Jan Demedts
IT Consultant and System Administrator
Don Bosco Onderwijscentrum, Belgium
Maximize on the Power of Peer Training
On training pioneer teachers in IT skills so that they can act as IT role models and influence colleagues through peer to peer training (from a K-12 perspective)
A demanding job
Teaching is a multi-layered and demanding job. The educational landscape is constantly changing, with new generations of students entering the classrooms every year, bringing in new words, fashions, skills, likes and dislikes. Teachers are challenged on a daily basis to prove themselves as educator, instructor, administrator, manager, psychologist, coach, companion, even standup comedian. Successful teachers need to draw from a broad range of social, educational and collaboration skills while they are working with students, colleagues and other partners outside of the school.
With the invasion of audiovisual equipment, computers and other electronic devices into everyday school life, teachers are also challenged to prove themselves as able technologists, not just during moments of preparation, but also on the class battlefield with up to 30 IT-savvy youngsters watching, commenting, assessing. Lots of things can go wrong: the projector doesn't show the pc image, there's no sound from the speakers, the webserver or even the school's internet access is down. Arghhh!
It's not just being able to handle the hardware and do some basic troubleshooting. To maximize learning and educational opportunities and to facilitate school administration, teachers are required to manage their subjects/class groups in learning platforms and student management systems, be proficient with online assessment/grading tools and collaboration tools like Google Docs. Frequent changes in software and platforms (upgrades, new functionality, change of provider) mean that there's always something new to be learned. Also teachers have tried out many web 2.0 applications and put them to good educational usage, with You Tube as one of the better known examples.
Teachers must also know about the potentially unwanted aspects of information technology. They need to know about the darker sides of the internet (as many students already do), about the pros and cons of social networking (Netlog, Facebook …) and should be able to advise their students on how to deal with privacy and cyberbullying.
The picture will be clear now: to get through the daily routine of 21st century school life, teachers need a broad range of IT skills combined with flexibility, creativity and … stamina.
Training the teachers and dealing with resistance
Taking all this into account, a major question arises: how to provide efficient IT training that makes teachers adopt the required IT skills and make them feel proficient, happy and confident in their daily routine?
This is no easy matter: not all teachers welcome the new IT techniques and some teachers even openly question IT at school and resist IT decisions made by the school management.
It is important to understand why. Many teachers have a strong individualistic side to their personality since they are used to managing class groups on their own and behind closed doors. At the same time they are intellectuals, critical of decisions taken at higher levels and wary of yet another change. Many times they have good reason: over the last decades K-12 schools have been swept by waves of pedagogic reform and an increase of control and administrative requirements.
A second reason why some teachers resist IT is the stress that comes with IT: some people are good with computers and others simply are not. Some teachers jump at new software and will readily put new IT techniques to the test in the classroom, while others dread having to take a class to a computer room and will postpone this as long as they can. They feel clumsy in front of their students and oppressed by the new curricula that want teachers to use computers in their classes to improve the students' interest, activity and learning efficiency.
Especially the fact that teachers have to use IT in front of large groups of IT-savvy and highly critical (pre-) adolescents should not be underestimated. Being able to work a computer at home or in an office does not equal being able to work a computer publicly in a classroom with the projector magnifying the demonstration of the teacher's IT skills.
It certainly does not equal managing a group of 25 students, each working on a computer of their own, and being able to teach well in the subject that is being taught: IT is only the method, improved learning is the real aim.
A good IT training strategy
A good IT training strategy should accept this resistance against IT/change and should try to work around it. The school management should not simply try to force new IT skills down the teachers' throats. The motto for school leaders is: be respectful to your human capital, motivate your decisions and set up well-devised change implementation schemes!
Good support facilities at school are very important in this respect: teachers should be able to get help and advice from school-based IT coordinators whenever they need it. Teachers also have every right to a dependable infrastructure: enough high quality hardware, a stable computer network and server infrastructure, good backup facilities, a trustworthy internet connection ... so ample IT funding for schools by the government and education boards is vital.
There should also be regular training opportunities. However, sending all the teachers on a regular basis to IT training sessions during (paid) work hours, is not feasible. That would be too disruptive for school life: the lessons must always go on for most of the students. Sending all teachers to IT training sessions after work hours (in their private time) is also something a school cannot easily do. Although widely underestimated, teachers have loads of school work after school hours ...
On the job IT-training to evangelize new IT-based methods
What then is the best way to train teachers in IT skills?
Let's start with the input. Teacher training schools have an important responsibility in procuring freshly trained teachers that are fully proficient and motivated to implement the K-12 schools' IT strategies. But once on the job and through the years, both young and older teachers will need IT-training to keep up with change in school IT.
A major question then is who should give the IT training sessions. Every school has one or more IT administrators: are they the best IT trainers? For many teachers they aren't since the IT-guys are perceived as being too savvy and too fast with IT ("IT is easy for them"), which to many teachers is intimidating and causes stress.
In my experience there is a better way to optimize the efficiency of K-12 schools IT training schemes:
- send a small number of volunteering teachers during work hours to internal or external training sessions on specific IT subjects given by specialised trainers or by the school's own IT-administrators
- for most teachers, target at on the job training in the school when the teachers aren't teaching (in between lessons, during noon breaks)
- work with a peer training model: train volunteering/pioneering teachers to be IT evangelists/role models and let those teachers spread the news, the IT-skills and examples of concrete implementations into lesson plans
- invite and reward these evangelists to give short IT training sessions in the schools on well-defined subjects and make sure the announcement/invitation to these sessions is worded in simple language so that it is clear to the target group
- for these sessions, try to get some teachers of the target group to put their name on the attendee list: if the training session is meant for beginners, the IT skills of the teachers on the list should be rated by their colleagues as indeed beginners level ... otherwise real beginners will not put their names down for fear of losing face during the IT training session
- stimulate the different departments (maths, modern languages, science, ...) to organise internal demos and share lessons material on the schools learning platform
- do not rush things: let the IT evangelization spread at its own pace.