The Middle School program at my school is arguably less developed than the Junior and Senior School programs. Like the middle child, its sense of identity is overshadowed by the younger and older siblings; the exciting, explorative Junior School Program and the creative, culminating Senior School Program seem more attractive, at least on paper. I chose Video Cases 5&6 because they were focused on grades that would be considered Middle School at my school. I wanted to get a sense of how technology was being integrated; as I talked about in my previous post, was technology being used at the higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy and SAMR model?
In case 6, we see a teacher who has incorporated technology in the classroom in various forms including PowerPoint, podcasts, animated gifs, audiography, and videography. One of the underlying issues that came out of this video was the overall vision for technology in schools. The teacher learned most of the technology by himself and the tools were implemented primarily to connect with students and give alternate ways of learning content. Students played an active role in teaching and explaining content which helped to synthesize main concepts. The school seemed to have a grass-roots approach to technology implementation and arguably lacked an overall direction of what they wanted their students to accomplish through technology. This begs the question, do schools really need strategic plans for technology or will teachers implement technology in the higher levels of Bloom’s and SAMR organically? A comparison of schools with a well thought out technology plan and those without any plan might shed some light on whether it has any impact on how technology is implemented.
In case 5, we see a school where one teacher has embraced technology and implemented it in various forms; some of these forms are quite noteworthy as they accomplished tasks that were not possible before the introduction of technology (communication with RAWA in Afghanistan). Two other teachers, a retiree and a new teacher, expressed their apprehension with technology citing lack of time and lack of confidence with technology. Professional development was provided but that did not seem to encourage these teachers to implement technology in a concerted way. Is the underlying issue a lack of clear vision for technology? Is it a lack of prioritization by the school to give teachers the time and resources? How can PD be improved to ensure greater buy-in with teachers?