Professional Development, Educational Technology and Getting to the Deep End

Photo by Curtis Palmer

Have you ever heard a fellow teacher groan at the mention of an upcoming professional development seminar? I have - many, many times. I think for many teachers, a different approach to professional development is needed. When it comes to educational technology and PD, wouldn’t it make sense to try to get ahead of the curve, so that we are not reacting or responding way after the fact? There is already a sense, for some, that as digital immigrants we are like a huge flock of educators sitting on the edge of the water whole our digital native students are splashing happily away.

So what are we doing? Looking for waterwings? Still trying to find the most flattering swimwear? Or are we almost ready to start leading more swim classes?

Professional development for integrating technology is an absolute necessity if we believe that education can be improved greatly by embracing the positive learning aspects of web 2.0. In my last blog, I wrote about how many teachers have not been able to get out of the shallow end for numerous reasons. Christine R has also written some thought-provoking words about problematic PD, identifying 4 different areas of concern:

-Out of Date Professional Development
-Lack of time to play and plan
-Lack of collaboration
-Lack of differentiated PD

What are some of the roads to improving ed tech PD?

Last year I blogged about how using blogs for/as PD may be one way to individualize and move toward more relevant educator learning. But in a wider sense, what kind of general changes in approach could lead to more constructive PD?

I’ve been thinking about various professional development opportunities I have been involved in over the years. From cavernous rooms with one speaker to smaller spaces with many presenters, most of us have had experiences with occasionally informative gatherings, and downright irrelevant moments. But what about those PD opportunities where you heard some good ideas and suggestions, but weren’t able to continue one-on-one discussions about making the ideas reality in your school? Without time to revisit the PD concepts and create workable versions that fit the situation for you and your colleagues, you may have moved on and put it on the backburner. The problem of “Lack of collaboration” as defined by Christine R above is one I’ve seen many times. How can we fix it?

Camilla Gagliolo wrote a brief-but-good article entitled Help Teachers Mentor One Another, in which she states:

“Powerful learning takes place when teachers teach other teachers in a peer-to-peer network. The creation of a cadre of teacher leaders serving as peer coaches will help power up the professional learning community and provide differentiated professional development offerings.”

I know when I think about PD that I found helpful and continued to use, the times when I learned it on a one-on-one basis come to mind immediately. I felt much more comfortable learning from a colleague that I was friendly with, or even one I was slightly acquainted with, and it makes sense – just as my teaching is more helpful when I know my students, my mentor can skip what he knows I can already do and go right to the essential learning – no need for unnecessary repetition, going off on irrelevant tangents to my learning goals, and so on. Gagliolo goes on to give few suggestions, and here’s one I really like:

“[C]onsider creating a set of laminated “keys” on a key ring containing information on expert mentors/coaches in the learning community. Each key lists the name of an integration tool and the name of the teacher/mentor who is the local expert.”

Cool idea!!!!!! As a teacher who has worked in different schools on terms as short as two weeks to a year for the past three years, I am constantly asking, “Who the local tech guy/gal?”

The idea of creating PD that works for the learner needs to be much more in the forefront of those creating PD opportunities – that’s why I see collaboration and mentorship as offering many more chances for individualization and success. Judi Harris has created a series of articles outlining the need for learner-driven PD under the banner of “One Size Doesn’t Fit All”. In the first article, Harris notes that PD creators need to “know your teacher-students' professional learning needs and preferences”, as well as stating that educators need:

-continued on-site support as they experiment with new tools and techniques in their classrooms to ensure continued and productive use of new tools and ideas.

-30 hours of focused professional development on average to change teachers' professional practice.

In the second article, Harris echoes Gaglio’s suggestion for teacher technology mentoring:

Collaborative learning ETPD also can take the form of mentoring, in which someone knowledgeable in a particular content area or instructional approach works with individuals or small groups of teachers wishing to learn more in the mentor’s area of expertise. Peer coaching, also with either individuals or groups, can similarly occur either face-to-face or online.

And finally, Harris asserts that teacher professional development needs to be teacher-oriented:

“One of the keys to effective ETPD design is to match models to goals and both to participating teachers’ needs, preferences, and characteristics.”

