Technology Built for Teachers
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We all love technology. Even folks with extreme resistance to technology prefer refrigerators to iceboxes, or immediate communication via telephone to months-long delays in correspondence. Who would exchange the comforts of a modern home for the chill and filth our ancestors endured?
But get a teacher talking about computers, and that joyous affair with technology turns into a bitter struggle for domination. Overnight, more hardware appears in classrooms, in libraries and even in hallways. As a result, pressure on teachers rises: they must find a way to make this work in their classrooms.
Most teachers just grit their teeth and refuse. “We need training,” they say, but they mean something very different. They mean, “Call me when you have something I can use. Right now, I’m too busy with what I do already.”
Time Drain
On average, teachers work almost 50 hours a week. Committed ones work even more. The very idea that they undertake learning an entirely new medium for class instruction pushes a few folks over the brink. However, most educators do try to integrate technology and teaching, or at the very least, look into the possibilities. Almost all of them conclude the same thing: technology is a time drain. Of course, Web searches eat the most time, but almost every techno-trick available, from PowerPoint to class-management software, consumes time, a teacher’s most precious resource.
Look at a staple like PowerPoint from a teacher’s perspective. It takes longer to assemble a PowerPoint presentation than to write the same material on a blackboard, but the better-looking PowerPoint presentation survives repeated use. Assuming all the technology works, this seems like an even swap: better than even if the teacher has to make the same presentation to three or four classes.
But teachers rarely make identical presentations. They vary the pace. They vary the focus. They vary the questions they ask. Teachers don’t change these things to annoy technology specialists or to confound curriculum developers. They change them to communicate better with their students. Classes with the same profiles in ability and demographics still differ in personality, so each teacher will relate differently to each class. In this case, whatever advantage a teacher might have gained in time through using PowerPoint rapidly diminishes.
Then add into the mix the fact that technology seldom works perfectly, and that training in PowerPoint can take many weeks. The advantages rapidly dwindle to nothing. Teachers, like anyone, need a demonstrated advantage to change their methods. And if old standbys like PowerPoint don’t provide them, why would any teacher bother to look further?
The Promise
Teachers keep looking because they know what technology can do. Think what an advance the chalkboard represented. Instead of hoping that students understood their assignments, instructors merely had to hope they copied his or her words accurately. Chalkboards caught on. The World Wide Web still promises to become a colorful, powerful chalkboard, but only when using it becomes as intuitive as writing on a large piece of slate.
This article originally appeared in the 10/01/2000 issue of THE Journal.