Blast from the past in the late 90′s and from my website in pre-blog days. Is naked no graphics etc. and I did not ask Zemanta for help. I do need to get back to those days…… and think more… but.

Teachers of the past never had a World Wide Web page, used a modem to
communicate, or used a graphics presentation system to accompany a
lecture. The most memorable teachers provided a personal element that
inspired and motivated students to pursue learning using the various tools
and resources available (Hinnant, Oliva)

The tools have changed but the message stays the same it is not simply the tool that is important, not simply the technology it is, however, the teacher that makes it work. The integration of technology into the classroom is no different; it is the teacher, in the end, that controls where, when and how this integration will occur. I feel it is important when examining the extent to which technology can be integrated into the curriculum to keep this completely in focus. Through an examination of past issues, involved with integrating technology into the curriculum, and current challenges one will have a better understanding of the, possibilities and limits, of such integration.

The Days Gone By

When one examines the history of educational computing one notices different phases in the use of technology in the classroom. D. Lamont Johnson identifies three different phases of educational computing. In his article “Integrating Technology into the Classroom the Time Has Come” he states that the use of educational computing has gone from familiarization to acquisition followed by integration. Based on my experience using technology at the Elementary, Middle and High School level I would agree with these basic phases. I would, however, add one phase that needs to take place before integration occurs; internalization.

Early on when technology was introduced in the schools the classroom teacher became aware of some of the possibilities of its educational use. The computer, however, was generally used in a laboratory setting without much impact on classroom instruction. Teachers were aware that the technology was in the building but use was generally relegated to the computer teacher and a programming course in Basic, Logo or Pascal. Teacher interaction with the technology extended to the odd staff inservice and perhaps dropping their class off at the lab for computer instruction. This resulted in a shallow familiarization process where the teacher had not examined the technology with the depth needed for classroom integration.

The next phase, acquisition, involved the mass purchase of the machinery needed to give teachers the resources to utilize the technology. During this phase educational, community and political leaders were convinced of the need to place more computers into schools. The reality of the situation was the computers were purchased and still placed into laboratory settings. Teachers still did not have the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the computer and were, therefore, still not prone to utilizing the computers within the classroom. During this phase of mass purchase of technology some interesting things were happening with software. More and more application programs came into being. Computer teachers began utilizing these different applications within in their elective program. No longer only teaching programming, computer applications such as the spread sheet, word processors, and the data base were taught. The tools the classroom teacher needed for classroom integration were developed and refined.

Currently, from the point of view of familiarization and acquisition, I believe many schools have been successful in the use of technology . In my my school district, for example, technology is in place both in the lab and the classroom . The technology, however, has not made a large impact when examining curriculum integration. It is at this point I would consider the role of internalization in the phases of educational computing. From the historical perspective the first two phases occurred but still the technology was used at the laboratory level and classroom integration was not common. This was, and is, true because teachers have not had the opportunity to move from familiarization with the technology to internalizing its use.

Today the opportunity for becoming familiar with technology is increasing. In 1993 according to Mike Grey the number of Internet sites was 130. In 1997 the estimated number of sites was up to 650, 000. If one examines the number of households that have purchased computers during the same approximate time frame you find a similar growth trend. It is reasonable to assume that many of these computer and Internet users are teachers. This trend of increasing numbers of home computers and computer users is bound to have the effect of increasing teacher familiarity with technology. As this familiarity increases, as the knowledge of using the technology as a tool and a resource increases, so to does the likelihood of the teacher internalizing the use of the technology . This, in turn, can lead to a situation in which integration can occur.

It is, of course, reasonable to conclude that many factors come into play when considering how we can facilitate teacher integration of technology. High quality inservice strategies that focus on different models of instruction using technology are needed (Wiburg). Increasing teacher access to the technology is also critical in this process. However, the explosion of the Internet and societies reaction to this explosion has been a major factor in refocusing teachers attention on technology. This refocus is resulting in greater familiarization with the technology and increased the likelihood of curriculum integration.

The Challenge

Based on an assumption of greater teacher access to technology, how difficult will it be to move from familiarization, to internalization and on to actual integration? Is it possible? Is it feasible? Does the classroom teacher have the time? Or are we once again setting ourselves up for failure? (Open Learning Technology Corporation) How realistic is it to expect results without a serious investment of time and money into teacher training. Furthermore, without such investments how can we expect widespread integration of technology into the curriculum.

When one examines the different skills needed for the teacher to be able to make integration a reality they seem unsurmountable. The teachers need to become familiar with, and internalize, the capabilities of the software. In addition, the teacher needs to have an understanding of the standards and curriculum. The teacher needs to combine both of these in order to facilitate student learning through the software. Furthermore, the teacher needs to continually reassess their knowledge level as the technology is ever changing. Is it surprising, as is stated in But He’s Wearing No Clothes “that the rhetoric about the potential of information technologies in education has seldom been realized”?

