Technology Issues in the Classroom: A Reflection
The issues facing teachers today are many and perhaps one issue that is becoming more common today than ever before surrounds technology use. Using technology in the classroom has always been a topic of interest but now with the advent of the knowledge economy information is so readily available that technology use is becoming more and more of a necessity in the classroom in order to prepare students for the real world. Teachers need to do their best to incorporate technology in order to keep up with the changing times, if for no other reason, for the sake of their students.
Specifically in regards to technology use I have found that there are a couple of major issues to consider. Many teachers seem to be concerned with what technologies are readily available to them in the classroom. Different classrooms and departments seem to have access to different amounts and types of technology. Teachers seeme to be concerned with who gets what and how fair access to these technologies can be administered. Obviously in many cases the school administration makes these types of decisions and at times some teachers may not feel the process is fair. Some teachers even go above and beyond expectations by buying their own technologies for their students. How can we make this process easier for teachers who may not have the personal funds available to do this? Would it be reasonable to give individual teachers their own budget in order to allow them the freedom to spend it on the technologies that they feel are most important for their classrooms? This may be more or less already be achieved through departmental budgets. Perhaps teachers should do more of their own fundraising with their students in order to increase funding for their classroom needs?
Another issue that is popular is that some teachers may feel obligated to use some technologies in their classroom even though they may be less than tech savy. Some teachers may not be interested or may not find it a beneficial use of their time to learn how to use technology if they don’t see how it directly improves student results. Can more professional development offered by school boards be the answer? It would be interesting to see how much funding is put into technological PD sessions and whether that funding is indeed helping not only teachers to learn how to use technology but also if that use of technology is of true benefit to their students. Also is too much technology a bad thing? Are teachers sacrificing teaching students about the fundamentals in certain topics by using technology to analyze data? This perhaps may be more detrimental to student learning as it may cause students may become dependent on technology to answer problems. Perhaps moderation is the best policy in this case alowwing students to complete tasks both using technology at times and in other cases pushing them towards completing their work the old fashioned way.
At the end of the day there are always going to be issues, there will never be a perfect solution to satisfy everyones needs, but as professionals it is necessary for teachers to be aware of the issues and do their best to over come them using sound judgement.
March 4th, 2010 at 6:57 pm
Good point Anthony. I find out that when a teacher uses technology because the administration pushes it, most often the result is not good. Technology by itself is just technology. So the question is, how do we make teachers be technology savvy and want to use technology. In other words “how do we help them take ownership of ed. technology in their classrooms?” I would say this is one of the key issues in this course and it is a tough question to answer. Regards, M.