I believe that collaborative learning, especially mentoring, is a great way to help teachers move towards more productive educational technology professional development. I’ll leave the last word to a report from the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory:

“A professional development curriculum that helps teachers use technology for discovery learning, developing students' higher-order thinking skills, and communicating ideas is new and demanding and thus cannot be implemented in isolation (Guhlin, 1996). In addition to working in pairs or teams, teachers need access to follow-up discussion and collegial activities, as required of professionals in other fields (Lockwood, 1999). Teachers also need time to discuss technology use with other teachers, whether face to face, through e-mail, or by videoconferencing (David, 1996). A networked computer on every teacher's desk can allow for greater interaction between educators. The National Commission on Teaching and America's Future (1996) suggests that school districts find creative ways to build teacher networks so that teachers have additional opportunities to discuss the new instructional methods that technology promotes.”

More technology, less support: teaching and learning are not benefitting from the great techno-push

photo by Katie Lips

Educational technology has not improved teaching or learning in general because teachers are not able to explore, experience, and be trained in relevant uses. A great amount of teachers want to help students become technologically literate, but finding the time to work with new technology and incorporate it into meaningful lessons is a huge challenge - and it’s not getting any easier. As Oppenheimer (2003) has noted, “…teacher training takes serious doses of time, money and effort” (p. 306). He has also suggested that “as far as technology is concerned…the panopoly of demands on America’s teaching force is substantial, and rising.” (p.311). I think we can apply that last quote to Canada’s educators as well. In my division, teachers coach and head other school clubs, plan educational trips, work on numerous school committees, incessantly work on keeping up-to-date on resources and teaching methods, and in the last few years have continuously been working on changing assessment practices.

Other educators such as Larry Cuban (2001)have echoed these issues, citing a “lack of time available for teachers to find relevant software, judge its worth, and try out the products in classrooms” and saying that “training in relevant software and applications was seldom offered at the times that they needed them” (p. 97)

Kalkowski has attempted to figure out why teachers have not been able to integrate technology to the desired levels. One of the important findings was that teacher training needs to be more extensive and start earlier – in fact, when teachers are learning their profession.

“It has been shown that teachers teach how they were taught. (Norton & Gonzales, 1998). So, for beginning teachers, the teacher education faculty members must model effective use of technologies in their own classrooms (Cooper & Bull, 1997). Ropp (1999) conducted a longitudinal study during a preservice teacher education course that included hands-on technology training and classroom discussion of technology and found that students made significant improvements in technology proficiency, computer self-efficacy and computer coping strategies from the beginning to the end of the course. When Topp (1996) studied recent teacher graduates, he found that a computer-specific course was essential, especially one on computer integration, but that the technology education pre-service teachers felt they received was inadequate.”


Think about how you were taught to use technology in when you were attaining your education degree. Do you believe it was substantive and focused on integration in the classroom, or was it superficial and ineffective? My Teacher and Technology course involved creating a website, a PowerPoint presentation, and learning about computers themselves. In one of my courses students had the opportunity to create a short film. In essence, teacher candidates received a brief introduction to educational technology. Is that good enough?

One force in education that may have been able to assist teachers in technology integration is teacher-librarians. Unfortunately, education budgets across many parts of North America have not allowed for extensive teacher-librarian or library budgets. Froese-Germain (2001) suggests that the whole system is backward: “Paradoxically, while schools go about acquiring more information and communications technology, teacher librarian positions are being eliminated as a result of funding cutbacks” (p.3).

But is Froese-Germain’s position supported by evidence? Here’s a few more voices on the issue:

“The government, teachers, and the public agree that literacy is essential. Research
evidence supports the value of libraries to improving literacy. However, the drastic
cuts in resources are hitting school libraries particularly hard. Teacher-librarian time
is reduced or eliminated in many schools making library services less available to
students.” British Columbia Teachers’ Federation

“In 2005 Statistics Canada released a study documenting the dramatic decline of school libraries over the years. It found the median expenditure on the physical collection of libraries (including books and magazines) was a mere $2,000. Even more revealing was the finding that few schools had a full-time
teacher-librarian. Those most affected by this sad state of affairs are families unable to supplement their child’s learning with books and other resources in the home.” - Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives

From 2001–02 to 2007–08, the number of library specialist teachers in B.C. schools declined by 21 percent. – Pieta Wooley

So even though there has been a strong, clear push for overworked teachers to use more technology, the support has not been equally strong. There should be more and more teacher-librarians in schools – why isn’t that occurring?

