I was recently having what has become a very frequent conversation for me. The conversation surrounds the different ways of ensuring students get the IT skills they need, through IT classes or IT in the classroom, through IT lessons or integrated IT in the classroom, through IT teachers or classroom teachers, in computer labs or in classrooms with laptops, on a schedule or as needed.
I found myself saying something I have grown fond of and that is “Computer teachers, or integration specialists if you like, are charged with helping teachers integrate IT into their lessons. We expect that from them. But classroom teachers are not formally charged with getting help.” (I am long-winded apparently) Classroom teachers are not expected to integrate IT in a formalized way, like in their job description or through performance evaluation criteria (at least not in the schools I have worked at). Even when you have a whiz-bang IT specialist who gets out there and plans with teachers, it too often is an uphill battle and that person can become very tired of making folks do things they don’t want to do and change when they are happy doing what they are doing. If integration doesn’t happen, the IT specialist is seen as ineffectual but classroom teachers are rarely seen as complicit in that failure, at least not openly and individually. “They” may be seen as such, as a grade level or team, if they act as such as a grade level or team, but classroom teachers are rarely fired because they did not integrate technology into their curriculum (at least not in the schools I have worked at).
What makes teachers learn new methods, integrate technology and change their practice? What makes them embrace tech tools in their teaching? What would make them go to the IT specialist spontaneously and say “Hey I want to learn about podcasting because my students need to know how to do that to improve their learning.”
And then it hit me (I am slow on the uptake apparently). That is exactly what would make them say such a thing: if it were true and they knew it and believed it to be so. If a teacher knew that the students in their classroom would learn better, more, and with greater effect, because of an IT tool, they would want to use it.
Teachers will do what is best for kids or what they believe is best for kids. That is the IT imperative. Professional educators will change their practice and learn new skills if it will benefit the kids. PD, therefore, must make that case. Not the case that IT is easy or makes teaching or learning easier. It doesn’t. IT often makes things take longer and is actually harder. But the benefits, the long term learning benefits, outweigh that. PD must show that, convincingly and repeatedly.