How to stimulate teachers to integrate technology in education?

In my previous post I reflect on the design process of my final assignment and I also told something about working with TPACK. In that post I said that I found it very nice to work with TPACK and during the design process we only looked at the components of TPACK in our design for one or two times. So, we weren’t busy with thinking about the T, P and C in our design. They just found their way in the program.

But in different posts before the last one I also talked about TPACK and about teachers using technology in education. But we also have to think about the integration of technology in education. In this post I will try to tell something about the way that we can stimulate the teachers to integrate technology and not only use it in education.

The process to integration technology consist of a couple of phases I think. At first there is knowledge needed on technology, then the attitude of teachers has to be positive towards technology, they have to believe that it can work in education. And to really use it there are skills needed to work with technology. Going through all these phases can lead to integration of technology, but teachers can’t do it alone. They need support to go through the several phases and of course they need time to get used to technology in education and working with it.

Knowledge on technology

To really integrate technology in education, I think that teachers need knowledge about the technologies in the class. They need to know what they can do with them, what the technology can mean for the teacher and of course for the student. To know more about technology they need experiences with technology. In that way they can see what the technology can do and with an interactive workshop about the several technologies they can learn more about the technologies.

Attitude and beliefs  towards technology

When a teacher knows more about technology then it isn’t directly so that they will use technology in their classrooms. The teachers need a positive attitude towards technology and willingness to integrate technology in their education. You can stimulate these positive thoughts by let them experience technology in a positive way. Teachers need positive experiences to understand that technology can be useful in the lessons and that it is a good thing to integrate technology into the education.

Skills to use technology

When teachers finally have a positive attitude and willingness to integrate technology and they also know more about the value of technology, they only need more skills to really integrate technology. To really be able to use the technology and also integrate it in education I think that teachers need to learn how to work with it, learn more about it and also try a lot. Here are experiences also a very important thing. These experiences build on the knowledge and skills of the teachers and make them able to use technology in the right ways. I think that when teachers know how they can use technology, that the integration into education will be much easier.

Support and time

We can leave teacher alone in the world of technology and hope that they will understand it and are able to integrate it in their lessons. But I think that teachers need support in the whole process that is mentioned. The support can be given from two different groups. At first it is important that there is an expert that support the teachers. This expert can show the teacher a lot and the teacher can learn from this expert. I think that it also gives a feeling of trust, when someone with knowledge stands next to you. I would feel secure and also would know that the expert can help me out. But later on the expert can also be supportive by helping the teachers integrating the technology, but I think that it is very important that other teachers and people from the leading and supporting staff of a school are working with the teacher. All of these people can give support to each other, and help each other to work with technology and integrate it in the lessons. By working in teams with each other, there is also the possibility to overcome barriers with each other and then you can reach more then when you need to do it alone.

A really big issue in stimulating integration of technology is the time that a teacher has. We all know that teachers are very busy and they have to do a lot more then only teach. I think that the support that is given from different kinds of people isn’t ending after two or three weeks. I think that teachers needs guidance for a longer time. It is hard to integrate technology, when you are used to work with your blackboard and the books that were there for years. But with guidance for a longer time there is stimulant to really try to integrate technology.

As I said before, I think that integrating technology is a process that a teacher needs to work through. But by giving the teacher support and the opportunity to experience technology in different ways, I think that it can stimulate the integration of technology in the right way. I think that when the teacher has the willingness to learn about technology and really wants to work with it, then I think that the integration of technology will come. But the support and the time is a big issue that we, as educational scientists and designers have to think about. We can want a lot, but we have to make sure that it is able for our teachers to work with it. So giving them the support that they need to create ownership on technology, will give them the self-efficacy that we want them to have. But it is a process that takes time and it needs to be done in a careful way, otherwise teachers won’t work on integration of technology.

Designing a professional development program based on TPACK

This week I finished the final assignment for the course ‘Pedagogies for Flexible learning’. This final assignment was about designing a professional development program for teacher or a course based on TPACK. In this post I will reflect on the process of designing that I walked through for this assignment. I also will tell something about my experiences with working with TPACK.

With the group that I worked with we choose to design a professional development program for teachers. I was very happy with this decision. Not because I don’t like to design a course, I also liked that assignment a lot, but the important reason was that I really like to do something new. In the bachelor Educational Science that I followed on the University of Twente I worked a lot on assignment about lessons and specific information for students and class based programs. This final assignment gave me the opportunity to work on a new level of designing and a new way of looking towards important design decisions. I also liked the fact that you really have to think about stimulating the teachers in this program and in other design assignments, I’ve got the feeling that the teacher wasn’t in it a lot.

