update our instruction. And they shouldn't. That's our job. But, they are making it possible for teachers to integrate technology into instruction, teach our students 21st century skills, and meet the "new" technology standards. So why aren't we? Nobody knows how.
I shouldn't say nobody. Lots of teachers do and are doing amazing work. Their students are skilled at communicating their ideas in online media, comfortable collaborating in online forums, and ethical in their behavior online. I have learned so much from these teachers, as they share their discoveries in podcasts, blogs, wikis, videos, social networking sites, and at the NCCE conference, and have tried my best to follow in their footsteps in my own classroom. I've had many successes. But, I've had to do this on my own time. My principal wants to see the technology get used, and occasionally she's asked me to lead a technology-focused staff meeting, where I demonstrate some of the technology we have available to us, but little ever gets implemented. It's really not surprising. That's not how people learn. We're not expecting our students to learn all the skills they need with a quick demonstration of what they could do once they acquire the skills. They learn by doing. And it's no different with teachers.
I've had several conversations with her about this problem. I know she doesn't want to give up days devoted to literacy and math professional development for technology training, but technology should be integrated into the existing training we all need to attend. We need to see how others use technology to teach important skills. But the people who lead these trainings, don't use technology. And so, we use chart paper.
We have probably decimated a forest the size of our entire school with all the chart paper we use at these professional development trainings. At each training, we are given a question to think about, we discuss it in our groups, then we share out, with each idea written neatly in colored marker on chart paper. Every idea has equal importance and is listed on the chart paper, and when we run out of room, we get more chart paper. What happens to the chart paper after the training? I never see it again. One day two teachers who were expected to run the math PD (professional development) were charting on a large piece of sticky-note chart paper stuck to a tiny easel. As people shared ideas, and inserted thoughts in places where the chart paper hung off the easel, they would unstick the gigantic sticky note to move it to the hard surface so they could write on it. It got mangled, as their efforts caused it to rip, crumple, and stick to itself. It was a comical fiasco. While we all enjoyed watching our colleagues destroy this chart we'd never lay eyes on once again, my principal didn't find it so funny. She came to me and asked me if I would be willing to help us integrate technology into our PD.
Yea! I was so pleased. Finally! But, this turned into more meetings for me. Now I was going to PD planning sessions, and, BTW, there was no extra service contract for me. This can't be how we bring ourselves and our students into the 21st century. If we're serious that we want our students to compete with the rest of the graduating world and have the skills to communicate in the 21st century effectively and responsibly, then we need to be doing it ourselves, and we need to be teaching teachers how to start in their own classrooms. This requires time, coaching, and, yes, money, but more importantly, inspiration. Our administrators need to value it and have a vision for it. As it is now, teachers put in so much extra time to attend trainings and meetings, where we see traditional approaches to instruction. Technology has the ability to motivate students, meet their varied needs, expand the walls of the classroom, and inspire creativity and innovation. We need to be demonstrating this in the trainings teachers are required to go to, because, let's face it, there are only 24 hours in a day and our community didn't pass those bonds for us to keep the technology in the closet.
That’s a great idea, Tom. I’m going to share that with the tech department in my district. I don’t know why we never thought of that.
Mark, I agree with you. We need more “work”shop-styled PD (much like those brilliant presenters at Sleeping Lady. :)) Instead, we share out and chart to death, and actively prevent real work from getting done. And what’s the new buzzword now… accountability?
Great post, Tracey. You’re right; there’s thousands of dollars worth of unused and, probably, obsolete technology just sitting there. My district recently starting doing something really smart. Instead of placing technology equitably into every classroom and hoping it got used, they made teachers apply for it. We had to show that we already knew how to use student laptops for instruction and explain in our applications what we planned to do with them once we got them. They got tired of seeing two unused computers in every classroom, so they put seven well-used computers into every third classroom. The district figured out that there are teachers who will learn how to use technology and teachers who won’t. And it’s worked out great. Those of us who want to use computers have them, and those who don’t are relieved of the guilt. And the students eventually get the best of both worlds.
I think that PD ought to be modeled like a real “work”shop, akin to what a couple of brilliant presenters did at the NBCT leadership conference in 2009…training accompanied by work time.
Unfortunately, the PD pattern you point out is not just limited to technology–mandates given sans time to plan for implementation. When it comes to technology, though, that’s an awful expensive setup.
Our building’s teacher-librarian has spearheaded a setup where during some of our meetings we have a “tech expo” where teacher-leaders offered mini workshops for which the entire staff could sign up (we each had to choose and attendance was taken, for accountability). Those PD workshops, crafted by teachers for teachers, tended to be more the “workshop” kind, where there would be some instruction, modeling, then guided individual practice and work time. However, it’s been a while since we’ve done these… I wonder if the technology push bas been replaced by the next buzzword.