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With a new generation of teachers coming into the work force, there’s a discrepancy between what principals expect of teachers-in-training and what they’re actually learning in school.

A new Project Tomorrow report surveying principals concluded that they want to hire new teachers with creative ideas about how technology can be leveraged to create authentic and differentiated learning experiences. But student-teachers report that their tech training focuses only on simple management tools. At the same time, the report concludes that those who have the biggest influence on new teachers — veteran educators –  don’t always embrace new ways of using technology to engage students.

Only half of current working teachers believe they can use technology to motivate students to learn, compared to 75 percent of incoming teachers. Only 17 percent of current teachers believe technology can help students deeply explore their own ideas, compared to 59 percent of incoming teachers. And 26 percent of current teachers believe students can use technology to apply knowledge to problem-solving, compared to 64 percent of aspiring teachers.

Teachers-in-training say coursework focuses on technologies that help a teacher stay organized, rather than ways to engage students. In their methods courses, where teachers learn the mechanics of running a classroom, 71 percent report that they’re taught to use simple word processing, spreadsheets and database tools, 64 percent report learning how to create multimedia presentations and 55 percent say they’ve learned how to use interactive whiteboards.

“Principals want new teachers to know how to use technology to create authentic learning experiences for students (75 percent) and how to leverage technology to differentiate instruction (68 percent) before they apply for a position at their school,” the report said.

Additionally, principals hope new hires will use social media to connect and communicate with students and parents, as well as their ability to integrate mobile devices, social media, and other digital instruction into their daily teaching. Principals also recognize that a move towards self-directed learning means that new teachers will have to have strong classroom management skills. Almost half of principals surveyed said incoming teachers should have the ability to manage a classroom where students are using their own mobile devices and 25 percent would like teachers to know how to teach an online class.

EXPECTATION VS. REALITY

But there’s a disparity between what principals expect from new hires and what teachers-in-training are learning. A full 72 percent of pre-service teachers report they think they’re being well-prepared to use technology in the classroom. That may be because this is a generation of teachers who grew up using technology — 61 percent use smartphones, preferring them for daily tasks. They are also much more likely to use social media, online discussion boards and other Internet tools to enhance and direct their professional development.

[RELATED READING: Amidst a Mobile Revolution in Schools, Will Old Teaching Tactics Work?]

These incoming teachers appear to be caught between generations. They use technology fluidly in their own lives and to enhance their education, but they’re learning to teach within a system that lags behind the times. Sixty-eight percent of teachers-in-training report they rely most heavily on field placements to learn about how to integrate technology into the classroom. They also watch their professors and take advice from peers.

There was a similar disconnect on metrics about how technology can improve the way educators teach. Teachers-in-training thought technology could help them be more organized, create more interactive lessons, make learning student-centered and would encourage students to be more self-directed, while experienced teachers were much less enthusiastic.

The report attributes the optimism to two main factors. One, teachers-in-training grew up with technology and aren’t afraid to figure out how to make it work in class. They’re also more comfortable looking for resources online and using social media to collaborate with peers. Secondly, as they were growing up they witnessed attempts at technology integration from their own teachers and they have a sense of what works and what doesn’t.

Erin Scott

Today is the second annual Digital Learning Day, designated to bring attention to the benefits of technology for learning. As part of the effort, PBS LearningMedia has released a survey showing that 74 percent of teachers say educational technology benefits their classroom in many ways, including the ability to reinforce and expand content, motivate students, and respond to a variety of learning styles. Given these numbers, and despite increasing access, it’s not surprising that 68 percent of teachers still want more access to technology in the classroom. That number goes up to 75 percent of teachers in low-income schools.

To understand more about the influence of technology and learning, the following articles help shed light on subjects of discussion among educators and parents.

• 7 GOLDEN RULES OF USING TECHNOLOGY IN SCHOOLS. 1) DON’T TRAP TECHNOLOGY IN A ROOM. “When I went to school, computers were put in a room called The Lab,” Bellow said. “‘What are they experimenting with in there, I thought.’ Technology wasn’t built into what we were doing. It was farmed off in a room, like it was special. Like we were learning how to code, and in case the Russians came, we’d know what to do.” Technology should be like oxygen, Bellow said, quoting Chris Lehmann, the founding principal of Science Leadership Academy: Ubiquitous, necessary, and invisible.

• CASE STUDIES: HOW TEACHERS USE TECHNOLOGY TO SUPPORT LEARNING. Larry Ferlazzo collected an invaluable list of criteria last year from educators, to which he added more resources in his recent blog post for EdWeek.Other posts in the series include Using Ed Tech to Create Deep and Meaningful Experiences and Effective Ways of Using Tech in the Classroom. Here is MindShift’s contribution to the collection of ideas.
• TO MAKE BLENDED LEARNING WORK, TEACHERS TRY DIFFERENT TACTICS. For many schools, finding a way to integrate the use of tech in a traditional setting — teacher-centered classrooms — is proving to be a challenge. What educational software should be used? What criteria should the software be judged against? And what happens to the role of the teacher and classroom activities when students are using software for practice exercises?
• WHAT’S WORTH INVESTING IN? HOW TO DECIDE WHAT TECHNOLOGY YOU NEED.  How will technology allow students and teachers to network their learning, to collaborate with each other, to extend the reach of what kids can learn beyond the walls of the school? How can technology be used to unlock what hasn’t even been thought of yet? These questions are more difficult to answer, and less tangible to measure, than improving test scores, which is what typically draws the attention of educators.

