- How does working with the public, school board, administration, and teaching staff differ from working with students?
One of the differences of working with the public, school board, administration, and teaching staff compared to working with students is that most of the time students are extremely open to new technologies where as the others might not be. Many times teachers feel pulled in 100 different directions because everyone seems to have their opinions about education and the implementation of technology. The general public may believe that money is wasted on new technologies, where as some may think we don't have enough. If the school board and administrators aren't on the same page it becomes very confusing to teachers who aren't sure what they should be doing in their classrooms and who to please. About half the teaching staff may love using new technology while the other half wonders why they need to use it if their lessons from 40 years ago still work well today. Another difference is that while it's important to communicate effectively with the public, school board, administration, and other teachers, it's even more important that we keep in mind what is best for the student and not someone else. It can be easy to get caught up in pleasing others when it's the students who need our help and attention. So, while it's important to listen to the opinions of our superiors and the parents of our students, it's really the students who we need to cater our lessons to. Learning how to use technology is now vital to the future of our students because of how competitive the workforce has become and also how globalized our society is now. I feel like it's much easier to get students on board with the use of new technologies simple because they've never known a world without them and are much more comfortable trying out new programs to create meaningful projects.
- What are the potential challenges a technology integrator faces from school communities?
I think a technology integrator needs to be prepared to deal with people within a school community who do not want anything to do with technology and fight you all the way. Unfortunately, I've heard many veteran teachers close to retirement say they'd rather just retire than have to learn anything about technology. I also think that a technology integrator might be taken advantage of by teachers who will not actually try to learn about the technology their using and apply it to their teaching but instead always ask a technology integrator to do it for them. Another potential problem I could foresee happening is a technology integrator being stretched too thin throughout a district. We don't have a technology integrator in our district and the people who fix our computers already have too much on their plates and cannot get to schools quickly anyway. I'm afraid there would only be one integrator for a whole district, which might eventually burn that person out resulting in exhaustion, frustration, and disdain for the job. These are not impossible challenges to overcome, but it would make it much harder to do a good job of actually integrating the technology and making sure that teachers get all the help they need to provide opportunities for students.
- What do you believe are the best strategies for tackling these challenges?
To tackle these challenges, I think you would have to be extremely straight forward with what you intended to accomplish as a technology integrator to both the teachers and administration and possibly the school board as well. If the administrators aren't sure what a technology integrator would do for their teachers they might have very unreasonable standards or not be very supportive which could create a hostile environment. If the school board has never dealt with a technology integrator they may think that one per district is plenty and if that integrator is very blunt to explain their job they may decide that they need to look into finding more people who could help integrate technology in each school within the district. As far as teachers go, I think that explaining what you do and not allowing a teacher to take advantage of you so that they actually become independent is the best way to deal with that issue. There will always be those who will want you to just take care of it for them, but if you explain that once they understand how a program works, it will go much faster for them and really simplify their lives. Many times teachers and administrators feel overwhelmed because they feel that they have to learn all this new technology and forget to replace some of their old practices with the new so that things become easier, not harder. It reminds me of the phrase "work smarter, not harder," which is really what technology helps everyone to do.
