Technology Integration

The discussion we had at our last class while we worked through a definition of "technology integration" really got me thinking about how little we sometimes evaluate programs, curriculum, and even terminology before we teach and explore. Technology integration should have been an easy topic of discussion for our class of "techies," but it proved to be quite challenging.

How often do educators use terms without full understanding of its implications? I think about how often our district has implemented changes in my 9 years as a teacher and there are some things that I remember the district pushing, then abandoning, with no teacher understanding in between.

But to come back to the specifics of technology intergration, this is just another moment for me to think how severely lacking myself, my school, and my district are in terms of equipping teachers to bring technology (in a current sense) into their teaching. It is still very much a mindset of teaching the technology itself vs. using the technology to enrich learning experiences. We have some resources available to us, (far more than many districts) but we are still a one-computer-per-classroom type of district. Another issue seems to be that our "technology teaching" tends to be based around primary grades using games, all grades using word processing programs, and intermediate grades using PowerPoint and the Internet. And seeing as technology is not only based in the computer lab, one can see what kind hardships our district faces as the need for technology integration continues and grows.