When teachers explore technology, they often feel as though they are entering an alien world, leaving behind their expertise and confidence. The challenge of teacher educators and technology resource professionals is to connect teachers to the possibilities of educational technology in a way that builds confidence, as well as competence. Training programs must provide teachers with an opportunity to familiarize themselves with new technologies. But experience shows that schools must go beyond teaching about the technology; they must also help teachers understand how technology relates to student learning.
The International School of Bangkok, a school serving 2,000 students in grades K–12, recently embarked on a three-year initiative to bring technology to the classroom. The school purchased computer equipment, built a campuswide local area network, and set up technical support systems. Once the technology was in place, we concentrated on instructional development for the school's 190 teachers. After-school workshops and one-on-one sessions in the classroom helped teachers learn how to use scanners and digital cameras, video editing, software programs, the Internet, and other new technologies.
Despite good attendance at the workshops, we quickly realized that our instructional development approach was missing the boat. Although the use of technology was on the rise, few teachers had integrated it into their instructional design, relying instead on a "yellow-sticky-note" approach, inserting a specific piece of software into the existing course outline, curriculum, or lesson plan. Although many students used word processors to complete homework assignments or write reports, for example, English teachers did not use word processing programs to teach writing. Science and math teachers similarly failed to see the enhanced data-gathering and investigative possibilities of computer-based lab sensors and probes. Most discussions among teachers about technology focused on hardware and software, not on what their students were learning.
We had experienced teachers, well grounded in educational thinking. How could we help them make the connection between technology and learning? How could we build on their experience and expertise and encourage them to share ideas with one another?
A New Learning Framework
We decided we needed a new learning framework, with common themes or strands that we could use to examine the place of technology in learning. We based our framework on a model that Chip Bruce had developed, using what John Dewey identified as the greatest educational resource—the natural impulse to explore and inquire, to use language and enter into the social world, to build or make things, and to express one's feeling and ideas (Bruce and Levin 1997). We adapted Bruce's model to structure our work around four learning areas: inquiry, communication, construction, and expression.
- Getting ready. Participants move into the role of learner by engaging in a scenario or quest.
- Learning about the technology. Participants become familiar with various aspects of the technology discussed in the workshop.
- Hands-on learning. Participants join in the investigative process as adult learners.
- Reflection. Participants put their teacher hats back on to think about how their own learning had taken place and how technology helped or hindered the learning process.
- Application. Participants explore the relevance of the technology to their areas of instructional design and learn about best practices in using the technology.
- Planning. Participants consider how they will make use of what they have learned by trying an approach, reflecting on what occurred, and assessing how well it went.
- Ongoing support. Participants forge connections with one another and learn how to get help as they take what they have learned back to their classrooms.
While the earlier "how-to" workshops focused on how to use technology and how participants might be able to use it in the classroom (phases 2 and 6), the new workshops added a focus on how learning takes place in a software environment.
Training New Leaders
Once the workshop model was in place, we developed a "train the trainer" program to help build connections among teachers and highlight the good work going on in classrooms. We trained teachers who were enrolled as curriculum design students to lead learning connection workshops at an inservice day. Preparation for the teacher-leaders focused on meeting three key needs: getting participants to buy into the framework, providing them with experience designing curriculum and evaluating learning in a technology-supported environment, and familiarizing them with our model as a basis for the design of their workshops.
As in other phases of our revised approach, we focused our efforts on helping participants make the connection between technology and learning. After participants became familiar with the learning framework, they chose one or more partners and a learning area. For each selected area, course leaders designed probing questions, investigations, and guided reflections. Teachers then designed a simple piece of curriculum to take back to the classroom for action research. We encouraged teachers to narrow the scope of their unit so they could focus on the learning that took place.
