About a week ago I 
was at a conference and was asked what do you do with those teachers fast approaching retirement who don’t want, or feel the need to integrate ICT into their learning. I was not really happy with the answer that I gave; which was that I had seen many teachers close to retirement re-energised to the point where they have delayed their retirement. I was not really happy because this is a real issue in many schools and it needs addressing.
I address this issue in Introduction of my book ‘Learning with ICT’ which I will paste below.
I was asked the question again at the conference dinner, and this time I nailed the answer. The problem with arguing with people about this issue is that they try to elevate it to an intellectual / rational level, whatever their position. The reality though is that whenever there is poor teaching, students are disadvantaged, they are harmed. Not integrating ICT is poor teaching if your students live daily in a digitally rich environment. In addressing this issue we need to include the voice of those that are harmed by it.
My answer at the conference dinner was to get half a dozen student and parents from that teacher’s class and get the teacher to discuss their position to this audience. When exposed to the victims of their actions, most people will change their position.
Cheers
Peter @Kent3Ed
Introduction – Why integrate technology?
♦ My teaching is sound, the students I teach do well in state and national testing. Why should I change and risk these results?
♦ I have heard that the research evidence around the effectiveness of using ICT is inconclusive.
♦ I cannot be expected to use technology in my classes until I have had Professional Development.
♦ Students get enough computing at home, they don’t need more of it at school.
♦ I find that technology ‘dumbs down’ my class. All students do is copy and paste from the internet, they never analysis the information.
♦ The ICT is unreliable, it doesn’t always work and it needs to. When it is going to work all the time I will use it.
Reasons not to integrate ICT into teaching and learning are numerous. On the surface each of the reasons listed above seem reasonable. Indeed, a great deal of the motivation behind teacher resistance to the idea of ICT integration isn’t due to petulance, but from a belief that the educational costs and risks associated with integrating technology outweigh the often elusive benefits.
There are a variety of ‘institutional’ reasons why teachers should integrate ICT into the curriculum. Virtually every modern curriculum dictates that students are to have technology integrated in their learning. In addition the increasing provision of ICT equipment to schools from governments and central authorities often comes with directives that the equipment will be used. However mandating that teachers must use technology is rarely successful, especially when the legitimate concerns that teachers raise are not addressed.
Teachers are professionals, they plan, prepare and deliver an educational program that aims to maximise student learning. If there is an expectation that teachers to integrate ICT into their teaching practice then there is a need to respect their professionalism and provide a rationale as to why it is in students’ best interests that computers and other technologies be integrated into student learning. When teachers understand the educational imperative underpinning the integration of technology, their application of ICT will be more committed, more authentic and more successful as a result. School leaders need to address and allay the concerns that many teachers have regarding the integration of technology; they must create cultures that encourage the integration of technology rather than just give orders.
In this spirit what follows are brief responses to the concerns raised earlier; brief answers to the ‘why’ ICT should be integrated into student learning.
♦ My teaching is sound, the students I teach generally do well in state and national testing. Why should I change and risk these results?
Firstly if your underlying teaching is sound then you are ideally placed to start introducing technology. Technology serves to amplify your teaching ability. If your teaching strategies are good, technology will improve them.
As an example, a well thought out inquiry based library research assignment is a good teaching strategy. However by expanding the assignment beyond the library, simply by using the internet, instantly increases the sources of information that students can draw upon, and in doing so also increase the level of intellectual rigor and analysis required by students to do the assignment well. The use of technology here (by including the internet) has not fundamentally changed the teaching strategy; it has made it better, amplified its effectiveness.
♦ I have heard that the research evidence around the effectiveness of using ICT is inconclusive.
Just as technology will make good teaching better, it will also have a detrimental effect on mediocre teaching strategies, often making them dreadful. It is the quality of the underlying teaching strategy that is important to consider when integrating technology. In many respects this is what accounts for much of the inconclusive research evidence.
Research studies that look at the question ‘Does ICT improve student outcomes?’ will always have mixed results. This is because teaching strategies that are being used to implement the technology range from inspired to appalling. Drill and practice activities and rote learning are very easy to implement using ICT. Indeed when a teacher turns their overhead transparencies into a PowerPoint presentation they are probably gaining very little pedagogically. If this teacher then set the student a task to make their own PowerPoint, based on the information that was presented to them……. And we wonder where the terms ‘death by PowerPoint’ and ‘PowerPointlessness’ comes from. As always the key is to ensure that the underlying teaching and learning strategies are relevant, engaging and encourage higher order thinking.
♦ I cannot be expected to use technology in my classes until I have had Professional Development.
Unfortunately this is an attitude or a way of thinking that we are going to have to let go. As a minimum we are going to have to re-define what we understand by Professional Development.
