17 How Do I Use Technology?

Felicia loved the education technology that she got to employ in her teaching. She could hardly imagine how teachers used to manage without it. Yet Felicia also saw how some of the senior teachers in her school barely used technology and, when they did, sometimes struggled with it. Felicia was glad that she hadn’t had to make that adjustment. Instead, when she got her teaching degree and started in the classroom, technology was already ubiquitous. Felicia used not only the course-management program, presentation software, electronic grading, email and text communications, and online administrative reporting systems but also online research databases, artificial intelligence graphic designs, and online assessment software. Felicia felt that technology not only made her teaching easier but also far better. She couldn’t imagine teaching without it.

Technology

Today, technology saturates the teaching and learning environment. Both teachers and students can depend on instructional, communications, and administrative programs and applications as if their lives depended on them. In such a technology-rich environment, teachers must generally keep up with the new systems or risk being unable to complete basic responsibilities of their job including such things as presenting in the classroom, accessing materials and resources, administering and scoring assessments, and entering grades. Yet teachers must also be aware of the limitations of technology and its distracting and disabling effects on instruction. Teachers need to be wise and well informed on the uses and abuses of technology. No matter your generation, technology skills, or disposition, make technology use, control, and insight a significant part of your teaching skills. 

Competence

Your competence in using the technologies that your school requires or encourages you to use should be your first concern. If, for instance, your school uses a learning-management system providing teachers with an online platform for the resources they deploy for each course they teach, then you should learn how to use that system. Schools implementing new technology systems are generally well aware of the need to train teachers and other staff members in their use, and will generally provide seminars, tutorials, or other training resources. If a school already using such a system hires you, it should provide similar resources to orient you to the system’s use. If it fails to do so, use the system’s own tutorials or other training services, or prevail on colleagues to get you up to speed. The same should be true for classroom presentation software and projection systems, online administrative systems for grade entry and other reporting, and other technology essential to your teaching role. Firmly establish your competence in the basic instructional technologies, and then continue to research and learn, to advance your technology skills.

Adoption

Your next technology question, beyond competence in the systems your school insists you use, may be what additional technologies to adopt to improve your teaching. Teachers can display widely divergent attitudes toward their own chosen technology use. Some teachers are avid early adopters, always looking for the next big thing. Other teachers wait for new technology to reach a confidence level among their colleagues or even a solid saturation point before adopting it. Other teachers avoid new technology as long as they can. Consider adopting a sound professional approach of remaining current regarding trends in educational technology. Follow education technology journals. Make new education technology a topic of discussion among colleagues, especially those whom you know to be early adopters. Technology developments are as swift in education as they are in other fields. Don’t get left behind. Better to stay abreast of developments. Students face their own challenges in developing technology skills. Be a good role model in that regard for students. Don’t exhibit fear and loathing regarding technology, but also don’t treat technology as if it will solve all problems. Project a mature attitude. 

Control

Your next question after your own technology use may be how best to encourage, monitor, limit, guide, and control student use of technology related to your instruction. Students can use online learning-management systems to retrieve study resources, watch lectures and presentations, engage in discussion groups, and complete problem sets, exercises, and practice assessments with automated scoring and answer explanations, among other efficient and effective learning activities. They can also perform online research, draft papers using word processing software with spell checking and grammar correction, and prepare presentations using graphic design software. Students can also access tutorials, tutoring services, outlines, and other resources online, to their advantage. Yet students can also use online services and artificial intelligence to complete academic work they should be doing on their own. And social media and other online surfing can be a huge distraction for students with serious psychological impacts. Research and remain aware of the benefits and risks of student technology use. 

Strategies

As to what to do about student technology use and misuse, begin by curating and offering to your students the best technological resources. Develop and deploy your course’s learning-management platform to support best teaching and learning practices. Post on your course platform your original, high-quality academic exercises and resources, aligned to your instructional objectives, that you create or acquire. Recognize and reward student engagement with your online learning exercises and resources, to encourage greater appropriate use. Conversely, warn students against unreliable, inaccurate, dangerous, and distracting technology practices, services, and resources. Identify for them the hazards of improper technology use. Be a shepherd and guide for your students in their use of technology. Especially coach them against cyberbullying, accessing inappropriate online materials, and sharing personal information with strangers online who may not be whom they claim and may have nefarious designs. Help students remain both innocent and shrewd in their technology use. 

Policies

Your school may have a well-developed student technology-use policy. Familiarize yourself with that policy, and help students comply. Do not adopt any policy or practice inconsistent with the school policy, that might cause students to violate school policy. Beyond following school policy, be especially clear in what other technology use you authorize, require, or prohibit related to student assignments. Share your own student technology-use preferences with your colleagues, department, or other teaching supervisor, to ensure that they are consistent with the school’s technology-use policy. If you have additional technology-use policies beyond those that your school publishes, put your student technology-use policy in a writing that students can access on your course platform at any time to review and comply. Distribute your policy to students, explain it to them, and remind them of it at every appropriate opportunity. And then hold them to it. Follow your school’s honor code regarding any suspected cheating misusing technology and your school’s student code of conduct regarding any cyberbullying or other misbehavior using technology.

