Beyond the required reading for this course, some of you may be interested in checking out more detailed discussions. Allan Collins and Richard Halverson have an excellent book called Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology. Here’s a thoughtful point they make in Chapter 1-
“… schools have kept new digital technologies on the periphery of their core academic practices. Schools often provide computer labs, tech prep courses, and computer literacy and programming courses to help students learn about technology, but do not try to rethink basic practices of teaching and learning”
What are your thoughts on this? Does any of this resonate with you? Do you find that tech sometimes lives on the periphery? To what degree do you see your colleagues or peers re-thinking their approach to teaching and learning in light of these technologies?
I was in the classroom until several years ago when the Army moved us again and I decided to go to culinary school as a personal growth break. At that time, I did not see teachers use or re-think how they used technology. We had recently received Smart Boards in the classroom only to have teachers use them like a newer version of an overhead. It was frustrating to see those teachers who were so apprehensive of learning themselves that they failed to equip their students with the necessary technological tools.
For me, at a community college, the extent to which new technologies are utilized is really up to the instructor. We are given some support by instructional designers that stay current in the technology available, but beyond that it depends on the instructor. We are at the point in our college’s history in which we are having many retirements of faculty followed by new hires. Because of this, there seems to be some faculty that are very interested in utilizing what is available. Obviously, those recently hired faculty must illustrate that they are participating in professional development offerings and incorporate those into their teaching if they are working towards promotion and tenure. So, there is definitely a group of faculty at my college that try new technologies, and the administration is supportive of this.