The rate that new software and hardware is being developed is increasing to at such a fast rate that into the future it will be increasingly unusual to have ‘formal professional development courses’ around the use of specific software applications or pieces of hardware. Individuals and teaching teams will need to develop the ability to ‘have a go’, ‘think about it’ and ‘work it out’. Our Professional Development will be within our networks, being able to learn from those that we work with or talk to in our wider professional network. This network will include our teaching colleagues in the next classroom, as well as teachers that we have never met, but who write blogs or post information to teacher community websites like teachertube.com. We undertake this style of personal learning in our everyday life, and have done for some time. On the whole we are good at this style of finding things out. There was never any formal professional development on how to withdraw money from an auto-teller, or make a purchase via eBay, we just had a go. There were never any courses on how to text message from a mobile phone. In actual fact the ‘have a go’, ‘think about it’ and ‘work it out attitude’ is a very successful strategy. As an example well over 100 million people have MySpace accounts, very few would have had any formal Professional Development on how MySpace operates.
Of course the ‘have a go’, ‘think about it’ and ‘work it out’ mindset is just another way to describe life long learning. What is required is that this mindset is consciously applied to our work when we integrate new technologies into our teaching practice.
♦ Students get enough computing at home, they don’t need more of it at school.
In the main, students do have a great deal of exposure to computers, TV and digital technologies in their lives outside of school. I don’t think anyone would dispute that, the question is how should schools and teachers respond to this. Should we use this as a reason for not using technology in schools?
‘Almost all of the students that I have taught have spoken English extensively at home. For many of them that was the only language that they spoke outside of school. I think they are getting too much English, I think that schools shouldn’t teach in English rather they should only teach in Greek, Chinese or Hindi.’
This of course is an absurd line of reasoning, but in many respects it is similar to the ‘students get enough technology at home’ argument. Most students and even most adults use technology regularly throughout their day. They rarely use technology for its on sake; it is what they use the technology for that is important to them. People use technology to communicate with others, to share information, to plan their time, to find stuff out, and to be entertained. Removing technology from the daily lives of most people, especially students, would make it difficult for them to communicate, find stuff out, plan their time and share information. It would make it difficult for student’s to effectively reach their potential at school, and it would certainly not prepare them for the world of work.
♦ I find that technology ‘dumbs down’ my class. All students do is copy and paste from the internet, they never analysis the information. It is too easy for students to cheat by handing in someone else’s work.
It is almost clichéd to say that ICT is just a tool, but that is all it is. ‘Cutting and pasting’ text, or ‘copying’ as it used to be known has been around for a very long time. When I was in high school in the 80s I copied out of encyclopaedias in the school library from time to time. Why did I (and most of my class) do this? Mainly it was a mixture of two reasons. Firstly, the expectations set for us by our teacher were so low that as long as the information copied was appropriate to the assignment it was always accepted. The teacher seemed to want to know that we could read and regurgitate an answer. The second reason that we did not undertake the intellectually challenging task of researching and analysing the information ourselves is that the subject matter failed to interest or hold any relevance for us. In summary some of the teachers that I had were of a poor quality, they created an environment were I wanted to copy and then they accepted it when I did. The quality of the teaching that takes place is the most important school-based influence on the standard of student learning. Making lessons significant to students’ lives; creating high levels of intellectual quality within the classroom; and creating an environment that sets high expectations and encourages all students to participate are qualities that make up high quality teaching. When someone states that ‘ICT dumbs down your class’ reality is that the teacher is dumbing down their own class. The ICT is just making this more obvious.
♦ The ICT is unreliable, it doesn’t always work and it needs to. When it is going to work all the time I will use it.
I agree with the first part of this statement completely. ICT should work all the time and it doesn’t. Having said that it is also true to say students should behaviour all of the time, and they don’t.
Teachers in the main cope very well with less than perfect behaviour from students. They are able to cope because they have put a great deal of planning and thought into preparing a classroom culture that encourages most students to do the right thing most of the time. In the instances where a student does behave inappropriately the teacher has a range of strategies to either guide the student back on track, or to minimise the negative effects of the behaviour.
While we would all like technology to behave itself all of the time, it would be unrealistic to expect that it will and teachers should plan accordingly. The maintenance of the ICT environment and the technical support provided to teachers needs to be well planned to ensure that most of the technology will function properly most of the time. Also teachers should have a range of strategies to fix minor problems (usually by asking the students), or to minimise the negative effects of ICT malfunctions on the overall operation of their teaching and learning program.
100% reliable ICT infrastructure will always be the ideal, but it will never be achievable. Schools and teachers need to accept this and have plans and strategies in place to minimise the effect of teaching and learning on the occasions where the technology does not work.