First grade teachers who chose the learning area of Communication and Construction, for example, illustrated an event in their past lives using KidPix, a multimedia software program for young people. They reflected on how multimedia environments supported their expression and communication and designed a classroom action research project, integrating KidPix into a classroom unit on Self and Family. Each of their students created three illustrations: "me as a baby," "me now," and "me as an adult," and organized them in a KidPix slide show. Teachers observed that the software helped users think about their experiences in a new way. Many of these teachers had used KidPix before, but the workshops had helped shift the focus from menu choices to learning outcomes.
Keeping the Focus on Learning
One of the greatest challenges of developing learning connection workshops is creating engaging quests. Probing questions that hook learners and lead them into investigation are central to good instructional design. Our experience proved that such questions were critical to success. The first time we led an investigation about music as a stimulus for memory, we opened with the question, "When you hear an old song, can you remember what was going on in your life when it was a hit?" We then played five hit songs from the past and asked participants to think about where they were when the songs were popular. The atmosphere quickly changed from a serious teacher workshop to a group of laughing, whooping adults sharing experiences and comparing their ages and activities. They were eager to use Tom Snyder Production's TimeLiner software to place their life events on an electronic timeline and compare it to a timeline of hit tunes.
At the next workshop, we conducted the same activity without the opening question. As before, participants placed life events on a timeline, but with a much lower level of enthusiasm and engagement than those in the first workshop. Later discussion in the first group revealed that teachers had remembered events right away and had enjoyed matching timelines of their lives to hit tunes. Some teachers had ideas for other ways to use the software as a teaching tool, and one teacher later used the software to create a timeline of her daughter's life. Reflective discussion in the second group fell flat; teachers failed to connect music to memory and were unenthusiastic about using an electronic timeline as a teaching tool.
Another challenge for teacher educators is to keep the focus on learning. As teachers, we are used to discussing our teaching, not our own learning. Reflection questions such as "What do you know now about music as a memory stimulus that you didn't know before?" or "How did technology support (or hinder) your learning?" can help keep the focus on learning. Teachers also may need assurances that they will be able to don their teacher hats later in the workshop to explore how the things they are learning relate to teaching.
Moving from Content to Process
The process of connecting technology to learning has required a change in the way teachers view technology and the role played by technology resource staff. When teachers ask for software suggestions, we help them first identify desired learning outcomes and then recommend software that would help them achieve these outcomes. We encourage teachers to think about the processes that technology supports, such as data analysis and communication, rather than about the technologies themselves.
Teacher training programs continue to introduce teachers to software programs and new technologies, but they focus on how learning takes place in the software environment. Workshops at the inservice training, from using computer lab probes to collect live data, to creating Web pages using Netscape Navigator, to building mathematical theories with GeoLogo, made the connection between the technology and learning. To build ongoing support, we set aside time at the inservice workshop for teachers to meet with others at their grade level to share experiences and to reflect on how to use what they learned.
The Power of the Learning Connection
The school's new approach to training has made a vast difference in the way teachers use technology. It isn't that teachers are using more complex programs; if anything, they have simplified their technology choices. The difference is the focus on how technology connects to learning. As their students work with KidPix, for example, teacher discussion no longer centers on what is available on the KidPix stamp palette, but on how working in a multimedia environment ties into what we know about multiple intelligences. Science teachers have gone beyond how to use probes in standard lab-based curriculum, exploring how probes can expand what students can learn. Students are helping staff develop Web pages, exploring what content and design are appropriate for this new form of communication. Not since early childhood have students so carefully considered how to use a single page to express their ideas. "I really finally got it," said one teacher at our in-service training. "I see much better what my students can get out of using computers."
The International School of Bangkok continues to provide ongoing support for teachers using technology in the classroom. Peer-led workshops continue, and another leader-training course with graduate credit is planned. Workshop leaders post technology tips and the results of action research projects on the staff development page of the school's Intranet.
Today teachers are taking control of technology, working collaboratively to explore its use in student learning. Perhaps the greatest sign of progress is the rich discussions among teachers—discussions that go beyond what technologies are available to consider how the technology can support process learning, outcome-based planning, portfolio assessment, and other school renewal efforts.
