using technology in education, one faculty's responses to questions

[Connie Weber]

A tech-friend of mine used the brilliant strategy of asking the faculty he's on to write down their fears regarding technology. As he describes it, he gave people only about a minute, so presumably the responses are rather quick and "gut" level. He collected the responses in a bucket. Then he asked people to say what they're excited about--after he made it clear that everyone would be learning to use technology--and everyone would be expected to move ahead this year (with support).

Here's what people said:


I FEAR…
• That it doesn’t perform as expected
• I feel like a dinosaur in a world of eagles.
• I’m afraid I’ll do something to everything I’m working on and it will disappear, so I’m tentative.
• Losing documents that don’t come up in the FIND button.
• Finding the right tech to match the concept (in a timely fashion, at the appropriate level)
• Time to find and organize for class.
• Not knowing the next step without assistance.
• No time to use in class (frustration)
• The kids will know WAY more than I do.
• Not keeping up with all the “systems” currently in use at the school.
• The technology itself will become the primary focus, rather than simply a tool to make learning easier and more dynamic.
• Not knowing how to do much on the computer beyond emailing and RenWeb.
• Getting stuck in the middle of trying something and not being able to finish.
• Not being able to troubleshoot when the kids run into glitches.
• Concerned that the principles, relationships, processes occasionally get lost in the “glamour” of technology.
• It will stall, stop working.
• Too many wires.
• That it will not operate correctly
• The focus will be on the tech, not the subject.
• Too much time to get all tech-y with it
• It steals soul
• Trying something new
• That I don’t know how to use much of it yet and what is available.
• Can’t figure how to do things.
• Increased demands that take time away from time with the students
• When in a hurry something won’t work
• My ineptitude will be revealed to the kids
• I will start something that then won’t work—I can’t start it again, make it go, use it.
• That training I receive today will be forgotten before I need to use it.
• Privacy protection
• Takes a lot of time
• Remembering my passwords
• Frustrated that printers don’t do what I ask them to.
• That it “won’t work”
• Programs that work best for classroom needs.
• Biggest fear when things don’t work especially when the kids are flying along, it is so deflating.
• Not really afraid of much…time gets in my way and lack of equipment (it is really hard to get the lab)
• Fear nothing
• That the technology won’t work when it is time to teach.
• Kids will forget how to do it without technology (oh and PowerPoint)
• That I will accidentally delete something by pressing the wrong thing.
• Not knowing how to do a task.
• The server goes down.
• No fear
• Looking stupid
• Lack of time to figure it out.
• Not knowing what is planned.
• That everything will be so documented it will bite you later.


I AM MOST EXCITED ABOUT…
• Learning new things and “spicing” up my curriculum
• Voice activated programs for kids that don’t read fluently
• Having “techno-buddies” to scout things for Academic Support systems
• Computer use of students’ creativity in unique ways
• It will make things easier i.e. some things will take less time.
• Learning how much the computer can actually do.
• Saving me lots of time
• Making curriculum coordination possible.
• Podcasting
• Movies
• Connecting with others
• Projectors, document scanners in every classroom
• Students and faculty having access to technology throughout the school—not just “in the labs”
• Total digital immersion—24/7 Flat World Learning
• Would like to have more at finger tips
• Learning how …
• Opening up a whole new world
• Sharing so much more with the kids
• Getting info to the students without paper
• Avoiding it at all costs
• Using the big screen
• Possibilities of new lessons
• Being able to switch between different mediums within seconds of each other for a more vibrant, diverse environment
• The potential of educational social networking
• Ease of report cards
• Enhanced communications everywhere in every way
• Parents Web
• Learning on how to use more in my class
• Learning how to do new things with confidence and applying it to the classroom
• Efficient and professional presentations
• Having a system where parents can easily update their own job.
• Cutting work load by using data already collected.
• Nothing except for looking things up
• Make our communication/job easier
• Makes learning come alive for kids.
• Animations and quick you-tubing
• Smartboards, nings, kids publishing and talking/thinking online
• Technology helping student achievement
• Photos
• Kids are fascinated with technology, I love it, makes things more efficient, we can reach out to others.
• The kids love it, it turns them on.
• Skyping my daughters in faraway places
• Writers workshop
• About the way it captures attention and reinforces what I teach
• My blog
• Color/picture drag the easier writing program for younger kids
• Making routine tasks more exciting and fun

Any thoughts on the lists? Observations? What do these lists reveal and what would you advise the tech person to get going on?

