In education there are 3 main issues with using technology effectively: time, money, and understanding.
Time with the technology is usually very limited for our students. At our school we are allowed to take our students to the computer lab once a week. It works to give them a chance to be exposed to the technology and we can do short technology lessons. However, it does not lend itself to doing any sort of long term project based around technology. Another problem was when our school first got in a cart of I-pads, we had to figure out how to share, you were lucky to be able to get to use them for a whole day.
Technology also costs the school systems a lot of money. Many of the desk top computers that we have in our school are between 10 – 5 years old, because it is very costly to replace them. Also many of my students do not have money to access technology at home either. I am at a Tittle I school with over 80% of the population having free and reduced lunch, so technology is not always a priority at home. I have been blessed the last year, because our school has been using our money to buy new Tech. We have chosen to try and get technology above and beyond anything else. In fact, our whole count is going 1 to 1 with devices for our students on the middle school level next year. I am very excited to begin the school year knowing that our students will have access to a chromebook all day long. However, I know that this seems like a dream to many of the counties around us. I hope that money can be found for all school systems to be able to venture into the 1 to 1 classrooms. Another part of technology that we do not have money for is the higher end science technology. In my project we are using Autoclave machines to sterilize materials, PCR machines to duplicate DNA, incubators to grow cultures, microscopes to view microbes, DNA sequencing machines, and even basic technology like pipettes. All of these items are costly, some beyond even imaging a school could purchase. So, we as teachers are going to have to come up with creative ways to adapt experiments or how to partner up with our local universities and research labs to help our our young middle school scientists.
Understanding how to use the technology does seem to be a barrier for both teachers and students. When we have lots of different technology in a school its hard to teach everyone how to use the different brands and types. We have Desktop PCs, I-pads, I-pod touches, Chrombooks, Netbooks, white boards, and mimios all in my school. For some people that are tech savvy its not a problem to understand how to use all of the different types, but some teachers and students get confused by the different interfaces. So time building lesson plans or time teaching is taken away to learn how to use the technology. When we spend half the class trying to get the students to remember how to log on to a new device, or get it connected to the wireless routers, we lose teaching time. This is why, I am super excited to know that all of our students will be on the same brand and type of device next year. Time will be lost at the beginning of the year teaching the students how to use the device, but then as the weeks go by, it will be as easy for them to use as pencil and paper.