Erik’s Random Babble

In the very general sense, I see instructional technology as any tool, hardware or software, that can be used to help facilitate instruction and enhance learning. It can be something the teacher uses to help illustrate, model or communicate the information they are trying to pass on to the students, or tools that the students themselves use during the learning process. Here are a few examples of each that come to mind:

Facilitating Instruction:

• Connecting a laptop to a TV or projector to show a website, PowerPoint presentation, video clip or software application that the students will need to use.
• Using a SmartBoard to model a computer-based activity to students before they do the activity individually or in groups at their own computers.
• Recording a class lecture and converting it into a Podcast, so students can hear it again either at school or at home.
• Using FCPS 24-7/Blackboard to post information about homework.

Enhancing Learning:

• Using Pixie to draw a diagram showing the parts of a mushroom or cricket.
• Using Kid Keys to help kindergarten students learn the location of keys on the keyboard.
• Using Kidspiration’s or Inspiration’s outlining tools to help students organize their ideas when writing a report.
• Using a website like WeatherBug Achieve to gather data that students can then use to create a chart of the average temperature over the past month.

As for my own personal beliefs about instructional technology, I do feel that the word “tool” is important when defining it because although it can take many forms, it’s not really the focus of the instruction. Instead, it’s something that helps the students get to where they need to go. It should help make the information being taught more comprehensible to the students. It can be a tool that helps students visualize a complex or difficult concept. It can spark the students’ curiosity, making them want to learn more about something. Or it can help the students pull multiple concepts together into a unified whole.

That being said, technology isn’t always “invisible” enough not to be at least a partial focus of a lesson (or lessons). To use one of my examples above, before students can draw a diagram of a mushroom in Pixie, they would need to understand which tools within the program that they are going to use and how to use each of them. However, I think that this tends to only become a partial focus when the technology is being used by the students. If the teacher is the one using the technology to enhance his or her instruction, that technology (ideally) remains the medium through with information is communicated to the students.

Achieving that ideal of “invisible” technology in the service of communicating information is the challenge, though. It is the goal we, as SBTS, have — getting our teachers to the comfort level and familiarity with whatever technology tools that are at their disposal, so that the technology does indeed act as the medium, rather than “getting in the way” of instruction. A teacher fumbling with a SmartBoard or unsure of how to use a piece of software distracts students from the information he or she is attempting to convey to them. Some teachers are more open and flexible in their approach to incorporating technology into their instruction, and are comfortable enough to go with the flow especially when things don’t work as expected. Others, however, may find themselves running into some technological hiccup or uncertainty, and allow that to color their own feelings towards using that tool again in the future.

That is actually something that I continue to work on myself — finding ways to ease teachers’ techno-phobias. Unfortunately, I often find myself coming to their rescue too quickly, to the point that they wind up relying on me too much for anything tech-related and stagnate in their own learning and use of instructional technology. Finding the right balance between helping teachers too much or letting them figure out things on their own remains a bit elusive for me — but I do see it as an ongoing process. Hopefully one of the outcomes of this class will be that I am better able to reach that balance.