Technology in My Teaching Career

Posted by Malcolm Drew

The first school I worked in was a typical Canadian public school of the time. “Technology” meant an overhead projector in every classroom, whiteboards instead of chalk in some classrooms, and one interactive whiteboard on wheels with a projector that would sit on top of a desk positioned roughly in front of the screen. The interactive whiteboard was housed in the Tech classroom where students learned how to use its drawing tools during 1 or 2 of their lessons in their approximately two month tech course. Later on, the school received an interactive whiteboard for each floor (3), all on wheels. Despite the wheels, the department heads held the boards hostage in their classrooms to become the experts on their use. The mathematics head was learning to use the board with Texas Instruments software when I left the school.

In officer military training I underwent around this time period, courses with a classroom component were conducted through PowerPoint presentations. The students in these courses coined the phrase “death by PowerPoint”.

Another school I worked in had the boards mounted in each classroom, with projectors mounted from the ceilings. This was a private school, and the owner wanted to showcase the boards. Teachers were required to have lessons using them every day, and upload the lessons in pdf format to the school website for students and parents to view. This lead to many teachers using the boards in a PowerPoint slideshow fashion, including myself. As much as possible, some teachers, including myself, working to add interactivity to the lessons with varying degrees of success. The highest degree of success came from students using the boards themselves. This lead to a “My turn, my turn!” environment with younger students. Other students, who were more prone to shyness, there would be difficulty in motivating participation.

Grades 9 to 12 at this school were in a 1 to 1 Macbook program. This put technology into each of their hands, but unfortunately many used the computer socially during school which lead to website blockages and discipline issues. The students wanted to use the computers in ways that did not conform to what their teachers wanted. Most teachers wanted the computers used for note-taking, making presentations, and doing online research.

In my present school, the classroom is structured much the same way. The toys are mainly developed for the teacher. We have 1 interactive whiteboard, and 1 visualizer per classroom. The visualizer is a device for projecting a real object onto the board. You can also take a picture or a video of the object with the visualizer’s camera. The school is currently grades 6 to 10, and will age to 6 to 12 one year at a time. All students are in a 1-1 MacBook program. Similar discipline issues arised for much of our first year that also lead to website blockages and discipline problems. Now in our second year, our focus on students making proper choices seems to be having a good effect. Teachers again largely focus on note-taking, presentations, and online research. The presentations have explained into video and podcasting, but they’re still presentations rather than students and teachers just telling or showing each other things.

From these experiences I would reflect that technology works best in meeting learning outcomes when it is in the hands of the students and the teachers are planning activities that do not simply replace normal classroom activities (like note-taking, and making linear presentations). One of the reasons I am in this program is to develop my own ability in using technology to its fullest extent in the classroom.

I asked a few of my students to briefly explain how they perceive technology in education, Satchet's response in particular raised some of the more physical demands of using laptops in school.

Samuel:

Technology is a tool to better help my understanding and to make the work simpler and quicker. So you work smarter rather than harder. I use laptops, use youtube videos, Word, and other programs.

Satchet:

It has brought down my attention span and does make my eyes hurt a little because I used to use the laptop for every class which makes me feel tired from staring at the screen almost all day but it’s improving now because I don’t use my computer for each and every class. I find the internet very useful because I can find out about different people’s opinions and pick out what information is reliable, it has helped me in finding out what is lies and what is not.

Theo:

It (laptop) is dependable, and worth working on. Saves paper, allows you to keep a copy of your work. You can search for things you’ve never seen before. Using a computer makes me feel like I’m getting useful skills.