Humanism and Modern Technology - another fabulous SEETA course

For a couple of weeks in September I participated in an online hosted discussion on Humanism and Modern Technology, led by Hanna Kryszewska and hosted by SEETA, the South Eastern Europe Teachers Associations

I was prompted to write a post about this course after reading Janet Bianchini's wonderful feedback post on this SEETA online hosted discussion.  As is often the case with the best learning experiences, we've both come away with different highlights from the course. The focus of interest for me was how to help, support and guide teachers to integrate technology. This was mostly because this is part of my current role and I want to find a way to understand how to best support teachers with a fear or anxiety of using technology and also get through to the sceptics. So our early discussions around anxiety and how to overcome it through creating an unthreatening atmosphere, and fostering, nurturing and promoting self growth, were very enlightening for me. It was wonderful having Janet there as an example of someone who overcame an initial fear of technology to become a role model to us all!  It was an excellent opportunity for me to reflect on how perhaps I could be a model for other teachers in using technology and in directing my own learning. And also, how I can more effectively use the very different learning styles and preferences of my teaching colleagues to tap into their creativity while I am teaching them how they can use technology in their classes.

Something that was very useful for me for my reflection in this discussion was that it coincided with the SLanguages conference in Second Life (SL). I've 'visited' SL a couple of times in the past, but have never really learnt much about how it works, have never really 'got' it or had a reason to try to!  Since one of my colleagues at work is planning a very small project in SL and I am keen to support him as much as possible, I had the motivation to try again, motivation being one of the key words we'd discussed in the first part of the course.

While I wouldn't say I felt at all anxious or fearful delving into SL again, I did experience a lot of disorientation and found I had no idea of what I was doing.  I was able to get online help for most things, but couldn't find the venue, but fortunately I was able to call on the help of a member of my PLN, who was one of the organisers of the conference. and she got me into the right place in SL.  The lesson here being the importance of asking for and getting help.  When I returned to the SLanguages conference the following day I felt a little more confident.  In one of the sessions I attended, someone typed this comment into the text chat which was very relevant to our discussion on humanism... "we can't push sl on others. they have to be interested in it.... and we help them" (Jayjay Zifanwe - avatar name).

Back on the SEETA course discussing my experience, Janet pointed me to a link to a blog post from Barbara Sakamoto called Why Every Teacher Needs a Second Life. These comments from Barb really resonated with me:

• Learning to live in Second Life is a lot like learning a foreign language.
• It allows us to remember what it feels like to be a beginner.
• After years of teaching, it’s easy to forget what it feels like to be totally lost. Regaining that feeling is worth the learning curve of trying something difficult.
• Mistakes are good. They help us learn.

In our discussion about this Janet pointed out that this type of difficult, anxiety-inducing experience can lead to some people just not persevering and mentioned that it can be good to try it "with a group of friends or colleagues, as you can learn together and support each other along the way". As it turned out, we had the opportunity to put this into practice just last Wednesday, when the #ELTchat birthday party was held in SL.  This time I WAS amongst 'friends or colleagues' and was able to get help every step of the way.  To tell the truth, when I say 'friends or colleagues', I've never met any of the people attending this, but have been chatting with them all year on Twitter, Facebook and in other online forums, and feel I know them.  The most satisfying part of the evening was when I was able to offer a helping hand to Janet, who had been 'inspired' by my SL adventure that she wanted to come to the party too.  Unfortunately she wasn't able to join us for the #ELTchat birthday cake, but it wasn't her will that gave way, it was her computer! 

Back to the SEETA Humanism and Modern Technology course, there were many other discussions, which I will continue to unpack and reflect on.  Janet's fabulous post highlights another learning from the course, that humainism values creativity.  I haven't yet mentioned Hanna Kryszewska excellent facilitation of the discussions, and the other participants.  It didn't feel like a course but rather an informal discussion amongst a group of colleagues learning together.  I am now working my way through some of the articles in Humanising Language Teaching, a free online magazine edited by Hanna.  And I found these videos and links from Hanna's presentation at the International Conference in TESOL earlier this year - well worth a look!

