Developing A Measured Approach to Integrating Technology Into Our Schools

The integration and incorporation of technology into the lives of our students is a subject that can be met with either enthusiasm or apprehension. With the state of educational quality and adequate funding educators must navigate these days rather than just throwing technology at every field of study in the educational development of our students, perhaps we could take a more surgical approach. I state this as an art educator. The beneficiaries of technology integration of the education system is beneficial community wide. The students benefit by being prepared to enter life after or for further education with comprehension and literacy skills that will help them with their future employment. