Keywords: lack of support, lack of training, lack of funding and limited access to technology
The teacher that I chose to interview is a grade one/two teacher at a school with a high percentage of ELL students. She currently has 284 students in her school and 18 in her class. 16 out of 18 of her students are identified as ELL. She has access to a cart of iPads that contain enough iPads for every student to be able to have their own. There is also a computer lab that they are able to use. She has a projector in her classroom that she uses to display examples, videos and student work. She has been teaching for 14 years in a variety of grade one and two classes. This interview took place on Saturday, January 20 at 3:57pm at her house.
These are the questions that I chose to ask. I asked the sub questions (1a and 4a) when I wanted her to expand on some of her ideas.
- Research has indicated that teachers are hesitant to integrate technology into their practice due to the perceived lack of support and personal experience with technology. How would you describe your experience in developing a sense of confidence when implementing technology into the classroom?
- Do you feel like you have other teachers that you can collaborate with?
- How do you think the school/district has helped or hindered your implementation of technology in the classroom? Some examples are funding, resources or support.
- Are 1:1 device programs necessary for integrating technology effectively in mathematics? Are students at an advantage if they do have their own device?
- Comparing last year when your students had their own devices versus this year where your students use school devices, what are the advantages and disadvantages to each?
- Did you find that your students did use their iPads at home for anything?
- How do you integrate technology into your math and science classroom?
Lack of Support and Training
The interviewee, Lesley, states that the biggest obstacles that she faced when she first began integrating technology into her classroom were a lack of support and training. When she began integrating technology into her classroom a few years ago, she relied on social media platforms to find support and ideas from other teachers. “I relied a lot on Twitter and following people who were using it in their classrooms and I was taking ideas and trying to implement them into my own classroom.” She describes her experience as somewhat of a solo one and she felt like she needed to discover ways to make it work for her students. “Initially, I was left to my own devices to try and figure out how to make it work in the classroom… when we were first told to implement technology, we were given no support or training on how to do it effectively.” In her new school, she feels more supported as she is able to collaborate with a couple of new teachers, and they have a technology mentor that supports them when needed and provides workshops for interested in teachers. “We have a couple of new teachers at my school who are very into using technology and our tech mentor is a good resource person to talk to… He has put on a couple of different workshops about coding and about our e-portfolio program that we use in the district that have been quite helpful.” Unfortunately, many of the older teachers in her particular school are not interested in learning how to use technology with their students. “A lot of the older teachers at my school are a bit more hesitant or don’t like using technology.”
Lack of Funding and Limited Access to Technology
Along with a lack of support and training, Lesley believes funding to be an issue. When there is a lack of funding for technology, this limits the amount of technology that can be purchased for the classroom. She feels very fortunate because at her new school she has access to a set of iPads that contain enough iPads so that her students can each use one. She assigns the students the same iPad so that they continue working on projects the previous day. “Our iPad cart initially only had 20 devices, but having a class of 18, I was able to jump into using technology without a lot of difficulty. My kids could still be 1:1, and they could be assigned to the same device and because a lot of the teachers don’t use it, it’s been fairly easy to book and get time with the iPads whenever I have wanted to.” Some of the teachers with larger class sizes were not as fortunate. Just recently, her school was able to find funding to purchase more iPads, but sadly this didn’t happen until almost half of the school year was over. “We recently used a bit of our learning grant money and our school has bought some additional iPads. So now our carts are full so that the older grades that have higher class numbers are now able to go 1:1 on the devices and [students are] not having to share. So I think for those teachers it was kind of a big hindrance.” Lesley does worry that as more teachers start integrating technology into the classroom, this will make it harder to find available times to use technology. “Funding definitely is going to be an ongoing issue as more and more teachers get used to using more technology and it becomes harder to find times [available] to use it; this will be a bit of a hindrance.” Even though she usually has access to technology, she still wishes that she had her own class set. Her reasoning is that it would be nice to have for those teachable moments that arise in the classroom. No matter how much we plan as teachers, our students will often take us down a different path. These are the times when it would be nice to have unlimited access to technology. ”Not having them in the classroom all the time is kind of a pain. Sometimes you think, oh if they were here, I could grab them and do this. You have to be much more planned and organized and you can’t use technology as kind of a spur of the moment thing, which sometimes naturally comes out of an activity – oh I wish we could’ve done this on the iPad. I think in that way, not having your own set for your class is bit of a hindrance. Given the funding concerns in the public school system that probably will never happen.”
I’ve had a very similar experience to this teacher. I have found that there doesn’t seem to be a lot of training and support to encourage teachers to integrate technology. I think the overarching reason for this is that there is a lack of funding, which makes it difficult for school districts to provide opportunities for teachers to get training and it also prevents each classroom from having enough technology to access. These obstacles deter many teachers from attempting to use technology with their students. What this teacher shows us is that there are ways to find support and training, even if you have to discover it on your own. I truly believe that if teachers are truly passionate about integrating technology into their classroom and see the value of it, they will find a way to overcome these obstacles.
If you’re interested in reading the entire interview, I have posted the transcript on my E-Folio (along with this abstract). https://blogs.ubc.ca/nicolemoxey/2018/01/21/interview-transcript/
Nicole
Hi Nicole,
It was great to read about the issue of funding from the teachers’ perspective. It is definitely frustrating when the school needs more technology and there is no money to provide tools for our learners. I had this conversation with my admin and she too expressed her feelings about funding but she raised some questions that have stayed with me. In my current school, there have been several opportunities for the school to get new technology through grants but it was up to classroom teachers and the admin to get the paperwork done. My admin sent out a survey to teachers who would be interested and the response she got was not so great. Many of the older teachers flat out refused to go and the younger teachers were not able to because of commitment issues. My admin said she felt that everyone wanted her to do all of the paperwork for the grant; my admin and a couple of teachers were able to get the paperwork done and made their case to the district about the lack of technology in our school and how outdated the current technology was. Because our admin took initiative, our school was able to get quite a bit of new technology; during our interview, she emphasized the fact that there have been many opportunities to get new technology but it takes time and commitment. This made me wonder, how many lost opportunities have there been?
