#octel *Activity 0.1: What’s my big question about TEL?*
I’m involved in training teachers to use technology and so my question really relates to that, and it’s very much a social/political one: will teachers who will not or cannot get on board with educational technology find themselves increasingly marginalized in their work?
I ask this question because where I work there are teachers who steadfastly refuse to engage with the technology available to them, who avoid using the interactive whiteboards in the classroom or the VLE that’s set up for them to use with their classes. And there are others who clearly want to use technology with their students – and to a certain degree feel pressured into doing so by the students and by the institution – but who struggle with some of the most basic skills needed to use it effectively.
Until recently I think this was fine, technology was in its infancy in education and there was little external pressure for teachers to integrate technology in their lessons. But that’s changing now, the students own and bring a lot of technology to the classroom and they expect a modern university/school to integrate it seamlessly into their studies. I see it in the feedback students give about teachers, they often raise questions about teachers who fail to integrate it into the classroom.
And it’s tough for a lot of teachers, some of them have come to technology very late in their careers and they struggle with basic computing concepts (file systems, saving documents, bookmarks, shared drives etc) and you can see them drowning in this need to keep up with the latest innovations. It’s my job to help them with this, but it’s a slow process, they have so many other things they have to do in their job and life that keeping up with technology is just another additional burden.
I really love technology and that spurs me to learn more about it, join courses such as this, but I’m also acutely aware that I’m trying to future-proof myself a little bit. I need to support my family, keep my job, improve my prospects for promotion and staying up to date with educational technology is likely to help me do this. But for those teachers who see technology as a threat I wonder how easy it’s going to be for them to adjust to this new way of doing things.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, how you perceive your role as a teacher changing as technology becomes more and more integrated and expected in the classroom. Do you find technology intrinsically interesting as a tool for enhancing learning or do you feel obliged to keep up with it because of external pressure? Or a bit of both?
