Technology Integration in the Classroom

This week’s blog assignment asked us to talk about what the best way is to get others at our schools to use more technology in their teaching and student learning. HA!! Can someone tell me how?? One of the biggest obstacles I have found is in the teacher’s thought process. Many see this as another task- they do not see it as something that will benefit them, but something else to do. The next obstacle is the actual technology itself. In my particular setting the technology is old and in many cases not functioning properly. This does indeed make technology integration more difficult, but not impossible.

If teachers are going to infuse more technology into their classrooms they have to see a purpose to doing so. It is not enough to tell them it will engage their students; they have to see it to believe it, so to speak. I have found that when I take time to work with teachers who are eager to incorporate technology others catch on. They see another *teacher* enjoying and benefiting from it- not the lead technology teacher or an administrator. For some reason this seems to deter them- even if the LTT is a former classroom teacher.

The next task is to expose teachers to what is available to them. Recently I taught a Web 2.0 workshop to high school math teachers. They were all required to be there. Many of them had minimal exposure to what was available to them (out of 15, maybe 3 had blogs and none had ever made a wiki). During the two all-day workshops they were exposed to many Web 2.0 concepts: blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, video, screencasts, podcasts, and more. I also threw in a “cool tool exploration” component. These were websites that offered “quick wins” so to speak- something quick and easy that they could embed in a blog or wiki.

They left overwhelmed the first day. When they returned the second Saturday some were eager to show me what they had done the week before. Believe it or not, no one focused on showing me a wiki or a blog- they were more excited about the “cool tools” and had played with those. If I had to guess why they focused on the cool tools as opposed to the big concepts I would say it was because these required a short amount of time to both learn and implement. I explained to them that they wouldn’t be able to take everything out of the workshop and incorporate it into their classrooms- some of the concepts wouldn’t fit easily into a math high school classroom. Rather my intent was to expose them to a number of applications and to let them ultimately decide what was best for their situation. I try to do this with my own faculty as well through my Wednesday Web blog.

With technology integration my belief is this. The most beneficial learning/implementation will take place when a teacher finds something that sparks their interest. When they do, they will begin to explore that application. Soon, they are spending more time on that application and it becomes easier. Next, the application becomes mastered and begins to filter down to student use/exposure. At this point the educator becomes more open and comfortable with technology. Chances are great that they will then want to explore what else is available. Then and only then will the technology become *truly* integrated.


Now if I can only convince my own faculty……