The Evolution of My Instructional Beliefs and Practices in a High-Access-to-Technology Classroom
By Marie Altieri
I began taking the Introduction to Educational Technologies course at about the same time that I began a new position as an Instructional Technology Specialist at a Middle School. I was fortunate in that I was able to apply the many concepts that I read about and learned in class immediately, with my students. I actually taught each of the lesson plans that I developed, in some cases once before I finalized the lesson plan, and then again after with a different group. As a result, I have certainly gone through stages in my instructional beliefs and practices.
If I had read the Apple Classroom of Tomorrow (ACOT) article before I took this class and before I started this teaching position, I would have said with confidence that I was between the appropriation and invention stages of evolution. I had worked with technology for 20 years, teaching Unix courses to adults in industry. After all, I actually took a course called “Introduction to Educational Technology” in 1983! I knew that I needed to learn more about K-12 instruction, but I felt pretty confident about my technology skills. Now that I have been through the course and the experiences I have had in my classroom, I see much more grey area. If I looked at myself objectively, I would say that I have some strengths and weaknesses in each of the stages.
As I read the article, I actually related most closely with the teacher who is quoted in the description of the first stage, entry. I took my instructional technology position one week before school started. A few days before school started I was shown to my classroom and given a key to let myself in. I entered the classroom and began to look around at 22 Emac computers. I had never worked very closely with Mac’s, but when I did I found them easy to navigate. I later discovered that an Emac is an Imac marketed for education. I turned on the lights and sat down at the teacher workstation which was in the middle of the room. I tried to boot the machine. I looked and felt all around the computer. I couldn’t find a power switch anywhere. I probably spend 10-15 minutes looking for a way to turn the machine on. Eventually I noticed a slight round cutout on the right hand side of the computer. I tried to push it in, and still nothing happened. I ended up spending a lot of time searching for a manual. To be honest, I couldn’t really determine how to turn the computer on from the manual! I finally was able to turn on one of the student computers that was against the wall. It turns out that there no power was run to the teacher’s computer station. It took me about 45 minutes to figure out how to turn on one of these computers I was supposed to teach on the next week! From there I went to the fact that no network cables were connected, there were student logins and nobody to tell me what the student logins were, and so on. I can still vividly remember the overwhelming feeling that I wasn’t going to be able to make any of this work. The administration had made it clear to me that the students would begin coming to computer lab on the first day – five or six classes a day for 50 minutes each.
I met the technology support person the next day, and he showed me the student and teacher’s logins and passwords. We connected the network cables, and slowly things began to work. I worked really hard for a few days, but when I left on Friday of Labor Day weekend, I had lesson plans for the first week, and everything was working. I was ready for school to start on Tuesday…or so I thought. I began my first class on Tuesday morning, a group of eighth graders. I had put together an introductory project where the students would use Microsoft Word to introduce themselves to me and tell me about their computer experience and what they had hoped to learn in technology class this year. They went over to the computers and went to log in. None of their passwords worked! The technology support person must have forgotten that he told me the passwords, and he re-set them all to something different over the weekend. The only password that I had that worked was my own, so I had all of the students log into their computers under my name. They were able to create their documents, and print them. It wasn’t perfect, but it got me through those classes on my first day. I didn’t end up connecting with the technology support person for a few days before I could get the passwords re-set.
By the third day, the printer stopped working. One of the five color cartridges ran out, and the whole printer stops working until the cartridge is replaced. The black and white printer already had a component out being fixed, and now the color printer needed a cartridge. By the time I navigated the P.O. process, had it approved, ordered and delivered, we had gone two weeks without any ability to print.
I’ve only gone into this detail to show that no matter how much technology experience one has, technology inherently runs into problems. As I went through this course, I saw that the variety of programs we used allowed us to experience the types of issues that we will experience in the classroom. Learning Photoshop and html programming both took patience and perseverance.
As the first few weeks passed, and as I began the course, I believe that I was transitioning into the adoption and adaptation stages. I learned a great deal about the students I was working with, and their technology learning styles. They want to do everything on the computer very quickly. They will be searching for something, and keep clicking right past the answer. They want to create Powerpoint presentations with the most animation, sound, and the busiest background. They don’t necessarily look for content, and many of them copy and paste directly from the internet.
The biggest “a-ha” moment that I had during the course was when Stacie showed two award winning Powerpoint presentations. I think it best symbolizes the stages that I believe my instruction has gone through since the beginning of the fall. The first Powerpoint presentation had beautiful pictures taken from worldwide landmarks and placed beautifully into the slideshow with lots of bulletized facts really impressed me. Stacie was talking about how much she didn’t like it and how she couldn’t believe it got an award. I was sitting there thinking I wish one of my students could do something like that. Then Stacie showed another Powerpoint presentation where students took on the role of a child in another culture. I absolutely loved it. I thought that the students who created the second Powerpoint really learned so much more about the culture they were studying. That very week I had watched students researching a colony, and the students either cut and paste or copied word for word from Web site after Web site. I think the biggest change in my instructional beliefs has to do with these types of observations.
Now I am much more careful to plan out assignments so that they are broken into smaller specific steps. If students are doing research, they need to take notes on a piece of paper, or answer questions, or take on a role where they speak in the first person. I always think through ways that they will synthesize the information before they begin to work on the product. The pamphlet, or the Powerpoint, or the poster all need to come after they have gathered all of their information and transferred it into their own words.
I am much more likely to create WebQuests, scavenger hunts, and other cooperative learning experiences for my students. I’m working really hard to break things down into simple steps so that students aren’t just sitting at the computer searching with google. I’m also trying to work with the teachers in my school so that their integration of technology is as effective as it can be. At the beginning of the year teachers would schedule time in the lab. They would either tell them to use google to find information, or they would pass out a piece of paper with a list of long URLs that the students were supposed to type in. Now, when they schedule lab time, I ask specific questions. I ask them to find some good Web sites and send them to me in advance. I post them so that the students can go directly to them. I work with them to incorporate programs like inspiration into various types of learning experiences. I make sure that our two mobile carts and mobile projectors are in classrooms being used as much as possible.
When I look at where I am now, I still see myself experiencing pieces of each stage – entry, adoption, adaptation, appropriation, and invention. I do think that I have learned quite a bit in a short period of time. I’m really looking much more critically at learning experiences to see if they are as successful as they could be. No matter what you do with technology, you have to be ready to respond to technical difficulties, and tailor your plans. We should always analyze our instructional models to make sure that the students are participating, working cooperatively and gaining as much from the experience as they can. I’m excited to see where this all goes.