Running head: TEACHERS TEACH WITH TECHNOLOGY

Teaching the Teachers How to Teach with Technology Ricardo Garay California Polytechnic State University- San Luis Obispo

TEACHERS TEACH WITH TECHNOLOGY

Teaching the Teachers how to Teach with Technology If we are not evolving, then we are without technology. If we are without technology, then we live in the past. If we live in the past, then teachers do not know how to use the internet. If teachers do not know how to use the internet then you do not get the notification that there is no class because there is a ferocious gang at the school. If you do not get the notification then you go to class and see that there is a gang at school. If there is a gang at school, then you get beat up and get put in the hospital. Do not get put in the hospital because your teacher does not know how to use technology. Generations today are not what they were 100 years ago, they are more advanced. Humans are constantly evolving, so should the teaching methodology. Teachers should be encouraged to implement technology into their lectures to facilitate the learning amongst the newer generation of students.

(Figure 1) Different Types of Students A teacher should be able to teach and understand how their students learn in distinct ways. Technologically inclined students learn via technology. The same goes for how students stand out. Some stand out with athleticism and some with grades, while some others shine in the way they play their music. If people like to shine those ways, then what about those students who excel with technology? In the article Effects of Technology on Classrooms and Students written

TEACHERS TEACH WITH TECHNOLOGY by the Department of Education of the United States, there are students who use technology to stand out. It is written how a young student stayed in class during recess and worked on a

computer on a project of his. This student was not really sociable and not great at making friends so he always remained alone. Once he finished his project he asked if he could show the class, and the teacher gave consent. The young student then demonstrated his project to his classmates and his fellow classmates were amazed with what he accomplished. He managed to make his computer play music that the student had made, all off a sudden he had everyone asking him how he accomplished it and to teach them how to do something similar. Everyone learns differently, teachers should be able to teach in a variety of different ways so every student has multiple opportunities to learn the material; everyone is different, so why teach everyone with the same teaching methods? Teachers are role models that need to support all types of students and what they like without judgment. Some students are more athletically inclined; others are more musically inclined, while there are some who are intellectually inclined. Why should a student who is technologically inclined have less attention from the teacher, or less opportunities to learn a certain material? Technology aids the teaching to be more effective for students by allowing more ways for the teacher to teach certain material more successfully. What if some students learn by shooting rockets, or by counting bees, or playing a sport; should they be forced to learn a traditional way that only some students can learn from? Like in the movie Stand and Deliver (1988), when a group of students could not understand some mathematics. The teacher knew that they had it in them and he needed to find a way to teach them. The teacher was able to find a successful method of teaching to make sure everyone learned; everyone ended up passing the AP Calculus exam. In Moving from Text-Bound to TechBound, written by Melanie Costanzo (2010), it says how students can be taught the same

TEACHERS TEACH WITH TECHNOLOGY material in a variety of different methods just as effectively. With a traditional curriculum there is not many different ways a teacher can teach certain material. However, with technology a

person can create multiple scenarios where students are taught the same material without getting bored of doing the exact same thing over and over again. Technology incorporates images, sounds, visuals and interactions. It is important to demonstrate teachers how to incorporate images, sounds, visuals and interactions; they can use it to teach students who do not comprehend the material the first time around. Techniques/Uses of Technology Teachers can be taught how to record their lectures, upload them to the internet, and assign the students to watch the lectures for homework. That way when the students come to class they will already have some basis of the material and class time can be used to work on examples or to clarify anything that was not understood. Ryan Lytle, author of the article Study: Emerging Technology Has Positive Impact in Classroom (2011) for the known website of US News, writes how there was an instructor who realized that his students were having trouble understanding the material in class; they wanted more time in class to work on problems. The instructor then decided to record his lectures and assign them for homework and in class he just worked on some examples and later notice there was a 15% increase in the average of AP scores. Some teachers do not know how to record, upload, and make their lectures viewable to their students; that causes a problem if they would like to try the idea. Schools should teach them how to record and upload their lectures; it will only benefit them in the long run. Instructors at times hand back tests in class and students in the first row tend to have a few extra seconds to complete a test where as the last person in the last row to obtain the tests tends to have less time than everyone else. According to the British Journal of Education

TEACHERS TEACH WITH TECHNOLOGY (2005),some ideas/practices that teachers can be taught how to integrate into their lectures and classes is the idea of online testing, where they would be able to put an exact time on tests and

quizzes that they cannot do in person. Instructors may try to avoid this by stating at the beginning of class that everyone leaves the test face down. This can work, but only if every single student in the classroom is honest and goes by the rules. However, another way to stop any student to get more time than anyone else would be to place the test online in the school's computer lab and to open at an exact time and end at an exact time as well. Teachers may not know how to do so or some may contradict this by saying that students can cheat by opening another window on the computer screen and search for the answers online. There are applications that allow teachers to have everyone's screen on their own computer and see what the student is looking at/doing. That way if some student tries to be a cheater and look up the answer the teacher will know and then take the actions he/she deems necessary for cheating. This is where schools should teach teachers how to do so. Technology may not have quite the same purposes as regular old fashioned material. Smithee argues e-textbooks are not as beneficial as regular textbooks because one cannot highlight and annotate on e-books. One cannot physically highlight and annotate on an e-book. However, there are apps specifically for this where one can highlight just by the touch of a button. With these apps students and readers can still annotate, just tap on the screen and write annotations on it. The best part of all may be that at the very end when the student or reader is done reading the book, he/she can just erase all his/her annotations on the book and it will be as if the book was completely new. One cannot do that with a regular textbook. Regular textbooks can also get worn out while e-books just need to be re-downloaded and it will be as good as new. Although e-books are not the same as regular textbooks, e-books can have the same, if not more,