I am very indebted to SEETA for opening this and their other fabulous short courses to teachers outside of their 'catchment area', especially this teacher who is VERY south-east of Europe! I also liked the format of 2-days of discussion for each topic. I managed very well with the m-Learning course which had a new activity each day, but only because I was on my summer break at the time. I've found it difficult to keep up with the other ones though, so I appreciated having 2-days to respond to each discussion topic, read other participants' responses and respond, etc. It is extra important when I am on the other side of the world to most of the participants who are posting while I am sleeping - usually by the time I read the posts and respond, the discussion has moved on!

Why do some teachers hate technology so much?

I've just been reading a great post by Sarah Ludwig called I hate technology which has got me thinking.  I posted a long comment on Sarah's blog but wanted to develop my ideas some more.

Sarah is talking in her blog post about students who lament that they hate technology, or get frustrated when it doesn't work.  I stopped in my tracks when I read her comment "we like technology so much that we assume everyone else will, too…", where 'we' is teachers.  Whoops, not where I come from!  I hear all of the complaints she mention from some of my teaching colleagues, but rarely from the students. 

To look at the issues as Sarah did:
1. If technology is not a constant in your students’ lives...
Part of the problem is that technology is not a constant in our teachers' classroom life, we don't have technology in many of our classrooms and we usually have to "trek down to the lab" for the technology part of our lessons.  I can't see this changing any time soon, as there just aren't any extra funds for technology to become ubiquitous.  I haven't been in the classroom for a few years now, and I know I would be frustrated if I was learning about wonderful tools and resources which I couldn't use because we just don't have the technology at our disposal.  It's easy enough for me to say, "just use what you have", but at the same time I'm expected to convince teachers to use more than they have!  And how are they going to develop confidence and competence in using technology with their classes if they have access to it so rarely?

2. Technology isn’t black-and-white... using a new tool can be daunting... requires a whole new set of skills...
While we have a lot of support available to help teachers acquire technology skills, there just isn't the time for them to do this, along with daily teaching activities, and keeping up-to-date with our pedagogy, language teaching methodologies, curriculum changes, etc.  Not enough support is given by the institution to providing teachers with additional time to keep up with the game, let alone moving ahead of it.  Really the only ones who are, do most of the learning in their own time.

3. Technology = troubleshooting...
When there is technology, in the lab or for the classrooms which do have IWBs, it is often the case of technology = troubleshooting, and teachers are easily turned off trying again.  It's not my role, but troubleshooting technology problems is something I seem to spend an awful lot of my time on.  Again the problem is inadequate institutional support: our IT help desk is not able to respond quickly enough to fix something during a lesson, we're lucky at times to get help in the same week! And we have only one audio-visual support person across 3 campuses! And there isn't usually enough time, or often the inclination, to teach the teachers how to troubleshoot for themselves, it's usually a case of "just get it working".

4. Teachers aren’t doing enough to emphasize the importance of tech skills...
We do need to emphasize the value of tech skills, for the teachers and the students, but, given the problems listed above, how? 

I sympathise with my colleagues.  Part of my role is to encourage and support teachers to use technology, but I'm finding that, without all of these things: without the technology being a constant, without adequate PD time, and without adequate support when things go wrong, I'm finding it difficult to convince them they need the skills and in turn to help their students develop their tech skills.  And because of these problems, many teachers can almost avoid learning any tech skills at all, which may suit them, and may suit some of their students, but not all and I think is doing them a disservice.

So, it would seem that the problem is with a lack of resources and time, nothing new there, but those problems aren't going to be easily overcome.  This post seems very negative, and I don't have any answers, but I am trying to work with what we have, to find subtle ways to entice teachers to experiment with some the fabulous tools we have got, to support them in learning how to use these tools, provide examples of ways technology can enhance teaching and learning, and I'm constantly thinking about more ways to engage teachers in using technology and to make it easier for them.

Many thanks to Sarah for sparking off these ramblings.