Technology courses are standard requirements in today's schools of education. Why, then, Ms. Firek wonders, do new teachers enter the classroom without knowing how to use technology to help create meaningful learning? YET ANOTHER study has concluded that teachers don't know how to use technology effectively in the classroom.1 After more than a decade of computer courses in education schools, one is left to wonder why. Preservice teachers in most education programs are required to take at least one course in the use of technology in the classroom. Still, they aren't entering the classroom with the skills -- or perhaps the confidence -- to use technology to its fullest. Let's take a look at some possible reasons. Lack of technology integration in methods courses. A student in my Computers in the Classroom course last year planned to begin student teaching in the fall of 2002. She bounded into my class one Monday eager to tell me about her interview with the school principal. He asked me if I knew PowerPoint, she said. so glad I'm in this course now so I could say yes. surely you've been asked to create PowerPoint presentations in your other education courses? I inquired. No, never, she replied. Upon pressing her further, I learned that until my applications class, this student had never been asked to explore technology -- in any form -- in her education courses. Of course, she did type her papers using a word-processing program, but that was it. The student's previous instructors had assumed that she would get any computer education she needed in the tech class. They saw no need to integrate technology into their own teaching or into their students' learning. In other words, the teacher educators had failed to model effective integration of computers into their own courses. Now, professors are busy people. They often have neither the time nor the inclination to pursue a subject as ever-changing as the uses of computers in the classroom. Their photocopied handouts on Piaget have been working just fine for the past 15 years or so, thank you. And certainly the experience I'm relating is just that of one preservice teacher in one university program. But if we believe what the reports tell us about new teachers and technology, I have to assume that this story may be more typical than any of us would care to admit. One-size-fits-all courses. So if my student's experience is not a complete aberration, the educational technology course is responsible for most, if not all, of the computer-applications training in schools of education. In many universities, this means that ed-tech classes are filled with preservice teachers from every program. Preservice kindergarten teachers sit alongside those who will teach high school biology. Physical education students share equipment with those learning to be music teachers. Of course, a diverse student population is something that all instructors must face, and good teachers know how to individualize instruction. To make such situations work, a good teacher surveys his or her students to find out what they already know and what they want to know. A student in elementary education, for example, might want to know how to create recognition stickers and print them out on special magnetic paper. A physical education student might want to learn how to use a digital camera to shoot footage of kids running track. A student in music education might want to know about the latest software and equipment for composition. But teachers everywhere know that individualized instruction has been sacrificed on the altar of conformity. Somewhere along the line we forgot that education is about individual people. In the name of standards -- often morphed into standardization -- we have come to embrace the idea that everyone needs to know the same things as everyone else. At the university where I am currently pursuing a graduate degree, the undergraduate ed-tech course has a uniform syllabus. …
Read full abstract
Apr 16, 2010
Theano Koutsoupidou 
Open Access