D. Lamont Johnson points to an Investor’s Business Daily article stating in 1995 “business spent well over $2 Billion in training their employees on the use of technology, but 90 % of the teachers in America reported that they were 100% self taught. The problem, today as in the past, is that the expectations placed on educators is not matched by the training given educators.” Teachers still are not given the time and training needed to fully understand the possibilities of the use of technology in the clasroom. (Wild Cradler ). As is identified in a survey, conducted by Kevin Green , “assisting faculty integrate technology into instruction” and “providing adequate user support” are the top two “single most important” information technology ” issues.

The learning process necessary for the teacher to be able to integrate technology into the classroom is ongoing and needs to be continually addressed. It is not enough to “dip” the teacher in the paint of technology and expect results. Opportunity has to be provided for an ongoing process where the teacher has access to ongoing support . From my experience, I think it is possible to accomplish this with a mentor colleague, who is given the sole task of being involved in a role of continual staff support. In this situation the mentor teacher’s knowledge of technology and learning coupled with the classroom teachers knowledge of the curriculum and learning would result in an integrated technology focused learning environment. (Learning With Software, Mckenzie)

From the past to the present the road to integrating technology into the classroom has been difficult. There are still many problems to face. We have moved from familiarization with technology through to acquisition of technology. Our resources now need to be allocated to the most important component, although not at first the most visible, staff development. With the Internet our attention has been refocused on the possibilities of the uses of technology. We need, however, to use this focus to give teachers the resources and time needed to internalize and integrate the technology into the classroom. Without this the wide spread integration of technology into the classroom becomes, at best, extremely difficult.

teachNbabble - just a place to babble (photos: scenes from our travels)

Nice thing about parent teacher conferences is they sometime give you time to talk to the people you work with. I am finding the work that Danielle and Robert are doing in their Humanities class interesting. They have taken something fairly straight forward and made it into an ongoing activity that the students enjoy.

As Robert and I were talking about the activity I realized that this was similar to something I used to do in Abu Dhabi. As part of what I did with blogging, I would to give students a choice of a few articles to read based on the same topic.  I  also asked to do some research to find other related articles and bookmark them using Furl they then commented on three other blog posts.

They have added Diigo to a similar idea. They have all of their students read one article and use the Diigo highlighting tool to pick out key ideas and “show evidence of careful reading”. Using some writing prompts the students then create a blog post on what they have read and analyzed. Once they complete the blog post they comment on three other posts. When all of this is done Robert also has them share one thing they have learnt with each other.

I think I will be using this with my grade eight classes in their Digital Identity Unit. It will be a bit different as the articles I use will be on this one topic. Most of the legwork has already been done thanks to Danielle and Robert so this will be easy to start.  Think I will add the creation of a podcast of the student take aways as well. I have made this one of my personal professional goals as well and will be documenting this with Mahara.

Things always seem to work better when you share and collaborate.

Related posts

• Working With Diigo (teachnbabble.com)
• Random Thoughts Social Bookmarking and Peer Editing (teachnbabble.com)

teachNbabble - just a place to babble (photos: scenes from our travels)

I have been playing with our WordPress installations on our site this year. Configuring a blog so that it acts as a  ”mini” aggregating blog. A system that will make it easy for the teacher to use blogs and to view what their students are creating. In addition, I wanted to see if this could be used to create a portfolio system where:

• all content originates on the individual students blog.
• students are responsible for adding blog portfolio artifact based posts to their blog.
• the portfolio site links back to each individual students post.
• all grade level student artifacts become part of a central site.

After a trial the system is set up and all that is left is a discussion with MS staff members about how this might work in Middle School next year.

These are my notes in a Scribd document so I have some idea of what I did when we get started in August.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/32355142/Creating-Aggregating-Wordpressmu-blogs

teachNbabble - just a place to babble (photos: scenes from our travels)

Image via CrunchBase

I love Twitter and my RSS feeds. I am continually learning new things. They also keep me looking at old things from a different perspective.

One tweet about suggesting new plugins for a new blog lead me to look at my first trial using Slidedeck and how I might embed video and audio content. The way I was adding the videos was not working so  I started wondering exactly what the auto-embed function was in WordPress.

Boy have I missed the boat with a few things I have been doing.

Auto-embed uses oEmbed and this means:

All you need to do to embed something into a post or page is to post the URL to it into your content area. Make sure that the URL is on its own line and not hyperlinked (clickable when viewing the post). (WordPress Codex)

So to embed content in your blog post just add the url of the content you would like to embed. Today, instead of using VipersVideoQuicktags, a great plugin, all I had my students do was add the URL to their videos for the embed.

Note: not a link to the content http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6BsDtj4b1c just the actual link on it’s own line.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6BsDtj4b1c

Check out the codex for more.

teachNbabble - just a place to babble (photos: scenes from our travels)

Boy this is quite simple. You know I sometimes still use FTP to add a plugin to wordpress………

astounding_1

http://teachnbabble.com/wp-content/newupload/astounding_1.mov

http://www.scribd.com/doc/29466350/Blog-Sheet-Part-1

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/gobo/1065937

teachNbabble - just a place to babble (photos: scenes from our travels)