Even after the long periods of remote learning during the Covid-19 pandemic, the challenge of keeping up with new technology continues to frustrate principals’ efforts to effectively manage their schools.
Some recurring technology-related issues for school leaders includes finding the ‘right fit’ device to meet students’ and teachers’ needs, ensuring ICT network compatibility and navigating software changes in classrooms.
Another challenge is that some teachers can be daunted by ed-tech and, in an effort to avoid losing face, avoid using it. This potentially causes students to miss out on a more engaging, impactful lesson. As such, it’s critical for school leaders to better understand teachers' pain points in this area.
Principals are also cognisant that they cannot always depend on the IT manager to constantly train teachers how to use ed-tech – especially considering factors like the high teacher turnover rate many schools are currently experiencing.
“The rapidly evolving nature of technology offers challenges to experienced teachers who find themselves having to adopt new technologies,” Education Perfect CEO, Alex Burke, told The Educator.
“Yet there is also a trans-generational opportunity to transform the role of teachers from guardians of knowledge to guides of thinking with the time to focus on relationships rather than resources and administrative tasks.”
Below, Burke outlines three ways modern delivery can help teachers:
- Truly learner-centric curriculum
Quality online platforms offer the opportunity to create a different programme for each student in the classroom that is goal aligned and follows their interest and passions while simultaneously saving teachers time with adaptive content and self-marking assessments. This supports a project-based learning approach and allows multiple curriculum strands to be effectively integrated by generalist teachers.
- Bring teachers together
Specialist teachers often find themselves working in isolation within their schools without colleagues to bounce ideas off of, moderate work with, or brainstorm new approaches. Adopting a hybrid approach can see clusters of teachers sharing resources, and lessons, and offering students the ability to experience different teaching methodologies and ideas.
- Micro learning leads to macro learning
A hybrid learning environment opens a world of opportunity to students. Microlearning cycles can be planned to flow into a macro learning experience that allows learners to focus on a specific topic through bite-size increments. This style of scaffolding allows for implicit learning and provides fantastic opportunities for teachers to engage students in rich learning conversations.