Teaching+with+Technology+-+Week+5

What has weighed heaviest on my mind this week after watching the videos and doing the reading, is the difference between the level of technology integration the administrators want and expect from their teachers, and what is being done to make this possible. For the most part, administrators are doing a great job of instilling the importance of technology integration to their teachers, but fall short in assisting them in doing this. My school is finally starting to designate professional development time for technology. This is the first year of doing so, and I have been very impressed. The part that is missing, that would get more teachers to use the technology they are learning about is extra planning time every nine weeks, devoted to technology integration. It is going to take awhile for the teachers to figure out how they could integrate the technology they are learning about into their class, so until they are allotted time to plan for it a lot of teachers are not going to use it in their classroom. Another problem that a lot of schools are facing, mine being one of them, is they are not yet 1 to 1, computers to students. Without all the students having access all the time, it’s going to be difficult for teachers to integrate technology. It is much harder to use technology when you have to wait for an available time to open up in the computer lab, then you have to haul your class down, wasting precious time transitioning to and from the lab.

The problem does not lay solely with administration. The state also wants us to use more technology in the classroom, yet no change has been made to the form of standardized testing. Many teachers are not going to be willing to adopt technology into their teaching as long as the method to evaluate their teaching and their students’ progress is a traditional pencil to paper test. Law makers and politicians, with the aid of educators, need to decide what skills are important for students to know when exiting high school and the test should be in a format, and with the right level of importance, to ensure that the teachers are able to give students those skills.