For over a decade now I have worked as a technology teacher at international schools in Asia.\u00a0 Schools with excellent technology resources and excellent teachers.\u00a0 Why then does high-quality technology integration prove so elusive?\u00a0 What is it that stands in the way of effective collaborative teaching?\u00a0 I think the answer lies in several areas of the planning process and it is these unresolved pitfalls that hinder quality integration.<\/p>\n
Firstly, what do I mean by quality integration?\u00a0 We all know it when we see it and when we are involved in it.\u00a0 Those rare times when a unit is planned involving many teachers, each contributing their areas of strength and spurring each other on with their enthusiasm.\u00a0 The times when many classes are involved in large projects and students are moving about from one classroom to another, to the lab and library and back and maybe even to the art rooms and all students are actively engaged in meaningful learning experiences.\u00a0 Times when it seems like utter chaos perhaps but you can feel the energy and the enthusiasm and the learning seems almost palpable.\u00a0 Each teacher involved is working to their strengths and offering students something unique and the students in turn are engaged in a variety of learning opportunities, catering to their auditory, visual and kinesthetic needs.\u00a0 This is quality integration because many teachers and disciplines are involved and everyone is working towards a common set of goals and it is purposeful and meaningful to the curriculum.<\/p>\n
There are a few key ideas here that hint at the reason that regular, day-to-day technology integration doesn\u2019t always happen.\u00a0 One thing is scale.\u00a0 In these kind of huge projects, involving all classes at a grade level or a division or even a whole school, it is usually a large-scale involvement that simply can\u2019t be sustained all the time.\u00a0 Getting so many people involved is hard and takes a lot of committment and energy, so we only want to do it if it is \u201cworth it\u201d and accomplishes a lot.\u00a0 Day-to-day tech integration does not meet this criteria and so it does not receive the same kind of energy and enthusiasm.<\/p>\n
Another thing is planning ahead.\u00a0 Large-scale themes, units and projects involving many teachers work well if they are well-planned and everyone is involved at the beginning stages of the planning.\u00a0 This is a crucial error in what I often see happen with integrated technology lessons and units.\u00a0 Typically, teachers plan a unit either alone or with a colleague or with their grade-level team and then, when they are all done, they approach the librarian, or the art department or technology teacher and ask them how they can support the unit.\u00a0 Inevitably this creates more work, adds lesson to the unit and reinforces the idea that technology, for example, is an add-on.\u00a0 How can technology enrich our unit?\u00a0 How can it extend our unit?\u00a0 While these are not bad questions, the technology teacher, the librarian and any other teachers involved need to be in on the ground floor.\u00a0 They need to be a part of the planning process from the outset and they need to ask slightly different questions:<\/p>\n
\n\n
- How will students learn in the unit?<\/li>\n
- How will the teacher convey important information?<\/li>\n
- How will the students work, individually or collaboratively?<\/li>\n
- Where will they find the information they need?<\/li>\n
- How will they process that information?<\/li>\n
- What tools will they use to organize and analyse their facts or data?<\/li>\n
- How will they communicate their learning to their peers?<\/li>\n
- Who is their audience for their final product?<\/li>\n
- How will they convey their learning to their audience?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n
For each of these questions one can then ask, How can technology enrich the unit?\u00a0 How can it extend the learning?\u00a0 How can it meet the diverse needs of my learners?<\/p>\n
Unfortunately the recent emphasis on standards and benchmarks has shifted the focus away from technology as a tool and on to technology as a distinct curricular area.\u00a0 With technology standards and benchmarks and technology co-ordinators or technology teachers (call them what you like) taking on the role of ensuring they are \u201cmet\u201d by students, there is a seemingly unanswerable question of responsibility.\u00a0 Technology integration is based on the idea that technology is a tool and that it is best taught in the context of the classroom curriculum.\u00a0 Ergo integrated lessons need to grow out of the classroom curriculum.\u00a0 Classroom teachers have enough on their plates these days, with their own standards and benchmarks and if asked would likely tell you that it is the technology teacher\u2019s responsibility to plan lessons and units that meet their own standards and benchmarks.\u00a0 Technology teachers\/coordinators\/integration specialists, myself included, generally respond that it is a collaborative process.\u00a0 We must work together to plan integrated lessons and units and ensure that students are meeting their classroom benchmarks as well as the technology benchmarks in some kind of magical unit that kills two birds with one stone.\u00a0 The problem is that that is very difficult to do and extremely difficult to do every week.<\/p>\n