Works Cited

Cuban, L. (2001). Oversold & underused: computers in the classroom. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Froese-Germain, B. (2001). A critical approach to technology - an anti-technology approach: putting education & technology in context. In But it’s only a tool! The politics of technology and education reform (pp.1-11). Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Oppenheimer, T. (2003). The flickering mind: the false promise of technology in the classroom and how learning can be saved. New York: Random House.


photo by Kevin Dooley

The great techno-push in our schools is killing people skills

photo by Drew Herron


Instead of improving teaching and learning, greater emphasis on computer technology and Internet use often has the result of weakening students’ social skills and eroding opportunities for the elements of learning some have called the “hidden curriculum”. Yes, it’s true – kids will spend hours upon hours sitting in front of computers without any expressed desire to hear a human voice or have any physical contact. And of course, young people have been spending hours watching television or playing videogames as well, but at least they may be doing so with other people. Computers have the potential to become the most isolating, harmfully addictive devices ever unleashed upon an unsuspecting public.

Bernie Froese-Germain (2001) has related some worrying facts about computer-users’ well-being:

“A recent study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University found that ‘greater use of the Internet was associated with declines in participants’ communication with family members in the household, declines in the size of their social circle, and increases in their depression and loneliness” (p.4) Froese-Germain has also noted that Ursula Franklin has recognized “the potential for computers to isolate students and to make learning more individualistic implies that ‘these implicit learning opportunities can no longer be taken for granted.” (p. 4).

A great deal has been written and said about integrated technology’s ability to help students become more independent learners. But it may be that we are forgetting how increasing technology use alters the classroom in more ways than one, as Heather-jane Robertson (2001) relates:

“Stanford educator Larry Cuban emphasizes what every teacher knows: classrooms are built around relationships, and they aren’t important only to students. ‘The touches, smiles, warmth, and even the frowns, annoyance and anger that pass between teacher and student cement ties that deepen learning and give gratification to teachers.’ Cuban warns that the computer-dominated classrooms dry up this emotional life by unraveling the bonds between teachers and students, and creating false liaisons between students and machine” (p. 35).

As an educator, I feel I must acknowledge that relationships are what students take away from school as much as curricular outcomes. How is integration of technology improving human contact? Why would a student feel that communicating with a person in front of them is important if they can chat online and never have to bother with full sentences, the subtleties of body language, or face-to-face disagreements?

Kevin Whitmore is one educator who has noted that children’s social development had led to the formation of organizations like the Alliance for Childhood, which contends that:

“Those who place their faith in technology to solve the problems of education should look more deeply into the needs of children. The renewal of education requires personal attention to students from good teachers and active p a rents, strongly supported by their communities. It requires commitment to developmentally appropriate education and attention to the full range of children’s real low-tech needs—physical, emotional, and social, as well as cognitive.”

Whitmore goes on to inform that former Education professor Chet Bowers has argued that greater use of computers is leading to “the decline of valuable face-to-face interaction; especially mentoring relationships”.

The central question here is, if students are learning more about computers and computer skills, are they learning less about people and social skills? You may choose to believe that students’ social learning is on the right track today. Some organizations, of course, are working towards more technology skills, without necesarily directly addressing the social needs of learners. One of those groups, 21st Century Skills, or P21, is pushing for more technological know-how, as well as promoting the idea that students can at the same time learn to critically and creatively and work well with others. Sounds good, doesn't it? But a non-profit group of educators has started a group called Common Core that disagrees with the rush for 21st Century Skills, asserting that the direction taken by groups like P21 is squeezing out crucial content, never mind the implicit social learning discussed earlier. It's possible that the great techno-push may have a shoving match on its hands. However, the board of directors for P21 includes members from Intel, Apple, Dell, Adobe, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and Cisco Systems. Is this where we should be getting our direction for education? Is it any wonder that people skills are falling by the wayside in our computer-dominated, corporation-backed educational lobbying system?

Works Cited

Froese-Germain, B. (2001). A critical approach to technology - an anti-technology approach: putting education & technology in context. In But it’s only a tool! The politics of technology and education reform (pp.1-11). Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Robertson, H.-J.. (2001). But it’s only a tool! Deconstructing the defense. In But it’s only a tool! The politics of technology and education reform (pp.13-42). Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

Educational technology has not had a major impact on teaching and learning

• 
  Photo by Sarah G
  
  Educational technology should have had a major impact on teaching and learning by now – it has not.
  
