Never ending circle….

We all know the up’s and down’s of trying to push the use of Technology in our Schools. This week has been a classic example of going round and round in circles and not really pushing in any direction.

LG summed up the start of it in her Making Lemonade post, and in the comments you’ll see the after effects of an intense discussion in our ICT Committee meeting.

We belong to a Multi-Campus College. It was decided some time ago to create a “Scope and Sequence” of how Technology needs to be integrated in all of the subject area’s, both to meet Curriculum requirements and those to be expected of 21st Century Learning. All in all this will be a good thing, as all Teachers will see what the expectations are for the use of Technology in their lessons.

A sad reality was brought to the meeting when our Head of Senior School mentioned that this draft of the document made her angry, and that the anger was that none of the requirements were currently being met. She felt that a lot of her staff were going to struggle with the integration of Technology in their lessons, as they have been teaching without for so long etc.

Now this is where LG and I should come in…. We should be creating the support plan and running short training sessions as part of our Teachers’ Professional Development, except we are drastically understaffed. LG has a full teaching load, and I have help only on 3 days a week. Add to this dilemma the comment that funding won’t be available to cover these issues in the near future and it all starts to look a little bleak.

On the other hand, if we look at the Scope and Sequence as becoming a mandatory requirement of our teaching, the College is going to have to put this Professional Development first. This Scope and Sequence could be the catalyst for the change that we have been fighting for.

While this is being sorted out, we’ll just go round and round in circles.