Only days after a province-wide system crash as thousands of students across the province attempted to write their English diploma exams on Jan. 13, the Alberta Teachers Association (ATA) released a statement on Jan. 19 expressing their displeasure with some of the technology being used in classrooms.
A portion of the release read “Digital reporting tools are not seen to improve student instruction or assessment but have had a significant negative impact on teacher work, according to teachers and principals surveyed in a new Alberta study.”
The release says researchers from the University of Alberta and the ATA surveyed more than 1,000 teachers across the province and nearly two-thirds responded that digital reporting tools such as PowerSchool and TeacherLogic have not improved instruction in the classroom.
“Teachers are concerned about the amount of time and energy that has to be invested into these tools that deliver little improvement to learning or communications. Their efforts would be better focused on professional work, like student conferencing, that does have value in improving learning,” said ATA president Mark Ramsankar in the release.
“There’s no question the use of technology has to be supported by the person using it,” said Wolf Creek Public Schools superintendent Larry Jacobs, in an interview with Ponoka News.
He feels teachers have to not only be able to use the technology but effectively wield it in a classroom setting in order for both teachers and students to benefit.
This goal is where divisions across the province are seeing a slowing pace. “A lot of our teachers trained in a world 10 to 15 years (ago),” said Jacobs.
As technology used in the classroom evolves, Jacobs says it is up to the divisions to provide staff with opportunities to continually upgrade their skills.
He feels students are open to the idea of learning with technology. “There’s something intrinsically motivating about technology . . . it’s fun.”
With students also being encouraged to bring their own technology — such as cellphones — to learn in class, there was a fear students would become easily distracted from the curriculum material.
“And yet a cellphone is an extremely powerful digital device,” said Jacobs.
“It’s not the problem some people suspected it would be,” he added.
Jacobs says some of the issues teachers face with technology in the classroom stems from a discontented Alberta Education, as it keeps pushing different initiatives. “There are reports coming back from the schools ‘you need to think it through’,” said Jacobs.
Ponoka Secondary Campus administration or teachers did not want to comment on the ATA release.