I've learned in my time at UGA that every department has a "technology culture." Most departments have their fair share of innovators, early adopters, and laggards, but there are some that have more than their share in one of these categories. Those often set the tone for others in the department to follow. In the case of the departments with more innovators, those who tend to be laggards are more likely to try new things anyway. On the other hand, departments with more laggards can be frustrating places to be for those who like to try new things. What is the culture in your department? How has it affected you and the way you think about teaching with technology in your discipline?
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As for my personal Grady experience? There really hasn't been any kind of technological push.
ReplyDeleteThat's not to say the other students and I don't study social media, Internet TV, and the like. It's just that we've never really seen videoconferencing being used, blogging being employed, Facebook or Twitter explored as classroom tools, clickers handed out to students, etc.
Now that might just have something to do with the specific courses I've taken under equally specific professors. However, you would think you'd hear the buzz about a new technology being used in a course. But other than the "news kids" checking out standard video and lighting equipment? Nada.
there are not really any early adopters that i know of in my department, although since we're combined with Instructional Technology, i imagine there are many in that half of the department that i never interact with! in education we are lucky to have good classroom technology---internet and projectors in every room, SMART boards and other contraptions in many rooms. so the profs in my department seem to be comfortable AROUND the technology, but don't go out of their way to be innovative with it.
ReplyDeleteGood question... and I'm not too sure of the answer. I don't really know of any professors in our School have become "champions" of teaching technology (except maybe our study abroad folks who have poured a lot of time into distance learning). Seems like most people just know enough or do enough to get by. I could be wrong about this, but it's just my initial impression (if 5 years of experience still qualifies as "initial").
ReplyDeleteI think that instructors in my department are just not aware of the technological resources that are available for classroom use. I see the use of youtube fairly frequently in lectures, but I have not seen much else. In larger classrooms, our teaching instructional faculty use clickers and I am sure there are other technologies used as well. I think if there was a way to ensure that faculty knew more was available, and most importantly, how to effectively use it, then more would be used. Hopefully, when more people in the department learn about instructional technology, more will be willing to utilize what we have available for our classrooms.
ReplyDeleteMy department is similar to Sarah's--the instructors are around some cool technologies like SMART boards but they do not use it in an innovative way. I hope to push some of the better classroom techs in my remaining two years here though, and hopefully pull social work into the 21st century a little more.
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