ARE TEACHERS REALLY SCARED OF TECHNOLOGY?
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Posted 7 months ago
To paint a profession, especially one as diverse as the teaching profession in one wide brush stroke as to say "Technology may be 'too scary' for teachers" (Wednesday, June 10, Enterprise-Bulletin) does a disservice to the profession and to teachers. There are incredible activities and discussions taking place and being completed with amazing technologies within our schools with limited resources, limited funding and continual technological challenges. Our Information Technology school board employees work hard at maintaining and implementing this technology.
At Stayner Collegiate Institute we are actually losing an entire computer room this coming fall through the complicated reasoning of the Provincial Funding formula. It will now be even more difficult for teachers to sign out a computer room for their classes to use the teacher's website, wiki, blog, and other on-line resources.
We have two Simcoe County District School Board funded SMART Boards at SCI, one that is portable and one that is mounted. The SMART technologies are being promoted by our school board and are wonderful teaching tools. There is one other that has been funded by an outside agency, which is mounted to the wall of a classroom. It is extremely cumbersome and time consuming, especially between classes, to get the portable SMART Board into a small elevator to access any of our second floor classes. Personally, I am not afraid of the SMART Board technology.
However, because the technology is not readily available and easily accessible when and where needed, it becomes an inefficient use of time to implement the technology.
Teachers do their best to make technology work in the classroom when and where it is available. There are teachers using their own iPods, home CD/DVD burners and USB memory sticks in the classroom with existing TVs to transfer relevant video clips and information to view in class. Many of these video clips can only be researched, made transferable at home, and then brought to school because many relevant and appropriate websites are blocked on our school computer systems.
I have heard rumours that our school board computer system may soon have a new, more effective Internet screening system, which would be greatly welcomed.
The use of the word technology confuses me in the Enterprise-Bulletin article. What is meant by the use of the term technology? Is it the latest cell phone, the latest iTouch, or newest YouTube video about the newest technology, or does technology mean the theories and applications of quantum computing, nanotechnologies or robotics (SCI has the only FIRST Robotics Team in the SCDSB)?
Technology is changing exponentially. A human being cannot keep up with all the ever-increasing advancements in technology. We need to rethink our educational model of delivering knowledge that can be easily acquired on Google and as a video on YouTube. We need to guide students to critically analyze the information and skills being shown to them. In my classes I need to teach students how to effectively and critically use a search engine like Google. They have known and used the Internet their wholes lives. But, just like me, they know some technology and I know some technology. We cannot know ALL technology. We must remember that technology is a tool.
I would be naïve to believe that I know more than my students about certain technologies. I do not find this to be scary. Today's classroom needs to be a shared experience of learning, application and wisdom. Focusing on producing a worker for the work force is an outdated concept, which we still are using. Our current model of education is still based on producing workers for the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s. "It's estimated that a week's read of the New York Times contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a lifetime in the 18th century." (Saul, R. et al; Information Anxiety 2, Published by Que, 2001). Imagine that, more information in one week than an entire lifetime! With so much information and so many skill sets available at the click of a mouse button it would be foolish and arrogant to think that I know more than some of my students in many areas. It is a big connected world out there and I believe I am a Guide. We must remember that technology is a tool.
There needs to be a balance of technology. We must learn and know when to turn off technology to be present in the living world that sustains us. Technology is not our entire life, only part of it. When it becomes our lives then it becomes a status symbol, an escape, an addiction. Modeling and teaching balance is extremely important in our world. It would be wise for all of us to realize and treat technology as a tool.
We are a community of learners and as such we can learn from each other no matter what age, what background and what profession we come from in this ever fast paced and information packed world.
TY MCNEA
Highschool teacher, Stayner