How then do we tie this all together and ensure quality integration?\u00a0 Firstly, I would argue that we need to get shift our focus away from technology standards and benchmarks.\u00a0 Not throwing them out entirely, but looking at them from a different angle perhaps and shining the light on the classroom curriculum more brightly.\u00a0 Teachers do indeed have much to do, much curriculum to cover (or uncover) but we can no longer, in the 21st century, look at effective student learning without technology.\u00a0 Reading, bias, accuracy of information, writing, editing, publishing, mathematics, data analysis, graphing, social studies, research, questioning, science, art and music are all done with technology these days.\u00a0 Not using technology tools to teach and learn in the classroom is just not \u201cgood teaching\u201d.\u00a0 Can we teach reading and writing and \u2018rithmetic without computers?\u00a0 Of course we can.\u00a0 Should we?\u00a0 I would argue no, we should not.\u00a0 It is not a reality for our students to read only paper books, to only hand-write stories and essays and look solely at a paper map to find their way.\u00a0 Most of what they will read for pleasure or information is digital even now.\u00a0 Blogs, chats, emails and text messages are what they are writing today.\u00a0 GPS and digital maps rich with added information are already standard ways of finding your way from point A to point B.\u00a0 We must look at our classroom curriculum and find where the technology belongs.\u00a0 Answering all the questions posed above with technology in mind, from the outset.<\/p>\n
Who should be doing this?\u00a0 Teachers of course.\u00a0 Classroom teachers have a big job, just as they always have.\u00a0 They need to prepare their students for their present and future lives.\u00a0 How can teachers be experts in Language Arts, Math AND Technology?\u00a0 That is an old way of looking at 21st century curriculum.\u00a0 To be an expert in Language Arts is to know the appropriate digital tools for your students and to know them well enough to teach with them.\u00a0 That has always been the case and is still is.\u00a0 Teachers do not need to be experts in all technologies.\u00a0 They do not need to know everything there is to know about MS Word or the Internet.\u00a0 They need to know enough to teach their students what they need to know.\u00a0 This is the same thing teachers have always needed to know.\u00a0 They need to know their own curriculum and how to teach it.<\/p>\n
So let\u2019s start there.\u00a0 What do your students need to know?\u00a0 What do they need to be able to do in Math at your grade level?\u00a0 What do they need to be able to do to effectively communicate what they have learned?\u00a0 That is what you need to know and be able to teach them.<\/p>\n
Does that mean we no longer need technology teachers, co-ordinators and integration specialists?\u00a0 Yes and no.\u00a0 I think we need to re-think their role and maybe even give them a new name.\u00a0 A good tech specialist (let\u2019s call them just that for now) needs to be a staff trainer, a good teacher, one who is up on the latest technology tools, one who knows curriculum, has a good knowledge of what is developmentally appropriate, is good with people, is helpful and can work collaboratively with other teachers.\u00a0 And, if we are truly committed to supporting teachers in teaching 21st century curriculum, we may actually need more of them.\u00a0 If students are using technology more regularly in the classroom, in the library, in the music classes, in the art rooms and out in the field, on computers, with handhelds, on laptops, on tablets, and things we can not imagine today, we will need tech specialists on hand to support teachers whenever and whenever necessary.<\/p>\n
I could go on but will save some for another post, another day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
How can we teach students 21st century skills? Collaboration is one of the skills students will need so we must model that in our teaching. Classroom teachers and technology integration specialists working together can design and deliver better integrated lessons than either one working in isolation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,42,70],"class_list":["post-10","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-learning","tag-curriculum","tag-integration","tag-student"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcglaysia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcglaysia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcglaysia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcglaysia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcglaysia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcglaysia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcglaysia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcglaysia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcglaysia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}