Jim’s posthaven

Getting Teachers to Adopt Technology: What to and not to Do

This guys gets it.

Rushton Hurley, Executive Director, Next Vista for Learning, and Teacher, Santa Clara Unified School District, CA

Two things technology must do for him to use it

Six Don'ts and Dos

1. Don't require teachers to be experts in technology. Do remind them of their expertise.
2. Don't tie everything to standards. Do show them something fun.
3. Don't sit everyone in a lab for training. Do allow for regular and short sharing time.
4. Don't limit technology to labs. Do showcase what can be done outside the lab. This ones is a little less important int our 1 to 1 environment.
5. Don't buy expensive software a teacher has not used. Do learn what is freely available.
6. Don't blanket the school with expensive hardware. Do use targeted spending to focus purchases. No matter what you do you are going to tick someone off. Do not shoot for equity shoot for putting stuff in rooms where it will get used. If the people who do not get the technology a mad and they do something about it, great. If they are mad and they don't change give more stuff to the people do stuff. If you flip this around the people who get mad are the people doing stuff, and you want to encourage them not discourage them.