Judith Sotir offers again today an insightful outline and argument for educators to consider the State-of-the-Use of technology in schools. This is a keeper for school decision makers thinking through how to increase use of computers by teachers.
Here’s her summary: Technology for the sake of technology simply will not be used by teachers. (bold added) They are too busy, and sometimes too reluctant to use something foreign and difficult to understand. But if you make the tool invisible, give it a purpose and a value, then new ideas can and will be embraced. We don’t need to have the newest state-of-the-art. We need to have the best state-of-the-use. We need to spend less money getting the newest and the best, and spend more on developing the uses of the equipment we do buy. Technology still in the virtual box is nothing more than a waste of resources. Get it out, and get it used.
I think her QuickNotes is adaptable by most school IT people to make software and tech programs readily available to teachers. Kudos!
Tableteers may also find interest in her December 8th comments about use of Tablet PCs in schools. The tablet PC has been around for a while. So has email. Teaching writing is difficult, and many teachers hate having to drag all the papers home to grade. Students hate to wait for a week to get the corrections to their papers, and see where they can improve. Let’s put a tablet pc in the hands of that instructor…