Week 13: We Just Need Shortcuts

Description 

This week, I was able to hand out my Tech Tuesday Bingo "game" to teachers who wanted more than 0.1 credit for tech PD. With new licensure updates, K-12 teachers need to have 2.0 CEUs for license renewals every five years. Even knowing this, my district does not advocate/pay for its teachers to go to the NCTIES conference, although the county leadership and some librarians get to go. #BaHumBug

So, I met with seven teachers who wanted to get an hour of credit and talked to them about the Bingo card I designed based on the types of technology we had been learning about this school year. In my original blog post (here), I talked about the reasons for some of my choices. 

Feelings

I actually felt pretty good about the work I had done to make sure the Bingo choices weren't too easy or hard -- like the teachers felt they could succeed at blending technology with their curriculum. As we brainstormed ways individual teachers could use implement a tech activity, I was struck by just how behind the times we are --and it was pretty sad.

Evaluation

I don't say "sad" in a bad way, like my colleagues and I are purposefully not using technology, I say that because we are set in our ways and see technology as more of a distraction (cell phones) rather than ways we might harness blended learning to meet our kids' educational needs. One of the Bingo choices is to have students email a summary of the lesson for the day, and one of my colleagues said something to the effect of "Our kids don't email." This is true, and so inappropriate for 2019. But the kids don't email us because we don't require it - not because they wouldn't. 

Conclusion 

So, in the end, the teachers were looking for shortcuts for the 1.0CEU. Things like "Can I tweet a gif and get credit for two choices" just make me angry. One teacher "finished" her whole project during one class period -- not the point of the game, but...

Action Plan

After my teacher survey and this Bingo fiasco, I'm making changes to my Canvas course for this practicum. I hoped to be able to use these small pieces as the Canvas modules, but that's not going to work. If I don't add in a collaboration piece, the teachers I work with won't see tech as tools to use to make the curriculum more engaging, but as just another hoop to jump through.