Link to Article: Technology Obstacles
Teachers all over the world are facing significant obstacles
in their attempts to implement and integrate technology in their classrooms. Regrettably,
a lot of these obstacles have gone unchanged in the last 50 years. Through the
combination of research, historical documentation, and practitioner
perspective, technology integration falls into five categories: time,
expertise, access, resources, and support (TEARS).
Of those
five factors, time is the largest obstacle. Teachers need time to collaborate,
plan, prepare, and use the technology, time during and outside of school to
attend trainings, and time to personally explore, digest, and experiment with
technology. As far as expertise goes, teachers must attend hands-on,
meaningful, systematic, developmental, and ongoing training. Furthermore,
access to computers, computer labs, and other technologies also hinder
technology implementation. Adequate staff development, the purchasing,
maintenance, and upgrade of software, and the electrical configuration of
classrooms is all taken into consideration. According to Leggett and
Persichitte (1998), “Time, expertise, and access are often interdependent on
resources.” The last critical factor is support. Administrations can best support
technology integration by articulating a vision for the implementation,
defining a plan for the implementation, and providing a role model of adoption
and utilization.
I found
this article to be very interesting because it was written back in 1998, and we
are experiencing the same obstacles today in 2017 as they did 20 and even 70
years ago. I feel this goes to show how difficult it can be to actually change
these obstacles and turn them into positive attributes. Technology integration
is always going to take time to learn and implement, but I think the expertise
factor can begin to be addressed with pre-service teachers. College students
with education majors should be required to take courses related to using
technology in the classroom to help in their future careers. Course that teach
them the basics and all the tool available to them. Yes the district they end
up in may not have the resources yet, but at least if they decide to go 1:1,
these teachers can help train and prepare other staff members.
Leggett, W.P., & Persichitte, K. A. (1998). Blood,
Sweat, and Tears: 50 Years of Technology Integration Obstacles. TechTrends, 33. Retrieved from https://goo.gl/wFuaCv
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