Evaluating Technology Use in the Classroom
Evaluating the use of technology in a classroom environment is not something most administrators are trained to do. It is easy to walk into a classroom and see that every student is using a computer, but how do you really assess if and what type of learning is taking place?
In the past, I have had administrators tell me “I walked into the teacher’s room and all the students were on laptops.” As though just the site of students working on laptops meant they were engaged in the learning process.
I have been trying to wrap my head around a simple way for administrators to evaluate the use of technology in the classroom (a thank you to Dennis Harter who got me thinking about this).
When most administrators evaluate teachers during the evaluation process, they have some sort of check sheet they are working from either mental or as part of a school’s evaluation process. I wanted to come up with an easy way for administrators to add to that list some questions that they can answer without knowing a lot about technology and by just observing its use within a lesson.
I remembered a Marc Prensky article in Edutopia in which he talks about the typical process of technology adoption:
- Dabbling with technology
- Doing Old things in Old Ways
- Doing Old things in New Ways
- Doing New things in New Ways
What if we turned these stages of technology adoption into questions that an evaluator could use during the evaluation process?
- Is the technology being used “Just because it’s there”?
- Is the technology allowing the teacher/students to do Old things in Old ways?
- Is the technology allowing the teacher/students to do Old things in New ways?
- Is the technology creating new and different learning experiences for the students?
This could be a simple list that any evaluator can use to decipher how the technology is being used in a particular lesson.
Is the technology being used “Just because it’s there”?
This would be the use of edutainment software, the use of a particular piece of technology because it happens to be in the room. The teacher dabbles with technology, not having a real focus on its use within the lesson but uses it as an add-on or at a very basic level (no real impact on the learning process).
Is the technology allowing the teacher/students to do Old things in Old ways?
Publishing a piece of writing in Word rather than hand writing it would be an example of this.
Also, using an LCD projector instead of a white/black board for a lesson.
Another example would be researching on the Internet rather than in an Encyclopedia.
These are all great things, and great ways to use technology, but they are only replacing the way we have always done things with something that might be faster, easier, and more accurate. In the end however, they are still the same old things we have been doing for years in education.
Is the technology allowing the teacher/students to do Old things in New ways?
Examples would be: watching Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech or listening to a recording of Stalin. Old things in New ways could also be reading and evaluation an original piece of writing or visiting a battle site via Google Earth.
These are not new things…just new ways of doing old things. We used to read Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech to the class, now we can watch him give his speech in Washington D.C.
We used to read the words of Stalin, now we can hear him speak them.
We used to read from a book, now we can read and look at the original document.
Instead of talking about a battle site, we can now visit that site virtually.
These are not new things; they just enhance the old ways of doing things.
Is the technology creating new and different learning experiences for the students?
Does the technology allow students to learn from people they never would have been able to without it?
Does the technology allow students to interact with information in a way that is meaningful and could not have happened otherwise?
Does the technology allow students to create and share their knowledge with an audience they never would have had access to without technology?
Many of our teachers are not at this level yet and many might never get here because this level of technology use requires a new way of looking at learning. One in which many of our schools are not yet prepared to look deeply into.
Prensky puts it this way:
For the digital age, we need new curricula, new organization, new architecture, newteaching, new student assessments, new parental connections, new administration procedures, and many other elements. Some people suggest using emerging models from business — but these, for the most part, don’t apply. Others suggest trying to change school size — but this will not help much if we are still doing the wrong things, only in smaller spaces.
As you evaluate a teacher, you should be looking for answers to the above mentioned questions. I am not advocating that every lesson should use technology or that every lesson should try to answer “New things in New ways”. However, it is good to know just how the technology is being used. There is nothing wrong with only using an LCD projector, or Google Earth to visit a battle site. I get excited when I see both of those things happening in a classroom. I just think it is good to put it into perspective just what impact the technology is having on teaching and learning. If a teacher is only ever ‘dabbling’ or doing ‘Old things in Old ways’ then a conversation can start about how to move the use of technology to a deeper more meaningful level within the classroom.
It is great to see teachers using technology in their lessons during an evaluation. It is even more informative if you can evaluate at what level that technology is effecting learning. Is it a replacement for the way we do things or is it something completely new and pushes both the students and teacher to new heights, new learning, and new knowledge?
Technorati Tags: marcprensky, evaluation, education, administrators, technology
Awesome post, Jeff….it not only provides a checklist for administrators, but it provides an opportunity for us to relect on our own teaching and see how we can push the envelope a little bit more in our own classrooms. I agree that you can’t be doing new things in new ways all of the time, but it forces us to think differently so those opportunities can occur more often.
Jeff, I like the realism of your post. Not only are you sharing the highlights that administrators can look for in positive technology use, but you are also reminding them that there is more to look for than JUST technology use.
Administrators can get caught up in our own excitement and push for quality tech use and in an attempt to be “tech-savvy” may take too much of what we say to heart, at the expense of recognizing quality learning when it happens.
A great part of your points is the focus on what learning experiences the students are having. After all, it isn’t about using technology, but rather about what learning is happening.
In that vein, then, administrators need to ask themselves whether they understand the possible answers to these questions, so that when they see old things happening in old ways, they can say to a teacher, “have you considered doing this or using (insert appropriate tech here) to enhance that learning?”
When we have administrators like that, we can make big steps forward in bringing learning into the 21st Century.
Yes yes yes. Behind you all the way here. What I am looking for is the guy who wrote somethign to the effect that if the tech is not facilitating something that would otherwrise not be possible with previous technology, it’s not tech.
If you have any idea, could you drop me an email someday? By the way, I have taught in Japan, and may be in China soon on a project. I am an Ed tech PhD student at Indiana U Bloomington.
Good luck. Nice post.
Craig
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