Chapter 4: Integrating Technology and Creating Change

     “Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is most important.”- Bill Gates

     Focus Question 2: What are the key stages and pressing issues of technology integration?

    Neither the integration of technology in learning is something that can be accomplished in the day to the next, nor can the formation of a technology-using educator be achieved by magic. This, like all processes, requires patience, willingness, knowledge, as well as skills and expertise, which is only achieved with regular practice and vast gained experience using technology in education. Only then educators are able to use balanced and creative technological tools and new practices to make possible for every student to reach his/her full learning potential. Therefore, this passes through the following stages:

  However, this complex process can be affected by several external and internal factors. For example:

•  Administrative Support and Teaching Style: It requires professional training, systematic support from school administrators, sufficient resources, and moving from a teacher-centered to student-center approach to teaching.
• Unwillingness to Change Favorite Lesson Plan to Include Technology: Some teachers are not motivated to invest time figuring out how to integrate technological resources into their teaching.
• Reluctance to Use Technology When Teaching New Lesson Plan: Infusing technology when teachers are asked to teach material they have not taught before requires time and energy, so this may seem like a burden that is best avoided.
• Using Technology as a Reward or Punishment: Students who behave and perform well get to use technology as a reward. On the other hand, students who misbehave or fail to get work done are denied computer time. This completely distorts the purpose of using technological resources in teaching and reduces its positive effect on learning process.
• Using Technology as an Add-On to Other Activities: To respond to school system requirements, some teachers use technology whether it enhances or detracts from learning. In this case, the classes are saturated with technology without resulting in an improvement of the teaching- learning process.
• Using Technology to Separate Students by Ability Groups: Children with higher test scores are given one kind of program while others with lower scores get another kind. Although at first glance this may seem logical and beneficial, actually establishes a gap between both groups of students and does not promote the integration of all them in activities that promote the exchange and cooperation among all.

        Tech Tool Link: edutopia

    This time I decided to venture through this web-site and really become fascinated. One thing is theoretically learn about the technology applied to the teaching-learning process by reading the book, and quite another to see with my own eyes practical examples of how this works. It contains articles, interviews, videos, blogs, on important, practical and innovative issues regarding the use of technology in education, written by professionals and specialists who are not sitting behind a desk dictating resolutions and policies, but by true educators who from their classrooms, struggle each day to find new and better ways of developing students’ creative potential. I was impacted by the interview with the Professor at Harvard University Howard Gardner on Multiple Intelligences. I fully agree with him, we all think and learn differently. So, not taking this into consideration when we educate students is very unfair. As educators we should differentiate the instruction for everyone to enjoy while learning. I also enjoyed very much watching the video on "Project-Based Learning." It's really inspiring to see what can be accomplished when we put students at the center of the educational process and work to and for them. I leave this here for you to enjoy it.

       Summary and Personal Connection: In general, this chapter offers practical approaches to help us infuse technology into both classroom and professional work. It also makes a realistic analysis about possible external and internal barriers we might need to overcome to integrate technology into our work as educators. Something that touched my heart was the existing differences in students’ possibilities to get access to technology within the context of their family, social, economic and cultural realities (“digital inequality” and “participation gap”). However, something that is very clear to me is that it cannot become an excuse to stop looking strategies to promote successful learning using the technology we already have. Instead of seeing those issues as a difficulty or limitation we must see it as a chance to create. Sometimes local circumstances are not what have to change, but our attitude and thinking. Former senator Nancy Kassebaum said: “There can be infinite uses of the computer and of new age technology, but if teachers themselves are not able to bring it into the classroom and make it work, then it fails.”

Closing the gap. Accredited to fotosearch