At Kell High School in Cobb County, the staff's knowledge in technology varies widely. Some teachers are very skilled with technology, often becoming early adopters of the latest and great technical instructional tools. Others, however, are quite the opposite, and instead view technology as a hindrance to their teaching. In fact, a few teachers at Kell either refuse to use email or do not know how to use email and will call another teacher to have him/her send an email on their behalf. According to the technology specialist "IT guy" who spends some of his time at Kell, the ability levels seem to coincide with age. The younger teachers are more technologically advanced and more willing to learn new technology while the older teachers are often technologically inept and afraid of experimenting with technology.
And it's not because Kell High School/Cobb County doesn't try to train teachers on technology. Just recently, during an early release day, all teachers were required to attend a one-hour training session on using iRespond units since it was mandated that all teachers use the response systems for check-point tests for EOCT (end of course test) classes. One teacher I talked to said that the technology training did not provide very adequate explanation of how to use the systems and he left still very confused. Being a younger teacher, he basically taught himself how to use the systems since he was required to use them for a check-point test. He said that he had to go help many other teachers who were struggling to set-up the systems even though they attended the training session.
While this training course required attendance of all teachers, the majority of technology training sessions are optional and available throughout the day for the teachers to attend during their planning periods. The teachers I talked to about this topic said they rarely, if ever, attend these optional training classes (which are typically offered by the county and not the media specialists) because they have more important things to do during their planning time. It's during their planning that they try to grade papers, respond to parent's inquiries/concerns, and plan for upcoming days. Rarely, do they feel they can justify spending time on technology. As one teacher said "Even if I do attend the class, if I don't work with that technology immediately, I will forget it by the time I have a free hour to try out the technology on my own."
The Kell High School media specialists have some "tech tips" available on the school drive, such as how to use the LCD panel and importing images to PowerPoint, but at this time they are not sure how often the "tips" are used and if they adequately fulfill the goal of aiding teachers in learning technology.
Through my field experience and questioning of teachers, there always seems to be one common theme when it comes to technology - lack of time. Teachers are burdened with so many tasks in so little time that they feel overwhelmed if they try to also add technology to that "to do" list. One way I think to overcome this is to allow for multi-tasking during training sessions. Perhaps the trainer can offer free lunch as an incentive or allow teachers to bring lunch so they can sit through a "lunch-n-learn". This way, teachers using their lunch period to do what they normally do, eat lunch, but while learning new and exciting things. Also, if the trainer advertises the training session so that potential attendees learn that they could save time by learning this new technology, I think attendance to technology training would increase dramatically.
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