Tech Inquiry part 2- A New Path

After having a look at language and speech delays I decided to broaden my inquiry research and look into ICT information communication technology in the classroom. This was very interesting to me as my research on this topic opened my eyes to the various ways that technology can be integrated into the classroom as well as provided an insight into why they aren’t being used by some teachers.

I found that there has been a big push to integrate technology into education yet we have not actually seen a mass integration happening. This is due to many reasons including the teacher’s personal feelings regarding technology, The school district’s views and priorities regarding technology, and a lack of training and professional development opportunities provided for the teachers. When We look into a teacher’s personal views regarding technology we can see that if a teacher has little experience with tech and/or a negative experience using technologies they are less likely to integrate it into their classroom. This is especially true if these teachers do not see an effective use of technology in action in the classroom which brings me to the point about school district views on tech. If a school district does not push for technology use in the school system and make the tools readily available to the teachers then there is a much smaller chance of integration. If the teacher does not see a direct need for technology and their school does not introduce and push for it, why would teachers use it? Lastly there is a lack of training and professional development opportunities for teachers to learn. Technology overall is a daunting resource to utilize and if teachers aren’t properly trained and scaffolded into integration, it will be less successful and they may feel as if they are better off without it. These are some of the main reasons as to why we aren’t seeing a huge shift to technology assisted learning in schools. Next I will look into the language/communication aspect of tech in the classroom.