Keywords: Connecting, Fluency, Time<\/p>\n
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Background:<\/strong><\/p>\n For this interview, I spoke with Teacher R, a secondary math and science (Biology) teacher.\u00a0 She went through the teacher education program in the mid 1990’s and, after taking some time off to start her family, she returned to the profession 7 years ago and has been at her current school for the past 3 years.\u00a0 Her current teaching load includes math 8, science 8, science 10, and biology 11.\u00a0 As well, she is nearing completion on her own Masters program in resource.\u00a0 As she is a colleague and classroom neighbour of mine, the interview was conducted after school and in-person.\u00a0 Through our 20 minute conversation regarding technology and technology in the classroom, a few main points arose.<\/p>\n Connecting through technology?<\/strong><\/p>\n One of the topics that came up in our discussion was that of using technology to reduce the amount of work and time required to mark assessments and provide feedback to students.\u00a0 Teacher R appreciated that technology can simplify her workload but was concerned that “… it wouldn\u2019t be able to let you connect with the students.\u00a0 […] And you wouldn\u2019t want to let the computer keep you from personalizing [the teaching].”\u00a0 The image of students learning, reviewing, and then being assessed all through the medium of technology could allow for teachers to take a reduced role in the classroom.\u00a0 Teacher R’s comments serve to highlight that educators need to make an effort to not sit back and allow education to progress without them, but instead to adapt to their changing classroom to continue to provide students the optimal learning experience.<\/p>\n Technological fluency<\/strong><\/p>\n This topic is one Teacher R felt strongly about was that despite all her intentions to plan and prepare a lesson that utilized technology, she still run into difficulties with connectivity issues.\u00a0 She recounted a lesson in which she had intended on using Bluetooth to mirror her iPad onto her laptop connected to a digital projector.\u00a0 When she was unable to connect her iPad to her laptop, she had to resort to delivering the instructions orally while the rest of the students work on their iPads.\u00a0 She also noted that “it\u2019s nice to have access to technology and all these apps, but you time to go through the app and to be able to explain it to the kids. \u00a0And then you need to be able to make sure it is working.”\u00a0 This served to highlight the importance of not only technology use, but technology fluency.\u00a0 In Teacher R’s case, having the right motivation and even having been given a short training session on the app she was to use in the classroom did not prepare her to troubleshoot problems with her devices.\u00a0 Thus educators and administrators must be wary of not only the software being used in the classroom, but also the hardware and how all the devices interact.<\/p>\n Time<\/strong><\/p>\n The third point that came up multiple times in our conversation was that of time.\u00a0 Early in the interview, when asked what she would like technology to do for her, she quickly laughed, “My marking?” While she did have ambitions for technology to do more for her (including making her lessons interactive and integrate all her presentation methods to be more seamless), the convenience factor that technology provides was one that she wanted.<\/p>\n Teacher R also noted, when discussing her connectivity issues mentioned above, that time was needed to allow her to become an expert in the technology.\u00a0 It was not enough to be comfortable with the software, but she wanted to understand all the supporting technologies so that small problems would not disrupt the class.<\/p>\n Lastly, she also cited time as a constraint that prevented her from discovering new technologies.\u00a0 She noted that “… in the future, we do need to spend more time on technology because that may be the only way to engage them.”\u00a0 The difficulty she found with adding technology to the classroom was that there were simply too many options and not enough time to identify which would meet her needs.\u00a0 The two pieces of software cited as examples during the interview (Doceri and ShowMe), “were recommended to me and I just set it up.”\u00a0 So rather than actively sifting through the myriad of options, she took what was offered to her and made the most of it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Overall, this was an insightful interview in that Teacher R helped to identify many of the factors that limited her ability to integrate technology into her teaching.\u00a0 Certainly she has ambitions to include technology use, but it is clear that educators need support both in training and time in order to implement changes.\u00a0 On the other side of the coin, it may serve as a reminder to software and hardware developers to continue to refine their offerings so that they become more seamless and easier to use.<\/p>\n