Perspectives & Biases

What perspectives and/or biases might you have that will impact how you will approach your question? (Falk & Blumenreich, 2005, p. 38)

I guess you could say that I am pretty biased when it comes to technology. I believe with my whole heart that it is absolutely essential for us as educators to bring our classrooms into the 21st century through the use of technology. Not doing so, in my opinion, borders on educational malpractice, especially in urban schools (see my "Use of Technology in Literacy Instruction" presentation, posted 2/17/08). This is my perspective as a teacher of children K-8.

When I taught elementary and middle school in Atlanta, technology was as integrated into our school day as books were. I have led my students on inquiry webquests, encouraged them to practice their fluency through electronic storybooks, communicated with them through e-mail and created collages from digital images. We webbed our thoughts using programs like Inspiration 8; they tracked their own progress through a website called Quia; they peer-edited in Google documents and published their writing on the internet.

Students are using technology to read and write all the time outside of school. They send each other text messages and instant messages. They e-mail each other. They communicate in a myriad of ways on social networking sites like MySpace or Facebook. Then they come to school and are told to write with pencil in their marble notebooks. This is creating a major disconnection between 'school' writing and 'real' writing for students and if it continues we will fail as educators to create true lifelong authors, readers or possibly learners. I believe that it is my job as a teacher to help students find connections between their 'real' lives and their academic ones. Technology is one way to do that.

Now that I have left the classroom to become a staff developer, my role and my focus has changed slightly. My research is focused on helping teachers, rather than students, to use technology to their benefit. However, my perspective remains the same: it is high time that we brought American schools into the 21st century.

Technology can make teachers' administrative and instructional tasks so much more efficient, thus helping to simplify an overly complex, mulit-tasked day. Grades can be automatically weighted and calculated, then posted securely online for parents, teachers and administrators to track from anywhere. Parents can contact school personnel from anywhere at any time using e-mail. All involved parties can collaborate around the work of students - sharing, commenting, praising, questioning, planning. Electronic calendars can be used collaboratively to keep everyone on track with events and assignments. The possibilities are endless.

So what does my perspective or bias mean for my research? It means that I need to be careful about making assumptions when it comes to teachers' confidence and competence with technology. Because many teachers are not already using technology, there may be a learning curve that needs to be addressed before I implement certain tools as the 'action' portion of my project. Also, I need to be aware that not every school or teacher has the funds to spend on new technology; therefore, I must be able to plan for only those tech tools that are already present, free or inexpensive to use.