Friday, January 07, 2005

Teaching with Technology

Teaching with Technology: Creating Student-Centered Classrooms states that for effective change to occur teachers must be aware of their own beliefs AND they must also become aware of alternative belief systems and experience the positives of those. Professional Development can help teachers to investigate those alternative beliefs.

As technology specialists, one of the big dangers of professional development is to think of the technology professional development as something isolated from good teaching practice. Far too often, we tend to focus on the technology – the hardware or the software. This is not effective – it does not compel teachers to confront their beliefs, and it does not provide any context for their learning. Hence, for the majority of teachers who attend these professional development sessions, learning becomes short term and meaningless, with little occurring after initial instruction. Good technology professional development is integrated into other professional development initiatives of the school. For example, a school may have brain-based research or Understanding By Design as a professional development focus. It would be effective technology professional development if the technology pieces were woven into the instruction in the focus areas, teaching the technology tools as needed, not in isolation. Teachers would acquire the technology skills along with the new models of learning, giving meaning to both. It’s not only good teaching practice, but it is modeling good technology use and how it relates to pedagogy. Another reason not to isolate technology professional development: Technology is not the single answer (there is no single answer) to school change. It can certainly play a significant role. The fact is, even without technology, we could still make school interesting, motivating, student-centered, and all that other good stuff.

Another big piece of the professional development puzzle is following through. The flaw with most professional development as run in our schools is that we make no effort to support teachers in moving to the next step. Without that support, it is too easy for the teacher to give in to the pressures of time and energy. Professional development must have follow-up support built in, whether it be collaboration with peers, or follow up with a curriculum or technology specialist as appropriate. This tends to require extra money and is therefore cut when the going gets rough. What school systems don’t realize is they negate all their previous efforts and investment when they don’t provide follow up and support.

We also need to think of new models for professional development. One size fits all is not appropriate. We wouldn’t teach children that way, so why provide professional development to teachers that way? The days of the entire faculty being talked at should be over. We need to assess the needs of our teachers and provide the opportunities and support for them to grow in meaningful ways. We also need to think outside of the box in how we structure the delivery of professional development services. Instead of whole-day in-services, maybe an hourly requirement each year would be more effective. Teachers, along with their administration, or teaching colleagues could develop collaborative plans that are accomplished after hours in ways that they find effective and meaningful.

Posted by Randy on 01/07 at 09:21 PM
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