Improving Technology Adaptation in Schools
It is an obvious problem that there is a flaw in the adoption of technology in the public school system. The original reason why technology was integrated into schools was to enhance the quality of education by allowing more resources to be available and making the lives of students and teachers easier with the use of automated systems. Theoretically, this should work out just fine. Teachers should hopefully see how beneficial this is to them and their students and how much of a load off of their shoulders it is. Students should see their lucky friends with teachers taking full advantage of all the technology offered to them and be begging their teachers to do the same because it makes learning so much more interesting, provides instant feedback, and allows for more instructional time instead of following the paper trail. Unfortunately, the mention of computers is intimidating and many just brush it off as being too hard or too much work, when it really isn’t. Also, another problem is that many don’t know that certain technologies even exist, or are offered to them, and they would probably be more than happy to learn and integrate if they only had the opportunity. Although this is rare, these individuals need to be targeted first.
A simple solution to the problem is presenting all possible use of technologies available to each individual department, then allowing the departments to choose which they would like to implement into their curriculum. These departments will be advised by a panel of technology specialists, and then once a final decision is made, training can begin. This is most critical in the core curriculum departments, where many tasks are so simple that it wouldn’t take much effort to make practically everything automated. Teachers have their lesson plans prepared usually weeks ahead of time, therefore, instead of flipping thorough pages of a lesson book, teachers can open files that are linked to other related documents, and save at least five critical minutes everyday.
After teachers have been trained, it is then necessary to make sure that the students adapt well to everything and that all new technology adapted remains consistent. The students should accept it well, for it will most likely be easier on them. If this all works as planned, it should be very successful, but as usual, something should go wrong. The gaps in the plan are disapproval from teachers, in which they will refuse to use the new technology, and nothing will change. Teachers can't be forced to use everything that would benefit them, but some vital things can still be 'forced' such as the use of a Moodle, at least for testing.
Also, a technology panel can be formed to assist teachers with incorporating new technologies into their classrooms. Tutorials would be helpful because some are afraid to ask for help, or feel better learning on their own. This panel of specialists would be on-call in the beginning, and once everyone is adjusted, it can simply go away. All of the materials to advance a school technologically is already there, it is just a matter of utilizing it. Hopefully, within the course of a year, a whole school can be changed for the 21st century.
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