A large majority of institutes agreed their program graduates posses the skills and experience to integrate technology into instruction. However, a large majority of these teachers indicate that barriers impeded the ability to do so in the classroom, two major barriers being 1.competing classroom priorities (76%), 2. time (67%).
Thoughts:
If competing priorities and time restraints are major issues in fitting in technology based learning , would school issued laptop computers help resolve this? Would extended learning be a possibility since every student has a computer? (ex: class period is used for content learning and demonstration via multi-media, then the work performed by students at home using labtop.)
This depends on whether or not teachers are willing to change instructional practices to empower students with the laptops. If they are going to use the same instructional activities and assessments then the laptops won't make much of a difference in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteIt takes time to plan for appropriate use of technology in a 1:1 program. That is why, if you look at the real data, instead of the data that gets published in reports, you'll see that most 1:1 programs are only marginally successful. If most students already have access to computers with Internet access then an intermediate step would be to leverage the home computer access to create learning opportunities using web 2.0 technologies. If teachers establish a strong framework that supports this type of technologies then a 1:1 would be more likely to be successful. It is the difference between "trying to build a ship while you are sailing it" vs. "getting the solid ship in the water and then raising the sail to move it along"...