POST THIS DISCUSSION IN YOUR BLOG (BY WEDNESDAY).

RESPOND TO TWO CLASSMATES' BLOGS BETWEEN FRIDAY/SATURDAY.

TIP Model Phase 2-Determining the Relative Advantage

The superintendent of the Wellmade School District felt that every student should be "connected to the Information Superhighway," so he decided to install Internet connections in every school classroom in the district. The hardware and installations were funded through a federal grant and local business sponsors. Two years later, it became apparent that only about 25% of the teachers were using the Internet with students, and most uses were "casual surfing."

1. Why do you think the teachers did not see the relative advantage of this technology?

2. If you were made responsible for integrating this technology into instructional activities, how would you translate the superintendent's rationale into problems and solutions for which the relative advantage would be clear to teachers?

1. The superintendent of the school had the best of intentions in providing resources to all persons in the district. The challenge of this lies in the fact that frontline teachers were not invested in this project. In introducing ideas to the group, it is imperative to identify those who are early adopters. That is, persons who are, in this case, already technology users in their personal life. These persons already posses the technical skills and have seen the benefit of this type of technology in their personal lives. By simply making the technology available, without directions or requirement, the staff simply used the technology for what most people use their computers for at home - google searches, e-mail and solitaire.

2. In my opinion, key to making teacher's interested in this technology and its opportunity would be to enlist the assistance of early adopters (as described above). By coordinating this key group of people, some from each campus, it will be possible to create goals and opportunities to utilize this awesome access everyone's benefit.

So, initially, getting the early adopter's to invest in the idea with clear goals. Second would be to allow the early adopters to share their experiences, both successes and dead ends with staff in educational development. Small, multi-disciplinary groups seem to be a powerful way to share this. The third step would have to be to make goals for the staff to have some form of technology implementation into their lesson planning. Leaving this as an open ended opportunity would create some interesting ideas. I think there is just as much opportunity for math to implement technology as science or english. As a last step, it would be great to have each campus create a list of ideas to share with other campuses. Even a contest to see who was able to come up with the most interesting application for technology in education.

Gearing staff to accept new ideas will always be a challenge. Change is difficult for some, and exciting for others. The things we are most excited about in life are those that have clear benefits for us. So, let me add another last step, and that would be to share with staff what benefit there is for them to take the time and effort to change how they have been doing things to implement this new idea. For me, it is allowing students to have tools at hand will allow them to integrate from student to productive citizen in the world. The world is full of technology, let the kids be full of experience with it in a productive manner.