How teacher learn technology best

By Jamie Mckenzie

When it comes to teachers learning and valuing the effective use of new technologies, some schools are discovering that the kinds of training programs offered in the past may not represent the most generative method of reaching a full range of teachers and their students. The key term is "generative" - meaning that behaviors and daily practice will be changed for the better as a consequence of the professional development experience.

Fortunately, some schools are now identifying approaches more likely to encourage teachers to employ these technologies on a frequent and sustained basis to enhance student learning.

Lead districts are finding that adult learning, curriculum development projects and informal support structures are proving powerful in promoting recurrent use aimed at deep curriculum integration.

After two decades of providing software classes to teachers, we need to explore different approaches — those honoring key principles of adult learning while placing both curriculum and literacy ahead of software and technology.

As will be explained later, adult learning strategies are fundamentally different from training strategies and usually more promising because they are tailored to the learning styles, preferences and needs of teachers in ways more likely to win their commitment than the approach more typical of training models.

In some places, eager planners have "put the cart before the horse" - emphasizing the purchase and installation of equipment without providing sufficient funding for the staff learning required to win a reasonable return on the huge investments being made.

We have evidence from Market Data Retrieval (MDR) (1999) that the majority of American teachers enjoy fewer than five hours of technology related professional development annually, and most of that seems to be training.

In many schools, the failure to fund and design robust professional development leads to "the screensavers’ disease" — the educational equivalent of an accountant’s red ink — as hundreds of computers sit idly glowing throughout the day and the district’s investment proves a huge waste of funds.

This challenge should be about using new tools to help students master the key concepts and skills embedded in the science, social studies, art and other curriculum standards. It is not so much about powerpointing, spreadsheeting or word processing. The focus should be on teaching and learning strategies that make a difference in daily practice — on activities translating into stronger student performance. As a result of these practices and the use of these new tools, students should be able to . . .

• read, reason and write more powerfully
• communicate productively with members of a global community
• conduct thoughtful research into the important questions, choices and issues of their times
• make sense of a confusing world and a swelling tide of information
• perform well on the new, more demanding state tests requiring inferential reasoning

This article will outline how teachers learn technology best and how districts may promote such learning to avoid "the screensavers’ disease."

(Note: This article first appeared in the January, 2001 issue of Electronic School, a publication of the National School Boards Association and is © 2001, J. McKenzie, all rights reserved. It also appears as a chapter in Planning Good Change.)