Thanks for your response Sabrina!
You raise an excellent point. Completely unrelated to technology, but I found out from a colleague that the teachers could have received $10 000 in grant money last year to update our PE equipment (cross country skis, snowshoes, etc.). The teachers (and possibly admin) did not complete the necessary paperwork in time. I am sure that this is not the only example where we, as a school, have missed out on grant money. I know that teachers and admin are super busy and it seems like just one more thing to do. So who should be responsible for taking these types of applications on?
Hi Nicole,
I have had heard similar stories from my colleagues regarding sharing iPads with other classes. It’s definitely hard to share iPads and having students trying to find their work the following time the iPad cart is available. I think this is a common struggle with most schools. I know some teachers who won’t even bother using the iPads carts for their projects because what ends up happening is the projects get deleted and the students/teachers get frustrated. You interviewee discussed grant money to get more iPads, and I know at our school we have some teachers who will apply for grants but then that technology is not shared with the other staff, it stays with the classroom teacher and they believe they invested their own time to apply for the grant. So what we have at our school, is some teachers have tons of technology (they use grant money and they use school technology) while other teachers just have access to school technology. Grants have been a touchy topic at our school as some believe all students should gain the benefits from it. I used to invest a lot of time applying for grants, but it was very difficult competing against others and then the time used to fill out the grant could have been used for something else.
Hi Amanda,
That’s disappointing to hear that the grant money is not being shared amongst all of the students. Even though I understand why some teachers feel that they can “keep” the technology, since it was their hard work and time that allowed them access more technology. I wonder if it could be done on some sort of rotation basis. Each grade/teacher gets an opportunity to apply for grant money if they choose at different times and years? I’m not sure if this would work in larger schools though.
Thanks for getting me thinking about the fairness of grant money.
Nicole
I understand that lack of training can be an obstacle, but when it comes to technology I often wonder about this. Because there is just way too many different technology tools out there that could potentially be used across classrooms – is it still reasonable to believe that you will get specific training on specific tools? Or rather is/should the onus be on the teacher to explore and learn how to use new tools themselves if they are interested? Are we mislabelling a lack of training as a lack of interest? I believe that technology can enhance the classroom and I think everyone in this program has the same mindset (otherwise why would we be here!) but not everyone shares these values and perhaps are able to engage and motivate their students in other ways. When you hear ‘lack of training’ what are teachers wanted to be trained on by the school/district/etc?
Thanks Kari for your perspective! It really made me think about what I have found most frustrating and what others have talked to me about.
I completely understand that it might be a combination of lack of training and lack of interest. I think when teachers say that they want time to be trained, what they are actually meaning is that they want time to collaborate with other teachers (either colleagues or teachers who put on workshops). I see the value in teachers sitting down together to find authentic ways to integrate technology (if possible). I don’t think teachers expect to be trained on every device, but what I do think happens sometimes is that devices are dropped off in teachers classrooms and they are expected to magically know how to integrate this new device into their lessons/units (this is what happened to the teacher who I interviewed at her previous school).
A better question might be, how to we provide more time for teachers to collaborate?
Hey Nicole,
I can definitely agree with your findings about the difference between newer and more seasoned teachers. In my school, the majority of younger teachers are always using technology in the classroom. When asking the older teachers how its going, they reply with something along the lines of “it’s not.”
For me this brings up a whole bunch of thought, but only one I’ll share here. Is the technology we are asking these older teacher to use actually superior? Or is it just new, shiny and displayed on a fancy screen?
Since I fall into the younger teacher demographic, is is hard for me to understand. I recently heard it compared to the whole electric car thing. Do we expect people to buy electric cars because they are told electric is better, or are given subsidies? Or do we just make electric cars far superior so that it is a no-brainer as to which vehicle a consumer will choose?
While Tesla is well on their way to making electric seem more attractive than a traditional Detroit manufactured set of wheels, I wonder if we aren’t doing the same with EdTech.
Intersting perspective Caleb!
I get similar responses from some of my colleagues when technology is discussed, but what surprises me more than anything is that some of these teachers have only been teaching for 3 years. I always wonder how it’s possible that they are not interested in even attempting to integrate technology? Is it because they are already frustrated by the obstacles that they have faced? I like your idea of making it “superior” so that teachers feel that there isn’t a better way – but how do we accomplish this?
Nicole
Hi Nicole
I like the fact that you brought up the lack of professional development in the school system for teachers. I believe 1/3 of the teachers will attend ALL ProD, 1/3 will attend if it is convenient, and the final 1/3 will find any reason not to attend.
I wonder if ProD should be mandatory. What do you think?
A good next step might be to find out why the bottom 1/3 do not attend any ProD?
To keep the conversation going — make sure to respond to at least two other learners as well respond to all learners that respond to your own post. When responding to other learners, expand the discussion.
Christopher
Thanks Christopher for your thought-provoking questions.
Although, in my district attending workshops on Professional Development days is mandatory, there are still quite a few teachers that I know of that either stay home that day or spend the day in their classroom catching up on marking. I am not sure how we can make teachers more accountable on these days.
Does anyone have any examples or ways that their district keeps track of what teachers are actually participating in professional development activities? Could there be a sharing day that teachers are required to share their new ideas at?
Nicole