The videos show the importance of technology in exploring preconceived ideas and background knowledge. They point out that technology can enhance inquiry, critical, and creative thinking skills. Students gain problem-solving skills while exploring different theories and strategies with technology. This exploration helps to reinforce their understanding and it facilitates their decision-making abilities.
In general, technology-based activities or projects are multi-disciplinary and often require that students synthesize their knowledge and understanding. Because it is rare to see teachers who are experts in the use of technology in a multi-disciplinary way, students do not always receive support with this need to synthesize. It is also unusual to see teachers who have a deep understanding of how to effectively use technology within their own discipline or subject area.
We need teachers with deep disciplinary and technology understandings to guide and extend students’ intellectual and practical forays, helping them to improve their inquiry, creative and critical thinking skills through engagement in authentic tasks with clear, precise, and measurable learning outcomes. We need teachers who can make the best use of technology in the classroom by developing their awareness of range of digital technologies and by considering carefully both how and why technology can be used to support students’ learning. Effective selection of software and devices is only part of the story. Identifying learning outcomes and deciding how technology may help is fundamental in deciding its effective deployment.
The videos also show that technology has not always been reliable. Things do not always work as predicted (e.g. a program will not run on a computer because an installed application is preventing to do so). Therefore, a learning experience could be transformed in a troubleshooting session. Although troubleshooting can be time consuming, both teachers and students can learn technical tricks that can be used in the future.
It is important to be flexible when using technology and explore other technology solutions. Being open to use different technology helps to develop the necessary awareness of the range of technology that can be useful for a particular learning experience.
Time has also been presented as a scarce factor in teaching. Indeed, time is a rare commodity in schools, and any new tip or initiative that squanders it and does not add real value to a teacher’s working day will inevitably fail. That is because the first priority for all teachers is to teach and to improve the prospects of the students they teach. We usually don’t have enough time to explore all aspects of the learning skills that we are teaching. However, teaching strategies such as flipped classroom and blended learning contribute to maximising instruction time.
Hey Vivien,
I think you bring up a fantastic point about the rarity of teachers who are experts in certain areas of technology. I agree with you completely that schools desperately need educators who are both learned and experienced in their specific tech offering.
Your post had me thinking about what the missing piece was for teachers as to why they are so rarely experts. In my local district we have a large number of competent tech teachers, but only a handful of true experts. These experts are are almost exclusively at the high school level and the majority of which came to teaching later in life from an industry background.
In talking with some colleagues this week, we determined that there is really no time to continue learning in a specific area without majorly interrupting ones career. Sure, you could quit teaching, get a four year computing science degree and then return to school and teach high school kids….but that is an expensive and often impossible endeavour for most educators. Especially because one doesn’t need a computing science degree to teach a group of grade 10’s to make an app. They don’t actually even need to be experts in all areas of computing, they just need to be an expert in the specific units/topics presented to students.
We suggested a sort of ‘vocational education reprieve’ would be a great possible solution. Not a leave, but it could be 3 afternoons per week where the teacher is in a targeted program to learn more about coding/design/web etc. Don’t force the teacher to disrupt (destroy?) their career simply because they desire to better teach their students in a specific content area.
While it’s an incredible thing to have highly educated and expert teachers…the practicalities of creating them causes so many challenges.
Hi Caleb,
The idea of “vocational education reprieve” is great. I think one way to stay current with new technology is to continuously experience new ways of solving problems, trying different approaches.
Also, I agree “it is an incredible thing to have highly educated and expert teachers” who know how to use technology to teach their subject. The last minutes of video 6 have implicitly brought this issue out by pointing out the difficulty that a new teacher just starting service would encounter when integrating technology. The changes that are currently happening in education with regard to technology are not appropriately addressed in teacher’s education. A teacher in the video recommended new teachers to do more project-based activities using technology. Also, because authentic tasks or real-life problems usually require interdisciplinary knowledge, collaboration among teachers is a way to go.
The exposure to real-life situation would justify the fact that teacher with industry background have better disciplinary and technology understanding over a topic as they might have experienced it before. That is why programs such as ‘vocational education reprieve’ are great ideas.