Preparing New Teachers with Technology

In the article, Preparing New Teachers with Technology, Christine Jones discusses the fact that districts could be facing a teacher shortage issue. The economic recession forced many districts to lay off both new and veteran teachers. And with many teachers nearing retirement and lower than average enrollment in teacher preparation programs, Christine believes that technology might be the key to keeping good teachers.  She states, “one way to retain qualified teachers is to offer them the appropriate support early in their careers to avoid burnout and to refine their teaching practices.” To test this idea, a Teacher Induction Program in California started to implement technology usage and support with their students. They are giving students practical experience of using Google Classroom as a tool to distribute content to their own students by using it as a tool to assign and submit their classwork. If they see the benefits of the digital submission capabilities, ability for instant feedback and collaboration, and more, than they are more likely to initiate and use that type of innovative tool in their classrooms. In addition, Google Classroom is no longer a “new program” first year teachers have to learn while trying to learn all of the grade level standards and resources their first few years teaching. It’s the “norm” for these new teachers. The Teacher Induction Program is also incorporating iPads, videotaping of proteges teaching, student digital portfolios and website building into their curriculum. They are encouraging the students to use social media to create their own professional learning networks. The overall thought is, “if  we don’t invest now in our new teachers through training and support, we will continue to lose teachers to other professions.” Why not teach teachers with technology programs that we hope they will continue to use in their own classrooms.

I think that this idea of teaching teachers using programs they will be expected to use makes total sense. Why use a learning management system that is out of date or not relevant?  We should use current tools to help teachers with their transition from training to teaching. From experience, learning new grade level standards, expectations, resources and more can be very overwhelming. When you throw new programs in like google docs or google classroom on top of it all, teachers’ feel burnt out. If new teachers are exposed to and given time to practice the ideas and concepts like student digital portfolios, using social media for education, or website building, they are less likely to be hesitant or unable to incorporate those things in their classroom.

I can see some obstacles to this concept though because not all districts use google or have the capabilities to be very “digital”. Overcoming these obstacles would be difficult as teacher preparation students don’t always know where or what they are going to be teaching. So in order to be fully “prepped” for their position, students would need to be exposed to a variety of the tools available which could be overwhelming. Ideally, I think it would be great for a new teacher to spend a year, or even half a year, co-teaching or working with an instructional coach to become familiar with their resource and expectations. Mentor programs are usually very helpful but they also load more time and work onto new teachers who are already struggling to keep up. Just like we say with our students, individualized support would be most beneficial. Seeing as that’s not always attainable, technology training and support early in a teaching career would be the next best thing.

References

Jones, C. (2017). Preparing new teachers with technology. Leadership, 46(4), 16.