Technology In Our Schools - Shaping The Future Is No Easy Task

The shift to what the Martinez school district is calling “the 21 century classroom” is not an easy one. The fact is, no one yet knows what it looks like. It certainly involves devices like laptops, iPads, Smartboards and other technologies that haven’t even been invented yet. It involves infrastructure – making sure the classrooms can accommodate the new technologies. And it involves training, to make sure the teachers and staff know and understand how to use the technology.

But it also almost certainly involves a fundamental shift in how students are taught, and perhaps even what they are taught. The basic foundation of a solid education will certainly stay intact, but the ways in which students receive those fundamental lessons will change and evolve as the tools of teaching change and evolve.

The district has put together a committee of teachers, administrators and the school board president, Vicki Gordon, to discuss and examine how technology can best be introduced into the daily task of teaching. The Technology Assessment Committee (TAC), meets regularly to examine this issue. Martinez Patch was fortunate to be present at a recent meeting of the TAC.

Some teacher concerns were expressed at the beginning of the meeting:

“I have students who don’t have a computer at home. It slows down the process,” said one teacher.

Another said she was qualified to teach her subject, but not necessarily using a computer or other technology.  

These are just two of the many concerns teachers expressed about the shift to technology in the classroom. But the need to change is there – the students themselves are immersed in the technology, said Audrey Lee, coordinator of educational services.

“The world is changing,” she said, “and the students are changing. They are always connected. They are driven, social, and multi-taskers.”

“We’re not going back to what was,” said superintendent Rami Muth, “but going forward to what needs to be. In terms of designing the 21^st century classroom, what I know is, there is so much we don’t know. Just because you have an iPad doesn’t mean you’re learning any more than if you don’t.”

Still, administrators are designing the ways technology can be deployed in the district, but it is the teachers that ultimately must make it work in the day to day classroom. And there are some concerns among some teachers about the demands such a fundamental shift will have, while still maintaining the rigorous education standards for their students.

Mary Hardesty, a third grade teacher at John Muir Elementary, said technology “is the way the kids think now. We need training, and more tech people.”

Ashley Atkinson, a first grade teacher at Morello Park Elementary, said to integrate technology correctly throughout the district, “we will have to invest a ton of time and money into this district. To do this well, we have to spend time with it, play with it, get to know how it works. We just don’t have that kind of time.”

“We need to invest in technology,” agreed Hardesty, “but we need to invest in people to go along with it.”

There are no easy answers to this question, but it’s good to know that the Martinez district is taking a long hard look at various solutions, hearing the concerns of the teachers, and beginning to get a sense of what that 21^st century classroom is, in fact, going to look like.