Five Top Reasons Why You Face Obstacles In Learning New Technologies Today
New technologies are a major part of the 21st-century learning experience. When incorporated properly in the classroom, tools such as computers, video conferencing, and even artificial intelligence can be used to supplement children’s education, provide support to students with disabilities, and have a wide variety of additional applications and benefits.
However, implementing New Complex technologies in the classroom is not always done smoothly or successfully. Many teachers and administrators face obstacles that prevent them from sourcing, installing, and using technology that they can use to enrich their students’ educations. Read on to learn about the top five challenges facing the adoption and use of education technology today.
1. Budget Limitations
By far the greatest factor limiting the efforts of teachers and administrators to provide education technology to students, budget cuts and limitations are a major hurdle that proponents of education technology must overcome in order to successfully introduce tech into their classrooms. A recent study even demonstrated that 75.9% of respondents saw budget restrictions as the biggest challenge preventing them from embracing education technology.
Budget limitations are especially challenging to overcome because great education tech tools don’t come cheap: while tools like Google Cloud can be a powerful tool for education, simply adopting that one tool also requires schools to provide Chromebooks to students and fund training sessions for teachers, which strained budgets simply can’t handle. Finding the funds to implement and sustain technology in the classroom can be a major barrier to its adoption in cash-strapped schools.
2. Lack Of Professional Training
Increasingly new and advanced technologies appears every day. You need to be able to know not only how to get the most out of each new tool yourself, but also how to train train students in its use. Providing classrooms with a shiny new tool that neither teacher nor student can use is unlikely to make an impact in any child’s educational experience, and requiring busy teachers to teach themselves how to use a new tool can be frustrating and time-consuming. Although professionally training teachers, faculty, and staff may require time and money, it’s necessary if students are expected to get the desired effects out of their technological experience.
3. Unreliable Devices And Software
The lack of a strong infrastructure can also be compounded by a lack of reliable devices and software, all of which can present major barriers to the adoption of education technology. An unreliable device can simply be a notebook that doesn’t function properly, or it could be a bug causing students to have trouble accessing tests or staying logged in at school. In more extreme cases, Common Core test disruptions in 2021 and other test-based technical glitches represented an unforeseen challenge associated with using education technology to administer testing. Although education technology can be a powerful tool, devices and software need to be consistent and reliable for it to remain a viable option in the future.
4. Poor Network Infrastructure
Simply handing a room full of students a box of laptops or notebooks won’t have any beneficial effects if the school doesn’t have the network infrastructure it needs to support them. A strong network infrastructure requires fast, high-quality WiFi at school and at home, as well as data privacy and security, access to digital resources, and much more. Designing, building, and supporting a strong network infrastructure must be done with a great amount of care and forethought, as it is necessary for the effective and responsible continued use of technology in education.
5. Failure to use technology to deliver effective formative assessments
Although testing has always been an important driver for educational practice and change, many teachers now “teach for the test.” The curricula and skill sets have adapted to our society’s needs, and in turn current testing methods have become an antiquated assessment. New technologies and our understanding of different learning patterns needs to play into the new way students are scored for the understanding of the topic.
Despite increasing adoption of technologies for K-12, there seems to be a problem with widespread implementation. Older teachers seem to lack an understanding of how new technology works. This lack of an understanding is exasperated when an older teacher is trying to teach a student who grew up using that technology. We’ve all seen YouTube videos of toddlers using an iPad, we’ve also watched our grandparents struggle to understand what an iPad is, or what it can do.
Older teachers also struggle with this sort of thing and that’s when the problem with implementation comes up. Every parent wants their kid to be successful and have a better life than they did. Embracing new educational technologies is one way to do this.
Because no one wants their kid to go from this....
… to a life of this…
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