Module 5: New Technologies

Oh wow! Does this pertain to me!! Pretty recently I was so disappointed with my fellow colleagues!! As I have mentioned, my school structures the day to include a 54 minute lunch for students. As a subsequent consequence, we have teachers have meetings during the lunch period once a week or once every other week in sessions call lunch'n'learns. I thought I would offer my knowledge of technology integration based on my experience in a lunch'n'learn session. I have my Masters degree in this area, obviously perusing at the moment a specialist in this area, and currently teach online classes. Since technology integration is one of our school goals, I approached my principal about leading a session on integrating technology in the classroom. I spent SOOOO much time putting together an awesome presentation about Jing, Prezi, Xtranomral, Voki, and so many other cool tools that can enhance student learning. The technology specialist at my school was super excited about it and sent emails out every week since the beginning of school about it. When the day finally came I was so nervous! I have never spoken in front of the entire staff before and was intimidated. Well, silly me because 3 people showed during 4th lunch, 5 people during 5th lunch, and 7 during 6th lunch. Now don't be fooled; I teach at a school with about 180 other teachers. Even my course team members or people from my department failed to show! I was upset, frustrated, and highly disappointed. I did the nice thing and emailed the presentation I made to everyone at the end of the day and still only received about 5 emails of thanks including one from my principal. I guess a positive side is that my technology specialist has had people reach out to him to use some of the tools they saw in the emailed presentation.

My presentation not only included information about each technology tool but also suggestions on how teachers and students can use them in the classroom. I made an effort to include how each subject could use each tool by providing samples of lessons and student products. In order to help build confidence level, I also included links to tutorials for each. To me, this demonstrates Keller's idea of relevance in his ARCS model. One of things that could improve teacher openness and adoption of my ideas would be his concept of confidence. I think most teachers have the desire to incorporate technology in their lessons, get excited about an idea, and then return to their classroom and feel totally lost. One of the things I appreciated from my session was the people who did come were part of the same course team. They were making an effort as a group for support to help one another feel confident incorporating technology in their classroom. In the link provided, the iste created a manual entitled "Preparing Teachers to Use Technology." One of the necessary factors mentioned in the manual is to provide constant training as well as feedback in the integration process. This corresponds to Keller's concept of confidence.