Week 4 articles- Personal thoughts from Emmy

I really like the 2 articles :” Examining Teacher technology use: Implications for Pre-service and In-service teacher preparation” by Russell, M. et al, and “High Access and Low Use of Technologies in High School Classrooms: Explaining an Apparent Paradox” by Cuban L, Kirkpatrick, H., & Peck, C. These articles help illuminate some long held belief about teachers’ integration of ICT in teaching and learning. The authors of both articles shared the position that access to equipment and software seldom lead to widespread teacher and student use. While in the 2nd article, the authors analyzed the challenges of teachers when integrating technology in their teaching through examining 2 high schools located in Northern California’s Silicon Valley, the authors of the 1st article presented their ideas about pre-service teacher preparation. The ideas are very useful for shaping directions for ICT development in education for education leaders and teachers and at the same time, make us “digital immigrants” feel more optimistic about the future.

After reading these articles, I have some personal thoughts:
First ,people tend to think that improving education quality for 21st century means to increase accessibility to ICT and increase budget for that. However, through these articles, we understand that availability of hardware and software are not the decisive factor to the success. The most important thing is how teacher use these resources for instructional purposes. Therefore, education leaders need to have a balanced investment strategy between infrastructure and professional development.

Second, for a long time, people emphasized a lot on professional development in schools as a solution to promote the integration of technology in teaching. In fact, the teachers have to face a lot of challenges which makes it not easy for them to integrate technology in instruction. As the authors pointed out in the article, the first few years of teaching are so challenging: the teachers have to develop behavior management techniques, become familiar with curriculum, adapt to the school culture which do not allow them to have time to explore ways to integrate technology in their teaching.

Third, people talk a lot about the technophobia of teachers as one of the reasons which impede the integration process of technology in instruction. However, personally, I think, this is not a matter we have to worry too much about, because technology nowadays develops to such a level that no one can be doubtful about its importance in people’s life. We cannot imagine our life without technology, especially, for young people. Therefore, as a matter of course, teachers nowadays understand that they need to integrate technology in their teaching to make their lessons more interesting and effective for their students if they do not want to be left behind. If they don’t try, they will be excluded by the market.

Fourth, this article is food for thought for those who design pre-service training in instructional technology for teachers. The question raised here is how we reform our pre service training for them in terms of content, methodology, assessment system… because with the development of instruction technology, the current pre-service training curriculum is not appropriate, for example, nowadays we need another way to evaluate our students. It is not reasonable to expect teachers to change their teaching methodology to meet the demands of 21st century education while at university level they are not prepared for that. I totally agree with the viewpoint of the authors that preparing teachers to teach with technology is to move away from focusing on teaching technology and instead focus on teaching with technology. The 6 categories regarding teacher technology use is very useful for instruction designers to examine and incorporate in pre service training curriculum.