Facilitating Technology Integration - Day 1
Ed. Research, Ed. Tech. May 26th, 2008
[WHERE IN THE WORLD IS JB: Sutton, WV. Gearing up for visit to first 5 schools tomorrow]
So, I’ve arrived in West Virginia, and as promised, here’s the first of this 5-part chronicle. After my visits tomorrow (5 schools in three different counties), I’ll begin my discussion of findings. For today, just an introduction.
My main research question here is this: Does the addition of technology support personnel into a school increase technology integration among teachers?
Ultimately, this study exists at the intersection of lots of issues. This study is about professional development. It’s about leadership. It’s about organizational structures. It’s about the micropolitics of education. My main goal is to ask lots of questions and make lots of observations to add to the data already collected so that I can begin to unpack those issues.
So, for now, if there are school leaders and/or ed. tech. support personnel out there and reading this post, I’d love to hear your initial thoughts and ideas? What are your estimates of how my research question will be resolved?
Wow, Jon, this seems like a great study and I am looking forward to reading your reports.
I will go ahead and make an estimate, even though I really have no basis for doing so, that you are going to see some positive effects but that it is going to be localized to those schools that have outgoing tech. personnel. If you see these localized positive effects and no effect in other places, my next question would be how the school tech. support personnel define their role within the school. Is their support role merely resolving technical glitches in existing technology solutions or is it to introduce other school personnel to new technology solutions? But, again, I really have no experience or authority whatsoever backing me up here, so grain of salt warranted.