Technology Training 101
The technology skills
in my school are all over the place.
Skills vary from those teachers that can barely turn on and logon to
their computers to those that try to “teach” the technology staff. I am sure this is true with most schools, but
this is my first year at this school and the gap in abilities seems to be
greater than other places I have been. I
had a teacher come in the other day to ask for my help that was using copies of
copies of tests that were actually typed on a TYPEWRITER!!! AND, he was quite resistant when I asked if I
could type them over for him and scan them as a PDF and email to him. He had this frightened look on his face that
I was about to take him to a strange place that he knew nothing about! In the end he was happy but still reluctant
to change. On the other hand we have a
department head that is so tech savvy (or wants to be and thinks he is) that
his entire class is online-I’m not even sure he lectures in person-he may
podcast himself! Our county is extremely
forward thinking when it comes to technology and opportunities for teachers,
but none of it is mandatory and therefore some teachers stay in their own
little world and do not change things from year to year at all. We also have some teachers that know enough
to be dangerous but genuinely want to know how to use new things and integrate
technology into their curriculum.
Currently, almost all
of our staff development in technology is provided by our county office. Staff members have to sign-up to take the
classes on the county website through PDExpress. Some classes are offered after school and
some are offered during the school day so you have to take professional leave
to attend. Some of the classes that are
currently offered are:
-BYLD (Bring Your
Learning Device): Tools of the Trade
-Adobe Pro
-Excel Workshop
-SmartBoard 101 &
102
-Moodle
-Web 2.0
-Promethean 101 &
102
-OAS (Online Assessment
System)
-Google 101
-Digital Citizenship
Several others are
offered as short courses that you can take on the same day such as Ipad,
Blogging, Digital Storytelling, Movie Making, Tagxedo, Webquest, and Wiki 101.
As I said before, we
are fortunate that we have the training available but I think that there should
be some way to make more of it mandatory.
Sometimes people need a little push to try something new and if the
district made more of it mandatory that just might be what some need.
As media specialists we
are not “required” to host any professional development but we certainly can if
we want and that is something that we are working toward. This being the first year for both of us, we
are trying to get our feet wet before jumping all the way in!! When we do get to that point, I would like to
go the route of making podcasts or recordings so that teachers could utilize
them when needed and on their own time schedule. One of the drawbacks that I find with certain
professional development classes is that they are drawn out in order to meet
the requirements for a full-day. I would
like to do short ones that give a lot of information that can be accessed at
any time by the teacher. If it is in
podcast form, even if there is a large amount of information, it can be stopped
and started by the teacher as they go.
So, I suppose my main DON’T is:
Don’t waste teachers valuable time with activities and fluff just to get
the hours!
I used to work with an experienced teacher who was very resistant to anything new, much less new technologies. She used to unplug the computer like a toaster at the end of each school day. She hand wrote all her lesson plans and begrudgingly checked email once a day. It seemed like life would be so much easier for her if she just gave in a little bit. It almost seemed like she spent more effort resisting change than the small amount of effort it would take to adjust or learn something new. In an ideal world all teachers would be life long, energetic learners, but that doesn't seem to always be the case.
ReplyDeleteWow! I wish our county offered the technology training that your county offers. We rarely get trained to use the new technology that we receive. We have a wide gap in the technology abiliies at our school as well. I find that as the media specialist, I have to get the teachers in the media center and model how to use the technology for them to see the benefits. Once they see it in use, they usually are very receptive.
ReplyDeleteThat is a lot of training opportunities, Cari. With all that, I would hesitate to do too much in the media center, and might devote my efforts elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteCobb has some training opportunities available county wide, such as continued Smartboard trainings, and indepth trainings on older software, like PowerPoint, Excel, and Access. But not nearly as much on all those Web 2.0 skills you listed out. I have no idea what some of those are.
I' at a primary school, and for sure the technology skills are limited for all but a few. The lady with the best technology skills got moved from classroom teacher to the computer lab this year, where she teaches computer for an enrichment block. She has a cart of Ipads, and also these NeoBoards, which are like little word processors that link to the computer cart to save & print. The students draft their writing, and then type it up. Not very exciting, but gets them started in word processing skills that they will certainly need going forward, while not taking up an internet linked computer just to work on word processing.
