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