[Ian Carmichael]

Thanks Linda,
You've brought a nice perspective to this discussion. More restrained!! (Man, check out some of our other discussions! If you think your even-handed comments are unrestrained, some of our other stuff here looks like tactical nuclear strikes!)
But the techno evangelists, like the other evangelists are right insofar as
"If you truly believe you (and all your household) can be saved". But salvation is not from buying my package, it's using the truth that the package contains (assuming that the package contains any truth at all.)
Back in the early days of desktop publishing, there was a phenomenon called the "Moses factor" - if you got you're document formatted to look authoritative and impressive, it was was taken with far more seriousness than the same thing churned out on the office selectric, or the Gestetner. Often it was taken with far more seriousness than it deserved. Web 2.0 qua Web 2.0 means nothing. Any more than a book is intrinsically valuable, or chalk and slate is an unmitigated harbinger of good, truth and freedom. (I guess in these days of reification that should be "Good,Truth and Freedom"!)
As always, it's the use to which we put the tool which is potentially person- and therefore world-changing. (or at the other pole person- and therefore world-denying.)

[Ed Jones]

Linda, go forth and defend!!

I am actually on this board because I was doing research for a paper with the theme that blogging wasted too much time, generated too little informedness, and distracted attention from the work of building next generation learning systems --systems that made the read multi-sensory learning leaps we need.

Given how much time I have taken from programming and put into issuing my opinions, I am proving myself right.

[Laura Gibbs]

Hi Ed, I don't see how you can blame blogging as a tool for the choices you make about how to use it...?

In terms of the kind of blogging and online discussion we do at Fireside (admittedly very different from the blogging I use in teaching my classes), I find the time for reflection is extremely valuable.

When I worked in a traditional office, the kind of random conversations I would have with the people I shared offices with or people in the break room were mostly very empty - friendly enough, but empty, largely because of the constraints of not being able to choose as freely from a range of conversations to participate in. If I walked into the break room at 9:05 AM on some particular morning, there would just be one or two conversations I could participate in.

I find the random conversations I have here at Fireside (my equivalent of the break room), where the asynchronous format means I will ALWAYS find an interesting conversation somewhere, to be extremely productive by comparison.

[Ed Jones]

Laura, the same way I blame beer!

Seriously,...any one of us here would be willing to admit that learning modalities play a huge role in the efficacy by which people learn. Text on a screen isn't that effective a way to learn for many (most?) people.

Dissing on those people seems a bit incomplete.

[Laura Gibbs]

I guess for me the comparison is text on screen (with images) as opposed to books in print (usually without images, for the kinds of books I would be using with my students). Text with images, which my students can combine while blogging, is way more effective for them than text with no images. What I am really waiting for is the screen they can write on without using a keyboard - and that will be arriving soon enough. The iPod Touch has got me all fired up for what that will be like - add in some voice recognition, and the world of the screen looks very good to me, far better than a book.

I'm no sure who you think I am dissing - I am just pointing out that for me blogging has been a godsend and has made my life as a teacher way better - both in terms of what I can achieve with my students and the interactions I have with colleagues.

