Young teachers, no technology… ’cause that isn’t content.

Over lunch today, two of my friends who are both young teachers (one in Edmonton and one in Calgary) and I met for lunch. The conversation came around to teaching different courses and both said that they wouldn’t take their kids into the computer labs, or even teach using the computers until well into the year/term.  Why? Well for a number of reasons, the first ones being that the kids don’t need to be taught keyboarding, they don’t really need to learn about how to use the “computer” in general. What they need is to learn how to deal with the information that they get from the computer. They need to learn how to print legibly and not rely entirely on spell check for everything. They don’t need time in front of the screen,  too many teachers think that because the kids are staring at the screen that they are doing something productive. That, as many of us know, isn’t the case. These teachers also don’t make these online/computer related assignments that rigorous as they believe that it is hard for the kids… or more likely that they would not have ability to assess what their students create.

So it seems that the obstacle to technology integration isn’t necessarily an age thing, it could also be that so many others have done it wrong and overlooked other basics that those teachers who would/could integrate would rather spend their time getting the basics done right.