We are having a school wide election on Monday, and she has linked up 16 ipads to some sort of collective survey app, and the kids will "go to the polls" electronically. Then they can go to the media center to see the live updates throughout the day.
The computer lab specialist is FAR more adept at technology than the LMS, sad to say.
Among teachers, it's pretty scary. If I even suggested some of the things we are learning in class, they would look at me like I was crazy. I showed a teacher the "replace" function in Microsoft Word the other day..she was amazed. And I have shown several ppl how to print multiple pages to a sheet in the Print Command box. Not too sophisticated.
Cari, thanks for sharing your insights - I'm right there with you. I'm not new to the school in which I am the new LMS (been in the classroom since 1989). We have a tech specialist assigned to our school... I just recently learned this and have found I rarely see her and didn't know she existed when I was in the classroom. I too am not officially expected (not given much opportunity) for training, but I'm hoping to change that. As my jumpoff point, I've been making training ppts and videos (bells and whistles of ppt, using photo story, and movie maker) and placing them on the shared-drive. So far they aren't getting much traffic, but it is a start. I'm doing them in such a way that not only can teachers use them for their own tutorial needs, but also use to instruct students in these tools.
ReplyDeleteAs much as many teachers hate to attend technology training sessions, I do think that it should be mandatory to at least attend a certain number of technology training each year. Of course, for some districts, it is mandatory. But, for those where it is not, they should be required to learn more technology. The media specialist that I spoke to said that she hates the disinterested look on teacher's faces as they sit in one of her technology training sessions. She understands that they have other things to do, but they should look at it as more learning to help them engage their students and help them to become 21st century learners. It's important that teachers be open to learning technology, just as they expect their students to be open to learning the information that the teacher is teaching.
ReplyDeleteI think it's great that your district offers so many technology training opportunities for teachers. It would be good if all teachers had to choose at least 2 or 3 to attend for the year. That way all teachers are exposed to different technologies that they can use in the classroom.
Oh the story of keeping of with technology in education and business. Many simply can't "keep up" without proper training of the newer technologies. I will share an anecdote of my own. Having graduated college in the early 2000's, I entered the professional world of non-computers!!! WHAT!!!! I was completely lost without a computer and email. I even had to hand write all documents for a secretary to type which was never ever on my desired time schedule. 11 years later and under new leadership, everything is done electronically. Thankfully!!!! However, I will admit that I feel very sorry for the "older generation" who have received no training therefor they must tread water to keep up with the young computer literate generation. Training is key!
ReplyDeleteThe list of training that your school system offer is amazing and hopefully help keep those who are not as computer savvy to see how they can benefit with the newer technologies.
In such a technology-filled world, education cannot help but be drawn into the mix. It is absolutely amazing the training opportunities your school offers--we have NONE. Not one single technology training...it is sad to think, but it is true. When I received my SMART Board in December 2010, I did not have a single minute of training until that next summer (just one day). I love the idea of creating podcasts so that teachers can start and stop them whenever they need to. Another piece of advice would be to keep things as short as possible. I have recently had to "watch" the GADOE's CCGPS training videos--there were three total and lasted about two hours each. Waste of time and energy.
ReplyDeleteOn a different note, the training sessions your school offers are exactly what our school needs to have! It gives me inspiration!
