This year has been a year of transition for the school because they have a new principal, quite a few new faculty members who have come in in the middle of the school year, and a new grading/data collection program that is being implemented. Because of these things, I cannot say whether what I have witnessed is the "norm" or if it is the result of change. Many of the teachers have become very frustrated witht the new grading program because it is so new and has experienced quite a few gliches. This frustration has unfortunately clouded their vision with technology in general, and has hindered them from wanting to learn more. Other teachers however, have embraced tools like Promethean planet, activotes, and Edmodo. For these teachers, they contact Ann with questions, and do more seeking of training, as opposed to waiting for training to be scheduled.
I have found that more technology training would certainly help with the media center due to the fact that we house multiple devices that teachers could use in their classrooms if they had the proper training. We have become the first place that teachers go to when they need help with ANYTHING technology related. With the proper training, the media center could not only answer many more questions, but we could also promote our products with confidence because we would know how to use them.
While I do not currently work in a traditional classroom, I can understand the frustration of needing more technology training to help faculty be more independent in terms of using technology in their classrooms. In my line of work, we run into the same situations where staff need additional training, but there seems to not be enough time. One solution that has proven to be helpful is the use of Camptasia to make a library of training videos. Another solution is the use of interactive .pdf files that "guide" the reader through the steps of a process with popups, hyperlinks, and animations. Adobe InDesign CS6 can create such interactive .pdf documents. In my office, we're exploring different software products to see what we can come up with to multiply our training efforts. So far, it seems to be working, but like many places, we've got a long way to go before we can claim some of our time back to doing other things.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your post - I am also a relatively new parapro at my school and we struggle with similar issues. The biggest difference would be that as an elementary school, we lost our technology teacher this year and that responsibility has been placed on the MS.
ReplyDeleteThe end result however is seems to be the same; we get every technology issue, question or problem. I find that so much of our time is spent troubleshooting that we have very little time to train our teachers on new technology. Our school purchased 60 iPads this year and our teachers got one training session on how to use them in a classroom setting. It seems so short sighted that technological tools are purchased and provided to teachers and staff but the time and ability to train them on this technology is not offered or supported, in many cases at a high cost. It's a shame.
Casie,
ReplyDeleteI understand the frustration that teachers at your school are feeling! Many schools are not equipped with 21st century technology and as teachers, we are encouraged to use technology with the students to keep them "engaged," but few of us have actually been trained to do so! It is not enough to have the equipment if we don't know how to use it our how to integrate it into our lesson plans.