Three reasons. 1) Lack of Teacher Training. B) Lack of Teacher Training. III) Lack of Teaching Training. The district plans on spending million to get mobile computing carts, interactive boards, projectors, printers, cameras, new office software, and new mobile computing devices (don't dare call them laptops) in each and every classroom. So how much training for the average teacher have they included in the technology budget plan? NONE. That’s right, none.
The teachers already self report a very poor technology literacy score so why pile on more technology without training? Many teachers find it hard to work with Destination Success or Study Island, let alone try and integrate it into the curriculum. This alone will doom the plan to failure and not only that, it will take away from real learning time from the students when teachers can’t figure out how download a picture from a document camera or how to replace the $300 light bulb in the SMART board. I guess they could call their Tech cadre leader for help, but then that will take away time from their students. Brillant!
The technology plan does mention teacher training in the plan. Apparently the plan is to plan for more planning, but first let’s get the hardware in the classroom so it can depreciate and gather dust. We will worry about teacher training and paying for the training later.
I don't think teachers are the ones requesting the technology. Nobody ever asked me what my classroom needs are. If I had one wish, it would be smaller class sizes...not gadgets that become outdated in a few years.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the comment. Of course smaller classses would be a huge improvement.
ReplyDeleteThe K-3 override and then subsequent state funding of all day K did very little to improve class sizes.