Through the little time I’ve spent in media centers in this program, I have found that technology training comes in many different forms and varies from school to school. I have worked in a school with a media specialist who knew very little about technology (it had been awhile since she was back in school so I’m pretty sure she didn’t have a technology course in her graduate program!). She was very sweet and tried to be helpful, but it seemed that she wasn’t interested in technology at all and focused on story time during media classes. At my current school, the media specialist is constantly trying new programs and going to technology professional development classes. She usually redelivers (briefly) any special training during our weekly faculty meetings. She utilizes every new program either while teaching a media class or co-teaching a special project. There are still many things she hopes to learn, and like you Cari, she hopes to take them one step at a time! Because the media specialist’s position can entail so much when you don’t have a technology specialist, you really have to prioritize the technology that is most useful to your school. My goal will definitely be to provide trainings online through wikis, podcasts, and webpages that teachers can visit and learn as needed. I agree that taking up time to teach a class without making it meaningful is wasteful for both the teachers and media specialist.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree that at my school, levels of technological competence are also quite varied. We have teachers who rely heavily on internet resources (which effectively replace the textbook) and then we also have teachers who can't make a worksheet with shapes in it because they don't know how, and can't send an email to more than one person at a time. It is quite varied. One of the biggest challenges is our grading system. It's online and it's quite UN-USER FRIENDLY. Although our media specialist is knowledgable about it and can help, it still seems like an endless maze of things to remember and options to check just to complete a simple task. I think that our training should be concentrated on the grading system at our school, since it's something that hassles us all regularly.
ReplyDeleteI think that it's interesting that your county offers so many training options for using tech resources in your classroom. While I know that we often don't have time for additional training after school, it is nice that your county offers these. We don't have that. We have mandatory trainings on things like our grading system and our smartboards, but the training is not comprehensive enough and is not specific to your needs. What we need is a time when you can sign up for "help" or a one-on-one tutoring session about the programs you are using.
ReplyDeleteI heartily agree that some professional development classes are drawn out for a full day. A better use would be to incorporate two to three technologies than can be used stand alone or combined to get the more “bang for the buck”. It is amazing that you work at such a technological forward thinking county school system. I would love to incorporate more technology in the classroom, but with the daily demands of teaching it is very difficult. Teachers are being asked to do more each day, but there is not any time being added to the day. Getting those that are not technology savvy requires more time which they have less of.
ReplyDeleteTechnology at my school is the same way. Some people are so against using the technology or wanting to know anything about it. It makes me crazy because most of the time it will make their life so much easier. My district also offers alot of the same training that yours does. Right now we are having to, required by the school, take two online promethean classes. We try to do a little bit once a week during our planning. I am sure you can imagine the millions of complaints that we got because we have to do this. In a way the technology is becoming more mandatory becuase it is included in our evaluation process in my county. There is actually a technology component and we have to include it also on our lesson plans.
ReplyDeleteI love attending technology training. I feel so empowered at the end of the training and I am ready to try something new in my classroom. When the time arrives to use the new technology, I often times find that I could use a little more than one day or afternoon to really work with the technology. This feeling often comes from forgetting a step and not having a tips sheet or good notes to go from. I am thankful to get the training I do, but most of the time it feels like I get a quick introduction and that’s it. It would help to have follow up sessions or a “go to” person who is familiar with the technology and can help once the training is over.
ReplyDeleteWow, I love the fact that you all have so much training available! That is remarkable. My school does not have anything like this. I am surprised to hear that a school drags out training over a full day when it is not necessary! My school is always trying to pack some into a small time frame and you are so rushed that you do not feel like you learned anything at all!
ReplyDeleteI do see many teachers that are reluctant to any and all training. I don't really understand this as I am always happy to learn about something new that can be useful to me in my classroom and in some cases with my students. Technology training requirements should be stepped up in teacher education programs so future teachers understand the importance of technology in the 21st century classroom.
Our school generally only trains us on an upgraded or new grading system or something to that effect. We do not have all of the additional options like your county has and that is very unfortunate to me.
Thank you for the informative blog as I would like to bring up some of the opportunities I see here. The podcasts would be great so teachers can do it on their own time and go back through it as necessary.
I have to admit I'm very impressed with the amount of training your county/school offers your teachers when it comes to technology. (And a little jealous.) As in every school there are teachers in my building that are reluctant to use technology or not sure how to troubleshoot when something goes wrong. With a busy schedule or family it is hard to go to training after school and I personnaly don't want to take off work to go so unless it is offered during early release meetings I can't see that changing in my building. I think it would benefit teachers to have it mandated that we go to some form of training but make it interesting or something valuable to us not just what is "in". That may help some of those that are reluctant to learn new things more likely to do so.
ReplyDelete