Emmy's Comments on the week 7 article

Comments on the article: Teacher Pedagogical Beliefs: The final Frontier in Our Quest for Technology Integration (Peggy E. Ertmer)

After reading this article, I have some reflection as follows:
I agree with some point views presented in the article:
- Education authorities are more and more committed to support the expansion and use of computers in K-12 classrooms. However, majority teachers tend to use technology for numerous low-level tasks, rather than higher level uses. I also shared the opinion of Becker cited in the article that low level technology uses tend to be associated with teacher-centered practices while high-level uses tend to be associated with student-centered.
- I also see the relationship between teacher’s pedagogical beliefs and their technology practices. However, personally, I think, this relationship should be 2 way. One one hand, teachers must have pedagogical beliefs because this will enable them to translate those beliefs into classroom practice. On the other hand, I think, if teachers are given technology practices, specifically, through professional development events, for example, they can change their awareness and their pedagogical belief will be developing. Therefore, we can not only say that pedagogical belief is the only pre condition for technology integration. How we can help teachers “grow” their belief is a big question for education leaders.
I really like the paragraph which provided suggestions for designing professional development experiences to effectively initiate and support teachers’ uses of technology which was indicated on page 35. After reading this I have some ideas for school principals:

1. Since in the article, they believed that it might take 5 or 6 years for teachers to accumulate enough expertise to effectively integrate technology in teaching and learning activities. To overcome this barrier, why we don’t create a position of Technology Integration Teacher Aid to hire in each school. Like the case of Special Education Teacher in each school to help classroom teachers with children with special needs. Technology Integration Teacher Aid will help classroom teachers to design lessons with technology integrated. They will learn a lot from that.

2. If it is hard to have budget to hire staff for this person, another solution is to appoint 1 teacher in charge for each level grade who will take the responsibility to collaborate with other teachers in her grade level to work in team to design lessons with technology integrated. I think for the first period,it make cost time and energy to do this, but as the time goes on, the teachers can learn a lot from this process and there will come a time, when they do not need much help. The teacher in charge will not have to spend too much time with them, the responsibility of teachers in charge then will be just keep people up to date to technology events and provide on the job training through professional development events.