TEACHERS TEACH WITH TECHNOLOGY

purposes when compared to a regular textbook. Lytle writes in his article about how Jim Tracy, a headmaster at Cushing Academy in Ashburnham, Mass., who says how for the same price it takes to hold a few thousand books, schools can hold millions of books on an online data base. Technology makes everything better and easier to access. Incorporating more of it will only help students. Counterarguments Schools need to be the ones to supply the hardware and software to its teachers because what good does it do to know how to use something if they do not have the equipment to use that knowledge with. Timothy Smithee in his article Negative Effects of Using Technology in Today's Classroom argues that technology is expensive to purchase, it requires schools cut programs like art and music to have enough money to support technology. It is better that schools get the technological equipment late than never getting it all. There is no need for any k-12 schools to cut any programs to obtain technology for the school. If schools need the money to be able to purchase technology, then they can go about fundraising money, whether it be selling chocolates or asking for donations or car washes etc. Even if it takes some years for schools to be able to purchase technology. It will only aid teachers in teaching more effectively. Arguably, people argue that e-text books are bad because they can strain eyes or damage their vision. According to Dr Blakeney, an optometric adviser to the College of Optometrists, computers will not permanently damage the eyes; however, they can cause strain or exacerbate existing eye conditions. People who use electronics a lot may suffer symptoms like eye discomfort, eye strains, burning sensations, and headaches (Cashin-Garbut). There are ways to minimize these symptoms, if not completely remove them from happening. One possible way is to the 20-20-20, which is when every twenty minutes you look up and away at something twenty

TEACHERS TEACH WITH TECHNOLOGY feet away for at least twenty seconds. This helps relax the eyes from constantly looking at a

screen. Another way to help reduce eye strains is to have electronics in the proper settings, where the brightness is not at its fullest and the position of the electronics is not at an odd angle where one has to strain their eyes. Electronics are bad for one's eyes, but only if one makes it bad. If people take the necessary precautions it can do no harm to one's eye sight. Solutions/Conclusion The whole point of schools is to make the transition from school to the real world more manageable. School does not require much technological knowledge to graduate. How does school prepare students for the real world if the real world is mostly technological? Back in the past it was not necessary for schools to teach technological knowledge. Now it is necessary because the world is now more advanced technologically than it was before. According to Wilson and Notar (2003), doers of a educational research with technology in classrooms, "Change is continuous and the coursework for training teachers must continue to change in response to the skills needed in the societal work place as well as in the development of standards and curricula that is implemented for teacher certification programs." There needs to be more standards for teachers to be able to become teachers because a lot of teachers have access to some sort of technology but few know how to use it, as can be seen in figure 2. This way once students graduate and earn their teaching credentials they will know how to implement technology into their lectures. There should also be a requirement for teachers to go back to school to learn new technological advances and how to implement those new advances. The requirement should be that least every ten years the teacher/ instructor need to pay for a course on new methods for using technology. This should come out of the teachers own pocket because if they want to continue teaching it should be a requirement that they do this every so often. It

TEACHERS TEACH WITH TECHNOLOGY would be like a renewal of the teaching credential for all k-12 teachers. Every grade would have different courses because every grade level requires certain things that were not required in previous grade levels.

(Figure 2) Professors can still be taught a few things that they do not already know which will only make their lives easier. In the article Ready to Upgrade? written for the newspaper NEA Today, a newspaper for the National Education Association, by Cynthia Kopkowski (2006), she discusses how an excellent second grade teacher refused to upgrade from the classical teaching style to a new more modern and advanced technological teaching style. The second grade teacher was then convinced to try the new approach to teaching. That teacher after being exposed to the new learning style learned there are many doors that can open up with technology. School districts should encourage teachers to "dip their toes in the pool [of technology]." (Kopkowski, 2006). Once the professors are exposed to the different possibilities that are available to them, like online testing, lecture recording and creating different ways to teach their material; they will

TEACHERS TEACH WITH TECHNOLOGY begin to implement technology in their classes, and making the material easier to learn for the students.

TEACHERS TEACH WITH TECHNOLOGY References 2005. What campus-based students think about the quality and benefits of e-learning. British Journal of Educational Technology, Volume 36. Issue 3. 501-512. Cashin-Garbut, April. (n.d.). Does Looking at a Computer Damage Your Eyes? News-Medical Retrieved from http://www.news-medical.net/health/Does-looking-at-a-computerdamage-your-eyes.aspx

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Costanzo, Melanie (2010, April 01). Moving from Text-Bound to Tech-Bound. School Talk, (3), 4, Retrieved from http://elibrary.bigchalk.com Effects of Technology on Classrooms and Students. ED.Retrieved from website: http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/EdReformStudies/EdTech/effectsstudents.htm Kopkowski, Cynthia (2006, March 01). Ready To Upgrade?. NEA Today; a newspaper for members of the National Education Association, (6), 24, Retrieved from http://elibrary.bigchalk.com Law, L., Menendez, R., Musca, T., Olmos, E. J., Phillips, L. D., De, S. R., Garcia, A., Warner Home Video (Firm). (1998). Stand and deliver. Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video. Lytle, Ryan. (2011, July 14). Study: Emerging Technology Has Positive Impact in Classroom. US News.com. Retrieved February 17, 2014, from http://www.usnews.com. Smithee, T. (n.d.). Negative Effects of Using Technology in Today's Classroom. Science. Retrieved from http://science.opposingviews.com/negative-effects-using-technologytodays-classroom-1549.html Wilson, J., Notar, C. (2003, July 01). Use of computers by secondary teachers: A report from a university service area. Education, (4), 695, Retrieved from http://elibrary.bigchalk.com