Motivating Teachers with New Technology

Different values and expectations promote different motivation factors for each individual. In the case of motivating teachers to want to experiment and teach with new technology tools, winning a $150,000 technology grant is an extreme motivator for many teachers and quite intimidating for others. This situation occurred at the K-5 elementary school where I teach six years ago. We received $50,000 for hardware, $50,000 for software and $50,000 for professional development to be used over a three-year period of the grant. Out of our 45 staff members, 15 teachers were extremely resistant to the laptops that were given to them, along with a plethora of software, and the training to learn how to use the laptop to enhance their teaching.

Using John M. Keller’s ARCS (Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction) Model, the other 30 staff members have been working diligently and patiently with these 15 who did not want any part of teaching with technology in the beginning of this endeavor. Each of these reluctant teachers exhibited the attitude, that what they have always done still works, so why change; and they said it was too much work to learn. They demonstrated behaviors like not showing up for the trainings, always making excuses of why they could not be there, and why it did not fit into their teaching style and schedule.

The first condition from Keller’s model is to gain and sustain “attention” (Driscoll, p.334). Our staff was able to achieve this by paying the teachers to attend the trainings. The grant allowed a portion of the professional development money to pay stipends for the teachers. This made a significant difference in the attention upheld at the trainings. The second condition is enhancing “relevance” (Driscoll, p.335). Once the teachers came to the trainings, they began to see how relevant the technology tools were to what and how they were currently teaching, and it made many of their teaching duties easier, gaining valuable student engagement time. The third condition is building “confidence” (Driscoll, p.336). Allowing a safe environment to acquire new skills, apply new skills, fail, and try again until success is achieved was the confidence builder these teachers needed. A little handholding goes a long way to gain self-assurance! The fourth condition of generating “satisfaction” (Driscoll, p.337), came from knowing that this group of reluctant teachers in the beginning, many has now become the biggest advocates for technology, wanting more teaching tools and actively seeking out new technology professional development opportunities for themselves.

Resource:
Driscoll, M. P. (2005). Psychology of learning for instruction (3rd ed.). Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.

Module 1 Blog:

What are your beliefs about how people learn best? What is the purpose of learning theory in educational technology?

People learn best when they make connections to prior knowledge, are given adequate time to process and reflect, allowed the opportunity to ask questions of inquiry in a non-threatening environment, provided time to apply and practice their learning and given positive reinforcement for achieving success. In our education world of high stakes testing today, teachers are forced to move ahead to cover all the content that will be tested, without taking the time desired to always respond to all students’ individual needs or allow them the needed practice time to achieve mastery of their new learning. According to Glenzer, in reflecting how behavioral change is the evidence of learning, practice does make perfect in order to achieve the desired learned behavior. (Glenzer, 2005, p. 101)

The purpose of learning theory in educational technology provides the needed background knowledge and historical perspectives about how people have used, and continue to use technologies as a teaching and learning tool. Historically, behaviorism has influenced educational technology in six areas: the behavioral objectives movement; the teaching machine phase; the programmed instruction movement; individualized instructional approaches; computer-assisted instruction (CAI); and the systems approach to instruction. (Saettler, 2004, p. 286) The ability to assimilate and understand learning theories provides teachers the foundation needed to produce well-planned lessons that include observable and measurable content and language based objectives. Teachers must also have a thorough knowledge of all students’ abilities, and be able to demonstrate a high level of competence in applying educational technologies to maximize their students’ learning. (Semple, 2000, p. 27)

Here is a list of education blogs from Online Education Database with 22 of them specific to educational technology:
http://oedb.org/library/features/top-100-education-blogs

Resources:

Glenzer, H. (2005). Living learning theory through My Fair Lady. British Journal of Educational Technology, 36(1), 101−105. Retrieved May 28, 2009 from Academic Search Premier database.

Saettler, P. (2004). The evolution of American educational technology. Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing.

Semple, A. (2000). Learning theories and their influence on the development and use of educational technologies. Australian Science Teachers Journal, 46(3), 21-28. Retrieved May 29, 2009 from ProQuest Central database.