[Skip Zilla]

Jim became a friend of mine back in 1990. Rhoda and Jim moved into our rural community when Jim was severed from his position as president of a steel company for a drinking problem; Rhoda joined our church choir, singing the alto part in the Lutheran hymnal along with my wife Karin, while I sang either the bass or tenor parts. Although Jim couldn't carry a tune and didn't sing in the choir, he did come to Wednesday night practices, which allowed us to get better acquainted. Jim and Rhoda planned to use his severance money to start-up a restaurant in a nearby historic tavern which on numerous occasions was a travel stop for George Washington on his travels west (My house was built in 1790 not far off Washington's route--what became the National Road--old Route 40 through the state of Maryland.).

When Jim learned that I "knew something about computers," he asked if I'd consider helping him "computerize" his new business. Despite having no business hours available to take on his request, I invited him to come over the next Sunday afternoon and told him to bring along whatever documents he had been using to develop his business plan.

When Jim arrived I sat him down beside me in front of the relatively new I386 desktop PC I was then using for managing my own business operations and for developing (ancient) Windows/MS-DOS software applications. I turned on the PC and opened Borland's then first-class spreadsheet application and began to ask Jim business questions. As he replied to my questions, i added labels to columns and rows and entered dates and anticipated money amounts into what "we" were creating that was part balance-sheet-like and part financial-business-plan-like. As I moused and typed, we built the spreadsheet little by little--inserting missing business factors and managing the data in columns and rows with mathematical spreadsheet functions as we went along. Within an hour and a half Jim saw electronically what he hadn't seen in as interrelated a way before about the monetary flows and shape of his business.

Jim told me that he had had a couple of people who staffed his "computer" department at the steel company, but he had never seen so clearly the power of dynamic, interactive business information development before; the standard printouts he had been used to hadn't allowed him to immediately see the information effect of "what if" adjustments in the data. Jim ran down stairs from my home office to my home's kitchen to tell Rhoda and Karin how great it was to "see" how to proceed and to proclaim me as the wizard that would ensure his business success.

Although I went on to completely design and implement Jim and Rhoda's restaurant business system, trained them and a trusted assistant to run it, and enjoyed an open table for Karin and me to dine splendidly nearly every week for many months, Jim sadly couldn't stop drinking--in fact, being nearer to a well-stocked restaurant bar only compounded his inability to reform his ways and rid himself of alcoholism. Restaurants are one of the toughest businesses to build into long-term successes even when their owners have no serious medical problems; Jim and Rhoda's business lasted for about two years, before it closed and they sadly moved to live in a trailer in Florida. Rhoda called us about a year after they moved to tell us the heartbreaking news that Jim had shot himself and died a sorry man.

Wanting (to learn how to use) a new technology is all about whether or not people discover for themselves the amazing new effectiveness it gives them to do what they didn't know was even possible for them to do. That "discovery for yourself" experience is the hook to want to learn. Otherwise, the experience is merely what someone else wants you do, which most of the time is like going to the dentist, at worst, and like kissing your sister at best.

[Connie Weber]

A friend just showed me the video "Brave New World Wide Web" by David Truss, on both Youtube and his blog "Pair-a-dimes."

Well worth the viewing... points out a lot of contrasts, such as before and after getting used to using technology in education. Lively, creative, thought-producing. Thank you once again, David Truss!

[Sue Palmer]

Hello Everyone!

This is a very interesting post and I love the idea behind it. "Leave your fears in the bucket".

As a high school teacher has been ahead of the curve in my use of technology in my school, it is interesting to observe my colleagues reaction to my work and initiatives of our district. The comments which ring most true based upon my observations relate to the FEAR of CHANGE.

I know I am a bit unusual as I have started a comprehensive "masterycast" podcasting program with my students, my own site to encourage review podcasting, have four websites which I admin, and two podcasts in iTunes. I did most of this pretty much on my own without hesitancy as I saw a need in my classes which I felt I had to address. As a career changer with a background in business, I have learned over the years to deal with the fears as the system required us to change to stay in the game. Education is very different. Once tenured, teachers do not have to change in the same sense.