Enforcement

Teachers should also be generally aware of the technology that schools are increasingly using, and increasingly making available to teachers and other staff members, to enforce school safety, security, and other policies. Surveillance technologies, for instance, include video cameras covering much if not all of the indoor and outdoor spaces around campus, monitored by artificial intelligence to send alerts to administrators regarding potentially endangering behavior or other inappropriate behavior. Schools also monitor school computer use, software use, and email and other communications systems, using artificial intelligence that alerts administrators of potential misuses, especially threats and accessing inappropriate materials. Schools also use video surveillance, keystroke detection, and AI monitoring of students taking exams, both in classrooms and remotely online, to detect suspected cheating. Schools also use software to detect student plagiarism and unauthorized AI use in assignments, to enforce honor code provisions. Engage your school’s administrators if you suspect student technology misuse or other misconduct that surveillance systems might expose. 

Options

Technology has indeed made teaching more efficient, effective, and satisfying. If you haven’t already investigated and adopted the following technologies, consider doing so: video-conferencing technology to substitute for travel and remote meetings; webinars and online discussion boards for professional development; e-journals for staying abreast of teaching and technology developments; student chat rooms and discussion boards to stimulate subject exploration; video recording, editing, storage, and access to make your lectures and demonstrations continuously available online; online course texts with active research links, interactive exercises, video displays, and animations; classroom technology for instant student polling, students posing questions, and back-channel or side-bar communications; classroom presentation technology enabling simultaneous projection of individual student work or group student work from multiple computers; and electronic simulations for skills practice. Your school may not have these or other advanced technologies available. But don’t let that keep you from exploring and recommending new technologies. New technologies may be available at no cost or low cost. 

Delivery

Technology is also affecting instructional delivery. The traditional model of exclusively on-site, all-classroom instruction is giving way to multi-modal teaching delivery. Teachers and schools are supplementing or replacing classroom instruction with online synchronous and asynchronous instruction. Online remote instruction can be especially helpful for students temporarily unable to attend class because of illness, disability, military training, dependent care, business travel, and other compelling reasons. Schools also now offer remote synchronous instruction into multiple classrooms, across campuses, and to other sites. Schools also offer distance education where students receive part, most, or all of their instruction online, either synchronously in videoconferenced classes or asynchronously in recorded self-paced instruction. Online and distance-education programs have vastly increased access and reduced costs, reshaping the education landscape at some levels and in some markets. Hone your online teaching skills. They may secure your teaching future. 

Intelligence

Teachers are especially seeing new opportunities and confronting new challenges introduced by artificial intelligence. On the opportunity side, teachers are using AI to draft syllabi, lectures, slide shows, graphic organizers, outlines, quizzes, tests, exams, problem sets, and other course materials. Teachers are also using artificial intelligence to score essays and exams. Ensure that you do not violate any term or condition of your teaching employment, in your AI use. Before using AI for any teaching responsibility, confirm with your teaching supervisor that your school permits you to do so. Discuss potential AI use openly with your colleagues and department chair before adopting its use. Beware ceding your expertise to artificial intelligence. Limited AI use for research, spelling and grammar checks, and the like may be appropriate. Wholesale AI use to shortcut your own developmental or assessment processes and ease  your teaching labors may not be appropriate. A paragraph above has already addressed adopting, distributing, and enforcing policies regarding student use of artificial intelligence.

Students

As a teacher, your greatest concern should be with how technology impacts students. Technology is changing students. Screens, social media, and the attraction of cell phones and their stream of images can shorten student attention spans, weaken their concentration, undermine their logical and conceptual thinking, depress their emotions and spirits, and isolate them from the positive influence of peers, parents, and instructors. Teachers are increasingly dealing with an anxious, mentally and emotionally disabled, isolated, depressed, and disinterested student population, arguably because of technology’s deleterious effects. As a responsible teacher, inform students of those effects and counteract those effects as far as you are able. 

Reflection

How has new technology changed your school from when you first began teaching until now? In what areas do you and your teaching colleagues resist, accommodate, or embrace technology? What are your best uses of technology, improving the quality, timeliness, and efficiency of your instruction? What are your worst uses of technology, isolating, depleting, and distracting you or your students? Do you need to reduce or otherwise alter your technology use for your mental health or the mental and emotional health of your students? Are you fully using your school’s online learning-management system? Are you competent in all your school’s required technology systems? Are you using technology in helpful ways that your colleagues are not, that you could share with them? Are your colleagues using technology in helpful ways that you are not, that they could share with you? Does your school have a clear and well-developed technology use policy for students and teachers? Do you alter or supplement your school’s student technology use policy, with your own policy? If so, has the school or your teaching supervisor approved your alteration or supplementation? Are you using AI to complete your teaching responsibilities? If so, does your teaching supervisor know and approve? Are you adequately monitoring your students’ use and potential misuse of artificial intelligence?

Key Points

• Teachers work in a remarkably technology-rich environment.

• Ensure that you are competent in your school’s technology systems.

• Remain current on technology developments to adopt them timely.

• Carefully monitor and control technology use among your students.

• Follow wise technology-use strategies, curating student materials.

• Follow your school’s technology policies, supplemented by your own.

• Be aware of your school’s widespread use of surveillance technologies. 

• Consider options for enhancing your instruction through technology.

• Stay current on new technological forms of instructional delivery.

• Be aware of the benefits and perils of teacher and student AI use.

• Monitor and reduce the adverse impact of technology on your students.

  Read Chapter 18.