  Many educational technology factions have been predicting that computers would transform and revitalize a staid and sedentary form of learning, but unfortunately the great wave of forward movement hasn’t materialized. Sure, kids have learned how to use Google, Wikipedia, and PowerPoint, and they’ve learned what games and instant messaging applications are accessible in their school. But in general, students and teachers still operate in the same manner, and the integration of educational technology has not advanced education to a substantial degree.
  
  Stanford Professor of Education Larry Cuban (2001) studied how schools used technology and reported in Oversold and Underused that:
  
  · “In the schools we studied, we found no clear and substantial evidence of students increasing their academic achievement as a result of using information technologies (p. 133).
  
  · “…the overwhelming majority of teachers employed the technology to sustain existing patterns of teaching, rather than to innovate…Only a tiny percentage of high school and university teachers used the new technologies to accelerate student-centered and project-based teaching practices.” (p. 134).
  
  · “If anything, what we observed and were told by students suggested strongly that occasional to serious use of computers in their classes had marginal or no impact on routine teaching” (p. 97).
  
  · “…teachers lecture, and students listen, read textbooks and complete individual exercises presented in workbooks or photocopies” (p. 96).
  
  Oppenheimer (2003) has argued that when Cuban “studied how schools have been using technology since the 1980’s, that there was no great accompanying improvement in teaching practices” (p. 313). Since computers have been widely introduced in the 1980s and educational technology has steadily increased, we should expect to see an increase in pedagogical advances as well as an increase in student achievement, but these developments are not readily apparent.
  
  What if researchers observed a number of schools and their computer usage in the classroom for a couple of years, gave teachers every available support and supplied lots of training? Well, that was done at least once with the Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow project, but evidence of improvement was still lacking, according to Heather-jane Robertson (2001):
  
  “After two years of total and unlimited access to technology by carefully selected students, whose parents had chosen the program and whose teachers had unlimited amounts of technical and instructional support, the best that Apple could say about the achievement of ACOT students was that they hadn’t declined”(p. 133).
  
  Baker has also echoed Robertson’s assertion, saying that “data collected provide no clear idea of ACOT success or failure, although data on achievement, writing, and attitude suggest that ACOT participation is not depriving students in any way.”
  
  Therefore, according to data from a highly subsidized pilot on educational technology, no great gains were quantified, although students learning was not lessened. However, other studies have shown us a different picture. According to Kevin Whitmore, a study by Thomas Fuchs & Ludger Woessmann entitled “Computers and Student Learning: Bivariate and Multivariate Evidence on the Availability and Use of Computers at Home and at School” tells us:
  
  “For schools and parents who have together invested billions of dollars to give children a learning edge through the latest computer technology, this study brought some sobering news: Too much exposure to computers might spell trouble for the developing mind.
  From a sample of 175,000 15-year-old students in 31 countries, the researchers at the University of Munich announced that performance in maths and reading had suffered significantly among students who have more than one computer at home. And while students seemed to benefit from limited use of computers at school, those who used them several times per week at school saw their academic performance decline significantly as well.”
  
  Uh oh. Perhaps our push for greater use of educational technology has not improved learning after all.
  
  Works Cited:
  Cuban, L. (2001). Oversold & underused: computers in the classroom. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
  
  Oppenheimer, T. (2003). The flickering mind: the false promise of technology in the classroom and how learning can be saved. New York: Random House.
  
  Robertson, H.-J.. (2001). But it’s only a tool! Deconstructing the defense. In But it’s only a tool! The politics of technology and education reform (pp.13-42). Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
  
  

Privacy in our public online spaces

photo by Rob Pongsajapan



Is anything private in our online world? Many of us may think that if we don’t physically type in personal information on a website or respond to unsolicited email, we’re safe. But almost everything you do on the Internet is tracked in some way. For example, just by accessing this blog, a little widget on the right side of the page has determined what city you are in. Hello, Bristol! G’day, Sydney! Hey, Vancouver!

Seems harmless? Well, maybe it is. But it’s possible that by hitting my blog, you’ve created one more piece of information about your surfing habits that is added to your digital dossier. In their book Born Digital, John Palfrey and Urs Gasser (2008) suggest that “all the digital information held, in many different hands, about a given person makes up his or her digital dossier” (p. 39). If your digital dossier only contained data about what blogs about educational technology you’ve stumbled upon, maybe you might feel okay about that. But Palfrey and Gasser contend that at “no time in human history has information about a young person – or anyone, for that matter – been more freely and publicly accessible to so many others” (p. 54).

