Personally I think the biggest deterrent from technology in school is time and training. I know many who would not mind adding more, but where is the time, and how do they learn. In my old school there was volunteer training, after school and unpaid… Teachers are resistant to spending what little “free” time they have on volunteer learning, there is already too much going on.
In other fields, there is onsite and paid for training. My sister works in the IT field and whenever they want her to master something new, they send her on trainings, pay for the training and the room and board.
Schools do not have that kind of money, so the stubborn employees who want money if they “have to ” learn something new, will fight and fight because they see it as one more thing added to the list, without extra pay!
Liz,
ReplyDeleteI agree that it would be wonderful to be paid for all of our extra training and work, but I do not foresee there ever being enough money in education for that to happen. I think my school district has taken a smart approach to teachers getting smart boards. Before a teacher can get a smart board in their room, they must go through the district's training on smart boards. Unfortunately, this does not mean that every teacher that goes through the training will receive a smart board. I do think this is a good way to motivate the teachers who do want to stay up on technology.