Week 5 photo week

This week's assignment was interesting. I enjoyed reading the chapter and dealing with the scenario for our assignment. I think this type of circumstance will become more common and the better we get at dealing with it the better off we will be.

As for the photo sites: flickr was pretty easy to set up. I used to have a photo bucket account years ago but that one was no longer active...again my lack of keeping up with technology proves troublesome for me! I hope to utilize my photo account more regularly; I have a habit of taking pictures but never doing anything with them. It is easy to lose pictures when you operate that way.

my flickr account

The writing assignment involved a scenario where technology was provided for a 7th grade class, both at school and at home. I had to speculate why it might not have influenced teaching interventions and how to remediate the problem. The following is my solution...

In this scenario some obvious possibilities for minimal effect on instruction exist. First of all there may not have been enough training, for teachers and students and possibly parents, to make the experiment a success. It could be that this program was simply “announced” and put into place without input from the people involved and there may not have been any specific guidance as to what was supposed to happen with the technology. Perhaps the teachers were not encouraged to use the computers innovatively but they simply became another tool to complete homework or write papers. Secondly, I could see from a home view, the use of these computers being considered supplementary or a great opportunity to have internet for a year. While the use could have been limited by policy, it is easy for the internet and computers to become a leisure experience rather than an educational tool. Parents and students without motivation or knowledge of the potential for learning may not be able to utilize laptops and internet access for this goal; and if the work was not getting done in the home setting, the teachers would need to continue using a more traditional method of instruction. Finally, and more than likely, a problem could occur in the resistance of the people involved to the intervention.  Throughout the chapter “resistance to change” is mentioned in nearly all the scenarios. In this case it appears to be a “top down” change and the teachers may not buy in for that reason. There also seems to be a concern about teachers being replaced by technology and naturally they would resist embracing increased use of technology if they felt their jobs were being threatened.

I feel the main issue that needs to be addressed in this scenario is the resistance to change. The first way I would remediate that is with some advanced planning and making sure that all participants understood the vision as much as possible. I think change and integration of technology is inevitable and at some point we all are going to have to accept that to a certain degree. That doesn’t mean that we should just throw people in to the mix without preparation. The teachers in the example probably have various degrees of computer skills and if their skills were on the low side and they did not have adequate training, they would naturally default to a comfort zone. In addition, I feel the families involved would need some serious training and would also need to buy in to the experiment. It may be better to ask families to participate and involve those that can and will commit to the idea, at least initially. Perhaps if the first year was successful for those who participated then a more extensive project could be launched for subsequent years. I definitely think, with technology, slow and steady change is going to be better accepted and more successful for most people.