PBS Learning Media

ClassDojo

With the thousands of ed-tech tools available to teachers, it can be difficult to find those that work well and complement teaching strategies. It takes a lot of time to research and integrate, and for teachers in cash-strapped schools, access to some technology is completely out of their reach.

Sam Chaudhary and Liam Don, the co-founders of ClassDojo, had the tech limitations of many public schools in mind when they designed the free service, a behavior management tool meant to reduce the amount of time teachers spend trying to get students’ attention. Classes need just one device — an interactive whiteboard, a computer connected to a projector, or tablet or smartphone.

ClassDojo works on three principles:

• Build positive behaviors through positive reinforcement — basically “catch kids being good” and use specific praise to call out good behavior.
• Real-time feedback is the most effective at improving and changing behavior over a period of time.
• Any tool focused on behavior must engage parents as well.

HOW IT WORKS

Each student gets an avatar and either receives or loses points. The point tallies can be projected on the board for real-time feedback. Teachers and students can come up with mutually agreed upon behavior expectations, and because the categories are framed using positive reinforcement, the tool has the potential to do more than just call out good behavior. For example, a teacher might create a category like “was able to counter another’s point of view without insulting them.” And that behavior becomes part of a classroom norm. ClassDojo can also take attendance and creates pie charts and percentage breakdowns to share with parents.

Teachers’ experience with ClassDojo spans the spectrum. Jennie Dougherty, who taught English at a large urban public high school in Brockton, Massachusetts for three years, recently left to become the technology instructor at a school in East Palo Alto, a low-income Bay Area town. When she first encountered ClassDojo she thought it was just a virtual sticker star chart, a paper version of which she already used. ClassDojo met her basic need — then she discovered it could do more.

“Educators have a specific objective in mind when we select a tool and then we customize,” Dougherty said.

Dougherty also used the tool to get her students to model more mature, college-level behavior. And in higher-level classes she allowed students to award points to one another and found if she prepared them ahead of time, students took this task seriously. And the act of withholding points from one another opened up great discussions for students. For example, she remembers one student refusing to award a peer a point in a debate because the speaker had gotten too emotional. That started a larger discussion about when it’s appropriate to insert oneself into a debate.

But Dougherty was willing to take a risk, and had the support of the administration.

“The classroom is a very high stakes environment,” Doughtery said. “You are getting evaluated. It’s a place where we expect teachers to always be on their A-game.” And that means they may not have time or freedom to try something new. They may even be at risk if they do.

VARYING EXPERIENCES

While Dougherty found ClassDojo useful, some of her colleagues didn’t have the same positive reaction. “What I saw teachers struggle with is how to get the value out of a tool without changing the structure of what they were doing,” said Dougherty. ClassDojo fit her style because she was spending most of her class time on group activities, and less time up front lecturing. It was easy to move around the room awarding points as she checked in on each group’s progress. Teachers who focused on lecturing found it hard to juggle the points system with their usual style of delivering the lesson.

Joan Young, another teacher at a San Francisco Bay Area school, found the service just didn’t fit her class well. She tried the tool, but found that the point system brought out more challenges than benefits. She asked her class what they preferred and they voted for a non-tech strategy she had been using where they could earn “fascination time” at the end of the week by transitioning quickly and quietly between activities. She also felt the tool was too focused on the teacher’s actions. She’d rather see students evaluate their own behavior, learn from mistakes and take ownership of their own learning progress. She felt awarding points stifled that kind of thinking.

Still another teacher at Brockton never got the chance to try ClassDojo because his classroom didn’t have a computer. Brockton is a large public high school south of Boston with more than 4,000 students, and the administration hadn’t been able to get computers into every class. ClassDojo requires a minimal level of technology, just one device. Still, the gap between what many classrooms have at their disposal and what much of the ed-tech world is designing can be unbridgeable.

FUTURE PLANS

The ClassDojo team understands that their tool must work for educators, so they are responsive to suggestions and feedback. They are also far from done with the tool. Sam Chaudhary is excited by what it has been able to do so far, but has big plans for its future. “There’s a whole other half of education that’s almost completely ignored by ed-tech which is beyond building test scores, it’s about building character,” Chaudhary said. He’s thinking about adding a self-evaluation element for students on ClassDojo, to help move it away from teacher-centered instruction. He also wants to strengthen the parental engagement element. He doesn’t feel the current offering of and a percentage breakdown of behavior tells the parent what they really need to know.