Discussion 4

The topic from this article that really stuck out to me was the barriers to technology integration in the classroom. The one that I strongly agreed with is time. The article stated that, teachers that put in extra time for searching the internet for images and to produce multimedia projects often suffered from burn out. Sadly, these over-achieving teachers often leave the field. There are times when I feel like I have spent a whole day putting together a very interactive, technology rich lesson, and the fact of the matter is that I cannot do that everyday. The lack of skills is not a huge barrier for me put I do see this as a major problem for veteran teachers. They get easily frustrated, then time is twice a big as a barrier for them as it is for more tech-friendly teachers. It takes these teachers 2 or 3 times as long to prepare a powerpoint presenation, much less an interactive lesson where their students are using the internet effectively. These teachers who are less technologically savvy also have poor attitudes and beliefs when it comes to integrating technology. This serves as an enormous barrier when trying to encourage technology use in the classroom.

~Danielle