You might answer, but surely there are laws against anyone using my personal information unless I have given my express permission. Unfortunately, we increasingly find ourselves in positions that make it seem like the law hasn’t kept up with our lives, as we saw in my last blog about copyright, intellectual property and freedom. Palfrey and Gasser noted the similarities between privacy and copyright in respect to law:

“...traditional legal mechanisms will not work as well as they have previously. A similar shift has occurred in the copyright environment: It’s become so easy to easy to make a copy of a creative work, and social norms are so strong that a chasm has grown between what the law says and what digital natives do” (p. 82).

Clearly there is a massive challenge ahead of us to determine as educators and teacher-librarians how we will assist digital natives to protect their privacy. When students are online in our schools and libraries, is their privacy guaranteed? Not necessarily. Helen Adams has asserted that recent or proposed changes in legislation for four U.S. state legislatures concerning library records show “the majority lack understanding of or support for privacy rights for minors using library media centers”.
Although many computer users know that there are those out there who will try to steal your identity, go phishing, hack into another’s data, or launch harmful viruses, how many people realize that, for example, in Pennsylvania anyone under 18 may have their library use records released to a parent or guardian (if new legislation is passed)? In other words, not only are students in libraries potentially allowing private information to be divulged in their online activities such as using Facebook or mySpace, state or provincial laws may also allow student privacy to be invaded by a family member.

Then again, should libraries and librarians be responsible for how privacy is maintained by computer users who are using Web 2.0 applications, especially social networking applications such as Facebook or MySpace? Isn’t that akin to librarians getting involved with what media people are signing out – in essence, no one’s business? In a blog post entitled “The Central Problem of Library 2.0: Privacy”, Rory Litwin eloquently stated what he sees as the main dilemma:

· The difficulty that I think we have to grapple with in considering the Library 2.0 idea is that libraries and Web 2.0 services are based on serving two very different essential activities, and those activities have an opposite relationship to privacy.
· Web 2.0 websites are, with some exceptions, based primarily on sharing information, but sharing information in a particular way: essentially, they are about seeing and being seen.
· Freedom Foundation and others have raised awareness of privacy issues with respect to a host of internet technologies and practices. Many internet users share these concerns about their privacy in theory, but think little of sharing highly personal information on blogs and social networking sites.

At the moment, social networking sites are blocked in my school division. I have no first-hand knowledge of how the students I work with are controlling (or not controlling) their privacy online as regards these kinds of applications, because they are not allowed to use them in schools. However, if my students are typical Internet surfers, it is likely that they are sharing private information willy-nilly.

As web 2.0 application users, bloggers like you and me have our own privacy issues to contend with. As Doug Johnson has kindly reminded readers, ecommunications are not private and are also not necessarily protected by free speech laws. Johnson quotes thePennsylvania State Education Association Legal Division:

“As a school employee, you must exercise extreme caution when you engage in blogging or other forms of Internet communication. Keep in mind that your First Amendment rights can be limited by virtue of your position as a school employee.”
As students should understand their online behaviour can have consequences, so should we; anything we write can be read not only by friends but also by employers, potential employers, enemies (!), acquaintances, friends of friends, complete strangers…you get the picture. Johnson tells bloggers that we should:

· Write assuming your boss is reading.
· Gripe globally; praise locally.
· Write for edited publications.
· Write out of goodness.

Generally, I would say that these are good ideas for everyone. Maybe students can’t necessarily write for edited publications, but that may be the case for many other bloggers as well.

So what can we do to move towards guarding our own privacy as well as that of our students? A good start is simply becoming more informed. Privacytown is a site created administered by Canada’s Office of Consumer Affairs, and I must say it is one of the more informative, well-written sites I have ever seen associated with a government agency. It’s not patronizing or condescending, and it actually contains some humour! (check out this example – “Privacy isn't exactly a recent concept. In fact, you might argue that it is the world's oldest obsession -- well, maybe the second oldest.”)

I don’t think it hurts any of us to learn or be reminded about data mining, the use of cookies, data shadows, and e-mail privacy. Right now, I don’t know the level of understanding my students have concerning these issues; my immediate goal is to become a lot more informed and be prepared to address them when I can in the school setting.

Works Cited:

Palfrey, J., & Gasser, U. (2008). Privacy. In Born Digital (pp. 53-82). New York: Basic Books.


photo by Andrew Magill