After reviewing all of the video cases presented, there were a few things that stuck with me. The first one is that the more things change, the more the seem to stay the same. I was surprised to see that pre-service teachers had little exposure or teaching regarding technology and its use in the classroom, in spite of this being an important aspect of the need for 21st century learning skills, and that, when they were shown how to use various programs and hardware, they were still reluctant to incorporate this into their classroom teaching and learning plans. Particularly in Case 4, many of the teachers acknowledged the the integration of technology is important, and what they were learning was interesting and engaging, they stated that they would still be reluctant to use it in their own classroom because they were not “experts” and it would take too much time to implement it. I still find it odd that there are people who still consider themselves not “tech savvy”. To me this is like saying you are not math smart. Everyone is math smart and everyone can be tech savvy, it is a learning experience, not an innate talent. This tells me that there is not enough technology education for educators to allow them to feel competent about including this as part of their teaching. Many of the teachers using the technology in the classroom stated that they had educated themselves by taking classes, or learning from others, or just trying things out on their own. Many pre-service teachers seemed to be not willing or able to put the required time in to learning or using technology with their students.
Technology should not be used for the sake of using technology, it should be integrated as seamlessly as possible into the daily routine of the classroom, as a tool, not as a special event. Unfortunately, in many cases, this is impossible due to the lack of available devices. If a teacher has to sign out the devices well in advance it becomes a logistical nightmare to arrange the curriculum to be at the point when you can get the devices. Many projects require the devices to be available every day for most of the day, which is impossible in the sign them out scenarios. In a lot of cases, teachers will forgo using the technology and revert to older ways just for ease of use. This is one of my issues in the classroom. I would love to be able to teach my students how to use a variety of programs as the need arises, and as they would do in their future lives. You need to use programs, software, and devices for specific purposes and times. My computer is on all day with usually about 5-10 tabs open at any one time. I am constantly switching between programs and platforms as I go about my day planning, grading, researching, and creating. These are skills that my students need to learn also, but it would require a 1:1 classroom, which is impossible at the moment. This means it is very difficult to move into the 3rd stage of integration where students are using the tech to learn at their own pace. It seems to me that although there is a push from the ministry and school boards to integrate technology, there is not the equipment or training available to make this a reality.
The last thing that caught my attention was that a lot of the technology being used seemed to be older technology. In particular I was surprised to see Clickers being used in the post secondary classroom. I used them when they first came out and agree with everything the professor was saying, they do engage the students more as they are being made accountable for their learning in a large environment, it is easy to participate as they are anonymous in that they are numbered instead of names, however it is important for everyone to participate because you can see when someone has not responded. However, Clickers would be an expensive proposition for a class of 100 students, especially when there are programs like Kahoot or Plickers that utilize phones and personal devices to do a very similar activity. Of course, Clickers would likely be a one time expense and could be used very effectively for a number of classes over many years.
Overall, it seems that technology is advancing at a great rate in terms of its applicability to the classroom and the variety of programs and platforms available to use, but technology education, training, and understanding seems to continue to lag behind. I think that there should be a mandatory course or courses for the education of pre-service teachers in the use of technology in the classroom. This is the future.