So, I started with lots of excitement on this assignment. In the beginning I had some difficulties. This was because I didn’t had a group very soon. When I finally joint a group, they already had an idea to work out and parts of the report were already divided under the other group members. For me it was a little bit difficult to really own the assignment in the beginning. Because I missed the first meetings and decision points, I had trouble to work myself really in the design. But after a while and also be reading the parts of the other group members I was able to own the assignment and start to like it a lot.

Working towards the end result I didn’t have any trouble to think about possibilities that can be used to learn TPACK to teachers. I also like it to think about the set up of the program. By doing it together there was the possibility to learn from each other and also work with each others background. In our group we had two persons that came from the bachelor, 1 member was a foreign student and the last one did pre teacher education before she came to the master track. So a divers group with lots of ideas. I really liked it to work with them and learn a lot about advantages and disadvantages of a professional development program for teachers. And because we had to explain some point to our foreign student, there was the possibility for us to really explain it well and by explaining I learned about the subject as well.

But of course there were also some big challenges to work on. One of them was for me that you really need a good balance in the program. Sometime I thought that parts in our program were too much or that it could be a lot shorter then we made it. Especially when I talked with members of other groups I thought sometimes that we did too much. But when I look back I think that we did enough. Our program is year based, but I think that you need it in a school to work with TPACK for a longer while then only two weeks, to really get used to the way of working.

When I look back to our design process I think that we worked pretty well on the assignment with the whole group. We divided the different parts of the report, but we had enough meetings together with the whole group to make sure that everybody knows what was going on and agreed with the things that we worked on. In the design process we also designed one activity in detail of the whole program that we designed. In that way the reader can imagine how the sessions could look like. Designing this part was a challenge, because you really have to think about all the things that need to be done in that session. For me it was very good to work on it in that way, because you see problem areas quicker, then when you only design a program with guidelines.

In the process that we went through I think that we looked at a lot and I think that we build on a good framework, but maybe we could have done it less extended. At the other I really do think that we thought through every point in our program and everything can be linked to the conceptual framework that we used.

In the design process we also focused a lot on TPACK. Not a big surprise, because the professional development program that we designed has to be based on TPACK. But for me it was sometimes difficult to think about TPACK. You are busy with the design and the writing of the different parts of the report, but I didn’t thought of TPACK a lot. One moment in the process we stopped with everything and started to mention the T, P and C in our program. We did this to make sure that they can be named and that they were in it. But when I look back at the whole process that I walked through I didn’t looked directly towards all the parts of TPACK. But still everything was in the program at the end, so in that case we thought about it through the time. I guess that in someway you just think about it, because you know that you want to make a balance with technology in your program. But really thinking about every part is too much I guess. In the way of designing this it was very nice to just do what you like and at some points look back to TPACK and say, this is in and this has to come there, to make it complete.

Did I like working with TPACK? Yes, I really did. I think it is very good to work with a framework or model that your program needs in the end version. For me, I found it very nice that you can measure in that case if you have all the components. But it isn’t necessary for me to walk through every step of TPACK, for me it was kind of obvious that it has to be in that way. But I think that that way of thinking depends on your background. I know what it is to design and designing this program was a really challenge for me, not because it was really difficult, but because you have to think of new points. And working with TPACK was a new thing, but more a measuring scale to focus on at the end, if every point was in it. Not to work from in the beginning.

The only thing that I really found difficult in the design process was the implementation and evaluation part. The evaluation was something that we knew quite soon, because of the articles that we viewed in the course. But the implementation part is something that is difficult. You know that you want it and that it is very helpful for the teachers when they know more about TPACK, but you also know that there isn’t a lot of time in the schools. We made a school context in which teachers are motivated, but what when you have a context without motivation. These are points that you really have to think about and I think that in the process that I walked through, that thinking about implementation wasn’t enough. I could have thought more about it and now it was too much away from me. This was the only part that I didn’t really own in the project. And that is too bad and not good, but I can work on that in the future.

So, when I look back on the design process and working with TPACK, then I can say that I really like the assignment. I learned a lot in ways of thinking as a teacher and knowing what is possible and what is not. But I think that I also missed some points, mostly about the implementation phase. I think that I could be more part of this and now it wasn’t in the main point for me. But I really liked to work with TPACK and especially design with TPACK. I know that I can design programs and lessons, but thinking about and designing with TPACK was a challenge and I liked it a lot. I think that it isn’t easy to make something really TPACK, but I think that we did a pretty good job and I'm very happy with our end result.