DEVELOPMENT APPROACHES FOR TRAINING TEACHERS TO INTEGRATE TECHNOLOGY INTO THE CLASSROOM Dean T. Spaulding and Evan J. Seiden, USA

NOTE; Theese are my conference notes. Conference proceedings are the only validated source.www.iadis.org

Introduction: How to, no longer IF we should integrate…

Sample:

20 school districts, 16 public and 4 non-public, government founded project, 8 teachers per high school involved.

Approaches:
1. Online courses: 10-14 were available to each teacher.

2. Pair- Modelling :”outsider” trainer coming in for 7 days

3. Project groups of teachers would have a $5000 mini pot to selected technology of their own choice

Data collection:
Teacher survey-Archival Usage (data stored of use)- Interviews & Site visits- Trainer survey

Thoroughly crosschecking was done by triangulate surveys and interviews’ and data use.

Result:

1. Online courses PD Approach, -provided by project partner (external).
   1. Low use by teachers

i.      Yr 1- 33%, Yr 2- 7% of teachers participated in at least one online course

ii.      However those who did found it valuable and informative

iii.      Why not?: Time, irrelevant course topic etc..

1. Lots of funds not spent. Govt’ expected this to be the most important tool/approach. They were wrong!
2. Pair-Modelling PD Approach
   1. Yr 1. All 20 buildings completed all 7 day trainer assistance. Yr 2 poor.

i.      Challenge was scheduling/ finding time

1. Three chosen technologies and teachers had no say. example- Moodle: was not seen as relevant. Elluminate (video conf.) had technical and usability problems
2. Project groups- CMP
   1. All buildings in Yr 1 and 2 completed with a variety from IPAD to own video conferencing tools (that even cost more than $5000)
   2. Report unique and successful

i.      Challenge: MANY! But teachers didn’t abandon technology like with Elluminate, they chose to work to address the challanges

ii.      Teachers reflexions revealed they might have chosen other technologies if given new chance

Conclusion:

–          CMP Unique successful approach for training teachers to integrate technology into the classroom

–          Focus on giving teachers autonomy

–          Provide framework for teachers to select, criticise and reflect on integration

Discoussion after the presentation:

–          This is in line with theory of learning.

–          Culture of organization will affect success of such initiative.

–          Typically funding and decision on technology goes to higher level in the organization.

–          8 is a small number of teachers on buildings with 2000 students.