Access to technology is in probability the biggest and most important factor in the adaptation of technology in Public High Schools. It’s definitely not a lack of skilled and tech-savvy individuals, thanks in part to the demographic shift of the last 3 decades since 1985. (Kotrlick & Redmann, 2009) With a short delay in the housing market crash of 2008, the Baby Boomer era teachers born in the 1950’s have been retiring en-mass and are often being replaced by young professionals born in the late 80’s and 90’s, most of whom who grew up with the prevalence of the internet and other emerging technologies.
These younger teachers are often attuned to the technological necessities of the 21st century world, be it resume-building on Microsoft Word, or proper research using EBSCO databases. (Johnson et al. 2010) Thus it seems to be that only availability, cost, and curriculum hinders widespread technology adoption in the majority of classrooms.
Unfortunately, utilizing technology both in the classroom itself and within teaching as a whole is something that is just now slowly beginning to be adopted by teachers with the access to it as a combination of both the cost issues and the comfort issues surrounding various hardware. While many teachers are using the simpler and easier to use technologies such as Powerpoint and Youtube in their teaching, one of the biggest issues is the depth of adoption as well as what to adopt, which can often be based on self-efficacy. (Paraskeva et al. 2008)
This is a tricky issue that I often find myself asking. There are the obvious technologies and items that are pervasive throughout upper education today, but introducing these pieces of the future into Secondary and Elementary Education in B.C. and abroad is hampered by the sheer workload and curriculum required of Public School Teachers today. Thus the focus of this Inquiry Project: “How can I acknowledge technology in a practical and accessible method and implement it into my own classroom teaching?” While I plan to start by building a resource guide for Public Secondary School teachers on the other pages of the site; here I expect to take a more academic minded approach, exploring the nuances, benefits, problems, and approaches to utilizing various technologies on a more high-concept scale.
Obviously the first hiccup any teacher might face in the Public School setting is issues of access. How can we generalize the use of technology and software in the school setting if access is not equal? Can we be assured that rural teachers or even poorer inner city schools are given the same tools and kits that wealthier districts or Private schools can adopt? More often than not the answer is a resounding ‘No’, as government funding at least in British Columbia has been met with a staunch refusal in regards to increases for the Public Education system in recent years.
Almost the entirety of British Columbia outside of Victoria, Vancouver and portions of the Okanagan could be classified as rural to a large extent, and this lack of funding on a Ministry and Government level means that areas who often already rely on the Underground Economy merely to exist are denied equal access. This interestingly is something which could be argued to be a facet of equal access to education. The populations of rural towns and villages in British Columbia often also lack the grants, charity donations, and localized wealth that the population centers possess in spades, exacerbating the problem to a large extent. (Markey et al. 2008)
Beyond the realm of accessibility, there lies the various problems of privacy and school safety. The first most obvious issue is interaction between teachers, parents, and students on social media. The actual implementation of social media is a touchy subject, as districts across B.C. have different policies and ideas on what constitutes acceptable use. (Wankel. 2009) Furthermore, there is no Provincial Education Ministry mandate on the use of Social Media or technology aside from vague relations to ‘equal access to education’ which many have connected to accessibility. This is of course aside from technology support for students with disabilities. This confuses and complicates the issue of teachers connecting with students personally.
It’s a catch-22 that one of the many socially enforced expectations in the modern era is to be connected with others on social media, and yet the professional boundaries of teachers conflict with this concept, insinuating that teachers must be ‘friendly but not friends’ with students. This is on top of numerous research articles and studies that reveal student learning is enriched by forming Social Emotional Learning environments and close bonds with teachers. Obviously this duality of needing informal connection and yet being held to the same standard as doctors, lawyers, and other white-collar professions makes Social Media and classroom integration an enormously tricky issue.
Still, there are ways of navigating it with the use of alternative styles of implementation, such as the school/socially-appropriate Fakebook which allows students to create false profile in an emulation of Facebook and thus complete assignments while maintaining this dichotomy of connectedness on the social media platform. Alternatively there is Twitter, which allows for only the vaguest identifiers as screening what you share via the systems of ‘tweeting’ and ‘retweeting’. This is coupled with a 140 character post limit to reduce conversation and communication to the bare facts, disallowing for the same sort of social faux-pas that may occur on more elaborate social media networks.
It seems that along these lines, any system which allows for anonymity of self and the use of handles and other pseudonyms is best. It offers that additional barrier to being too-interconnected with the school environment and allows for connectivity at the teacher’s discretion, at the cost of finding difficulty in verifying student interaction and participation. (Wankel. 2009) These sorts of activities would be good for formative assessment, but would obviously be inappropriate for Summative assessment and marking. Still, given the option between not using technology for sake of only having summative marks and broadening learning opportunities, this seems like a smaller flaw. Additionally, alternatives to the social media demographic such as finding third party content and having students reply to that seems to discredit a large part of the issue.
Of course, a smaller factor in the issues surrounding technology is collective adaptation. It actually seems to harm the students learning with technology if they are only allowed to use it in specific circumstances, due to issues of exclusivity. (Johnston. 2010) If a student can only engage in this multi-modal newer style of technology facilitated learning in a single class a day, they become disillusioned and apathetic due to being restricted, and come to recognize it as largely irrelevant due to the nature of the education system or even that school on a macro level. However, this seems to be more of a hurdle to integration rather than an impossible roadblock. With an increase of technology use, not only will the learning curve for students and teachers lessen, it will instill an importance in learning and using technology as a whole, something which is tantamount in our 21st century world.
An example of this 21st century importance, it’s more important to have an e-mail address than a phone number on your resume in many cases, especially when being hired into a white collar environment. Furthermore, access to higher education hinges on being able to effectively and easily navigate webpages or online access forms. When you are quickly reduced to nothing but a name and student number in a large institution, your only saving grace is to be proficient at using that system and to know every ‘in-and-out’ of the format. Regardless, there will always be issues, as at the fundamental level technology is the very representation of change and rapid evolution.
Cyber-bullying is a final note to bring up when regarding the use of technology in the classroom, as students are still ever cruel to one another, even in joking ways. (Strom & Strom. 2005) It’s important to remember as an educator that you are only a single person, so when designing tools like anonymous surveys, the use of social media, or other such concepts, you must be vigilant in preparation insofar as students aren’t even given the option to engage in cyber-bullying in the first place. That way it’s less about monitoring for problems than it is doing the extra work to stop it before it can even start.
I believe that the benefits of technology in the classroom far outweigh the problems, as many of the issues I’ve brought up are only potentialities in most cases, and preventable in others. The potential gain of teaching students to become comfortable and skilled with new communication forms is wholly more important than worrying about possible problems, although that’s not to say careful guidelines in implementing them wouldn’t hurt.
In response to my inquiry question, I’ve found that the various technologies on the pages of this website help challenge the traditional education style of lecturing in front of a blackboard. Even as little as to have your students be allowed multi-modal project response with a technology based tool is a step in implementing technology in an efficient and practical way. I can ultimately implement technology in a myriad of small and yet crucial methods to help foster a 21st century learning environment, however, sticking to using technology in activities and assignment response styles rather than focusing the class around technology seems to be the best procedure, and there are obvious difficulties outlined above which will be cause for reassessment in the future upon actually implementing some of the concepts and tools cached on the various pages of this website.
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