It may seem counter-intuitive but as technology use seems to be increasing in all aspects of our lives, the desire for schools to have a subject devoted to technology seems to be decreasing. More and more schools seem to be embracing what is most typically called a technology integration model rather than a full, curriculum driven subject called 'Technology.' Firstly, when people refer to Technology Integration, really what people are referring to is electronic or digital technology.
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="307" caption="Thing Never Overheard in an English classroom: "Ok, class, turn to page 37 of our book of hand tool poetry""][/caption]
You don't get people thinking about the best way to seamlessly integrate the use of a hand drill into an English or Science class. However, at NIST and in the MYP Technology curriculum, Technology could refer to ICT, Design Technology, Food technology, Textile Technology, or any other interpretation that suits a school given it's resources and needs. The MYP course is intentionally vague in its description of what exactly technology means to make it more accessible to a range of schools regardless of if they're in a wealthy European city or in a poorer African country. So for those that argue whether it should be referred to as integration of technology or embedding of technology, I ask you this question first: What exactly is technology?
Ask anyone to define technology and see what kinds of answers you get. Now, take a trip around the internet and search for a definition of technology and I'm willing to bet that very few of your informal replies look anything like the results online. I found one definition on dictionary.com to be rather interesting:
Technology is "the total knowledge and skills available to any human society for industry, art, science, etc."
The idea of this definition makes it sound like technology is, by definition, simply integrated as part human society. If this is true, then why shouldn't it fit seamlessly into the day-to-day life of a school? Well, there are a few problems with technology integration but the main problems, it seems to me, boil down to time (or the lack thereof). Last week, I posited in another blog post that the main obstacle for integrating technology is that teachers themselves do not have the confidence or skills to bring technology effectively into their lessons. It's not that these teachers aren't smart enough to use the technology, they just don't have time to invest in trying unfamiliar technologies and they're afraid that if the technology fails them then the lesson is lost.
[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Are You Ready for the (Technology Integration) Matrix"][/caption]
How can teachers that haven't yet grasped how to use certain digital technologies effectively integrate them into their classrooms? On that note, with available technology changing and evolving so quickly, how do you set standards for yet-to-be-introduced technology? Not questions that are easily answered but The Technology Integration Matrix (TIM) is an interesting place to start. What first struck me about TIM is that it is not just a matrix for students' technology skills but an interdependent matrix which takes into account characteristics of students' learning, plotted against a teacher or school's level of technology integration. Students' use of technology is broken into five fairly broad categories (Active, Collaborative, Constructive, Authentic, and Goal Directed) and the level of integration in the classroom is dependent more upon the curriculum and the level of technology integration in the classroom (ranging from Entry to Adaptation to Transformation). This doesn't mean that if a teacher doesn't understand a particular technology, then a student can't be sitting under the Transformation column of the matrix. While a teacher knowing about technology for use in the classroom would certainly help, a simple willingness to allow students to explore and try new and unfamiliar technologies could help push a classroom closer to the transformation column on the matrix. In this case, despite not being familiar with a specific technology, the teacher just needs to take on (and be comfortable with taking on) the role of facilitator. According to this article by Michael Sunnarborg, "Facilitation makes the learners responsible for their own learning." This opens up the whole conversation of the changing role of teachers from holders of knowledge to facilitators of learning which is an important one but not something I'll get into here.
For some, TIM may seem a little too vague and unfocused or perhaps just a bit too hard to quantify what a school meeting these TIM standards actually looks like. If you're in that boat, then there are ISTE's NET standards. The NETS have been widely adopted across the United States and are spreading worldwide. According to the ISTE site, "the NETS are not subject-matter specific, but rather a compendium of skills required for students to be competitive and successful in a global and digital world." They have devised standards for not only students but also teachers and administrators. Unlike TIM, these standards are not explicitly plotted against each other though there are a number of implied connections between the three sets of standards. As it is impossible to establish ultra-specific goals (e.g. student should be able to use a header and footer in Microsoft Word), they have set up their standards as overarching statements (NETS for students example) rather than specific skills. These skill statements are supplemented by more age specific profiles of how these might look in a given grade or year level.
My school is in the process of reviewing how we ensure that our community (students, teachers, administration) are meeting digital literacy standards and both of these methods have been considered as models to base our standards upon. Overall, I really like the way that TIM interconnects student and teacher learning but as a more practical approach, the NETS are probably easier to interpret by a wider range of people. One thing is for sure, whether a school offers a curriculum Technology course or not, if we want students to finish school with effective essential digital skills, explicit time needs to be devoted to teaching these skills by all teachers, regardless of which subject they teach until, ironically, these skills become so natural that you can't imagine a time when people did anything different.