Effective Ways to get Teachers to Use Technology

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jody Allard on January 13, 2009 at 10:56pm

I am part of a technology group where each participant is provided with a laptop, document camera, infocus projector and 35 student response devices for the students. These are provided to the teachers as long as the teachers agree to attend five full day training sessions, blog every few weeks on the technology and agree to use the equipment as much as possible.

It is a lot of work to make interactive power point incorporating the response devices and finding the streaming videos for the math sections I am teaching. I would use my technology equipment even more if I had more pre-made power points and units. Your teachers will use the technology more if it is not too much work for them. Thus, the more pre-made items you provide to the teachers the more they will use tech in the class. Also, going into classrooms and teaching a class using technology will really show the teachers how successful this is.

Jody
May the force be with you

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Permalink Reply by Colin Matheson on January 16, 2009 at 10:00am

I spoke with some English teachers about blogs/wikis/forums and they had these issues:
this is just one more thing we don't have time for
how does it really help

I guess my job is to really convince them of the bang for the buck they will get (collaboration amongst students which is impossible without an online space)

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Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on January 16, 2009 at 10:17am

Colin---I'm not married to the new technologies, I use some new, some old, some not at all. BUT, big BUT the one tool I am sold on it our student blog. I've noticed over the last 3-4 years that elementary student are doing very little writing in the regular classroom (IMO, NCLB has taken that time away). Students report to me, I teach in a special ed pullout program for gifted kids, that ALL the writing they do in the classroom is assigned, even "creative writing" and many times the writing is not edited at all. SO, what our student blog has done for my students over the last 2.5 years, is to allowed them to write about topics of interest, current events, books, social situations, familiy life, whatever etc. They have also had the opportunity to reflect on what others think and put their thoughts down in writing. Sometimes parents blog with their kids.

Our "rinky dink" little blog has recieved 53,000 visits from 34,000 unique computers since August 7, 2007. We have had visitors from 102 countries and territories. That is a heck of a lot of readin' and writin'. If your teachers want an easy outlet for authentic writing, try a classroom blog. Whew---felt like a preacher there!! N.

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Permalink Reply by S. Penderel on January 16, 2009 at 1:18pm

Exactly! (See my post below this). Until the tech industry recognizes the need for easy to use & unintrusiveness, technology integration will always be held with a very long stick.

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Permalink Reply by S. Penderel on January 16, 2009 at 1:16pm

Currently there is a void of accessible technology for all brackets of teachers. While it is being made a consistent goal of educational planners, the realities are that much of the technology is actually intrusive to the teaching process. Teachers are constantly having to learn "the latest and greatest" new tech tool, and there is no consistency in this aspect of education. Second, what is consistent is the fact that the technology available is far from user-friendly. Last, due to the need for training and support, because the technology is NOT particularly streamlined, this causes teachers to keep their usage of technology to a minimum. Until the industry starts recognizing the need for smoothly integrated programming for the user end, teachers, regardless of age, will keep their integration of technology to a much lower degree than it could be, due to the time required to maintain the "tool" for the classroom.

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Permalink Reply by TI Teachers on February 19, 2009 at 8:45am

Thank you for encouraging teachers to use technology in the classroom. The Texas Instrument Math blog recently featured an entry with tips for using technology in the classroom. The entry was written by an AP calculus teacher and draws on his own personal teaching experiences. To check out his suggestions click here: http://timath.com/blog/?p=237

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Permalink Reply by meL on February 19, 2009 at 12:10pm

I struggle with this on a daily basis. As what the state of Virginia calls an Instructional Technology Resource Teacher (ITRT) your question is one I ponder daily. When I started this job three years ago I knew it would be a tough sell - but I never imagined how tough. Every teacher has a laptop - some are as close to being untouched as one can get doing only the required things (grades and attendance), others are worn out within a year.
The buzzword in our district these days is "differentiated instruction" - it applies here as well. Remember that all your teachers are coming from a different place. They have different experiences, different expectiations. What works to get one to use technology won't necessarily work for any others. I have had greater success hand picking teachers for various technologies than anything else. There are teachers you have who will try anything, some who will try the basics, some won't try anything. Start with the ones who will try something, anything. Once you have gotten through those, try the next group - those who might use it if you can show them it will work for them and they can indeed do it. Use a little healthy competition (the teacher down the hall is using _______ and it is really working, the students love it). Spend some time finding out why a teacher won't use technology. This is frequently a good place to start. If you need to hold their hands the first few times, do it. Let them know you are willing to help out all they need for you to.
Good luck!

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Permalink Reply by Julie DeSutter on May 14, 2009 at 6:28pm

Teachers are the hardest to teach!!! But if you can survey the teacher to see what they know and don't know and then group them based their answers it may work better. Some teachers feel overwhelmed from the start on many technology workshops due to lack of knowledge or relation to their subject matter. But if you group them on what they want or need, it may work better. Also if you offer to teach a teacher's students about a new program or tool it could be a win, win in three ways. One, the teacher gets a break teaching. Two, the teacher sees the students getting excited about technology. Three, the teacher may be learning right along with the students(or thestudents could teach the teacher).

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Permalink Reply by Paul Anderson on May 15, 2009 at 6:43am

I think a quiz/test is better than a survey, as a lot of the time, people tend to either under or over estimate what they know or don't know.

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Permalink Reply by Andrew Marcinek on May 15, 2009 at 9:05am

One successful strategy would be to visit my blog! The mission of my blog is to provide practical ideas for teachers to incorporate technology in their classroom. I hope you like the blog and I look forward to hearing your feedback!

http://iteach20.blogspot.com/

Any questions please ask!

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Permalink Reply by Tracie Weisz on May 15, 2009 at 9:30am

I started a blog this year called EdTechSec with the idea that it would include ideas and tools that teachers who were just beginning could apply in just a "sec". It was slow to take off - many staff in the district didn't even read it! Ironically it was getting decent readership from lots of other places though, so maybe it was helping some folks. I stuck with it and it gradually caught on over time. I still don't have a big in-district readership, but much more than when I started, and my out-of-district followers have steadily increased too.

Part of the problem is that our district will implement programs that are computer based - they require the kids to read and answer multiple choice questions on the computer. The district counts this as ed tech - I do not - but I think herein lies a lot of confusion for teachers who are just starting out with it. Just because they turn on a computer does not mean they are implementing technology in an educational way.

So I guess my lesson for this year and to others trying to motivate their colleagues is to just stick with it. Adoption is slow, but it is still progress that may not have happened were it not for your efforts and belief in the importance of it.

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Permalink Reply by Becky Ernsberger on May 15, 2009 at 4:44pm

When I was an elementary lab teacher and had open lab time part of the day I found that if I could get one teacher to bring a class in and we could complete one project successfully it encouraged others to do the same. I found one teacher that was willing to take the extra step, we created a slideshow project using KidPix and I entered one students project in a state competition. She won 3rd place and I drove the student and her mother to the awards ceremony 2-1/2 hours from our city. The rest was history. Then teachers were beating on the door to get open lab time to create projects that integrated technology. Find the first one...

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