I believe that teachers do have the best of intentions, and like me want their kids to do well, but the fear is able to stay in the picture because of the security the system offers. I have an amazing tech director who has really nailed it to deal with this. She actually says to teachers, "I will sit with you and help you start." That is very different than answering questions or providing support. She sits with teachers and says. "ok-- Let's start to make this together". Once the teachers begin, they usually keep going. Beginning is the toughest part!

I think that fear to do something different generally is the biggest barrier. In teaching it is very possible to do the same thing over and over year after year.

Another problem I have experienced and don't see on the list is "peer pressure". Because of fear, many teachers like myself are really ostracized and pressured indirectly not to go to far afield. Yeah-- that is the truth. I am getting an award this year from NYSCATE for my work, and as a result the comments have at least gone further below the surface, but it is a real issue. It has not been a barrier to me because again, I came from a much more competitive world, and it really bothers me when my students are not doing as well as I think they can. I gave up alot to go into teaching, and so I am not really hindered by that. I see it as an interesting phenomenon. Again-- sitting with teachers and actually working with them to begin a project will help break through that barrier as well. It isn't always easy to be the one who says yes to the admin!

Great post. Thanks!

Sue

[Laura Gibbs]

I agree very much with your comments, Sue! I wish I shared your enthusiasm for "sit down with you and start" - with college professors, even that is not enough, alas. For two years, the university paid me to do that, sitting down and starting with literally hundreds of faculty members over that time period - starting to build webpages, to blog, to make better use of productivity tools like spreadsheets, etc. etc., and the failure I experienced was almost complete.

With the students, "sit down with you and start" is great - the students in my classes are initially scared at first of all the new things they have to do, but when they find out how easy it all is, they are delighted. I've experienced great success with college students embracing technology for their own use, and basically zero success with fellow faculty.

I think it is probably that element you mentioned here - "Because of fear, many teachers like myself are really ostracized and pressured indirectly not to go to far afield." The world of college professors is painfully dominated by a tendency to mediocrity rather than competition - in a world where you would expect just the opposite! I left my job as a tenure-track faculty member because of this ostracism - and it is only by working now not as a professor, but as an instructor, someone completely excluded from "the club" so to speak, that I've really been able to achieve anything valuable in using technology for education! :-)

[Skip Zilla]

But you, Laura, not your mediocre colleagues, are on the turn of history. I have little, if any doubt, based on my experience with organizational change in business information cultures over nearly forty years, that your stock has nowhere to go but up as a first-class user of digital learning technologies in her work as a university educator. I've known professional business managers who transformed themselves into business leaders through their use of the new technologies available to them over time to know and do what mattered for those who bought their products and services. Optimistically, too, the more students discover what they can learn for themselves, the more they'll engage in watching/asking mentors and peers for what works for them.

[Sue Palmer]

Hi Laura~

Interesting....I have just been offered a position as an adjunct teaching a Digital Internet Law course at a fairly well respected college, and they hired me because I have a website and use technology. I pitched that I would turn the course into a hybrid and use ANGEL! They told me that I had the job just for that reason!

In my other world, my prior life, you had to be in the game and possibly the best or you were gone. Not so here, and I am not sure how you fix that. I really don't know how you can balance the need for independence in academics with the need to stay on top of the game. Haven't figured that one out yet, but that's another discussion in and of itself! :)

Hang in there. I think that just as with students, you can't always believe what you see.

[Laura Gibbs]

I hope you will enjoy it - that sounds great. I've heard good things about Angel. I've got my current job for essentially the same reason - I teach at a research university which tried very hard to get its regular tenure-track faculty to learn more about how to use technology, because the school itself (i.e. the administration) wants to offer more online courses. Because they are having such a hard time getting traditional faculty members to offer online courses, I was able to get this nice job teaching online courses - you can't really force tenured faculty to do much of anything, and so to develop the online course program, the school has had to hire non-traditional faculty, like me - and it sounds like a similar situation for you, too! Great!