If it ain’t personal, it isn’t professional

If you don’t use tech, per se, in your daily life, at all levels, and you’re not comfortable with it, then it’s unlikely that you’re going to be as speedy (to embrace) technology,” noted Dr. ToddRothenhaus, senior vice president and chief information officer of Caritas Christi Health Care, the second-largest provider in Massachusetts. “If you’re not a touch typist…or if you never use a mouse or are accustomed to using a PC as part of your daily activity, then there’s going to be an enormous barrier ( C|Net).

This is something that I keep telling the powers that be when it comes to trying to get faculty to adopt technologies in their classrooms. It is not that I’m trying to get instructors to use clickers at home to poll their family about what to eat for supper or if they agree on what time they should go to bed. I try to get them to use similar technologies to what they would use in the classroom, and as they get comfortable with one technology and fund success, they are more likely to find and use another and once they feel that they have sufficient mastery of a technology in their personal space, they are more likely to extend that to the professional or occupational realm. At the university, I differentiate professional and occupational because of professors that we have all either had or will have in the future. Those profs that live only for their research and view teaching as the “requirement” or “hoop” that needs to be jumped.

It is likely those profs/instructors who are going to be the last to adopt technology into their teaching because the teaching isn’t seen as being important. I seem to find that sessionals who are teaching because they love it (nee not for the paycheck) are the ones who are more likely to be using technology or those who are willing or asking to get help to use some manner of technology in their teaching.

It is nice to see that others are thinking the same thing when it comes to technology adoption.


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