I found a blog post online titled the "Five Reasons Why We Aren't Integrating Technology In Schools." You can find it at: http://www.needleworkspictures.com/ocr/blog/. I thought this was a rather interesting post because the person who posted it had just recently listened to a couple of conferences on the K-12 online conference website. He goes on to say that he's not a pessimist, but people need to realize that if we dont' fix these 5 problems, technology will never make it into school curriculums effectively. His 5 problems were:
1. Technology is expensive
2. Technology use isn't tested (no standardized tests are assessing student tech. knowledge)
3. Technology lessons often aren't well planned
4. Technology is broken or unavailable
5. Fear of losing control
After reading this blog (and posting a comment directly to this blogger), I can't help but agree with the ideas. These problems with technology are apparent, and school districts need answers to these before they can start developing curriculum to include technology. Educators today are worried about bringing adults into the 2.o web-world, but maybe these problems are what we should be thinking about now. We all know that a digital divide exists right now between parents and their children, but can't we also admit that a digital divide will begin to exist between the children themselves?? For example, students from a more affluent school district are going to have greater use of technology than students from a "not-so-well-off" school district.
Any suggestions on how to solve these problems?
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2 comments:
Thank you for continuing the dialogue.
To be clear, I would not wait for the problems to be solved before beginning to integrate technology in the curriculum. We cannot wait for technology to be perfected or schools will be obsolete before we begin using technology at all. You will see individual teachers and teacher groups beginning the change but to have widespread technology use we will need both enlightened leadership and models of effective lesson planning (more on this in a future blog post).
I can see how you are concerned and he does make some good points. However, if we don't start using technology in our classrooms, who is going to teach children HOW to use technology. By integrating blogs, wikis, ect. into our classrooms, we are not only using the technology but we are teaching how to use it. We are teaching what information is appropriate for the internet, what not to post, how the internet can serve a better purpose than chatting with friends, and what is free and what is not free (i.e. music) on the internet for their taking. We have to step up.
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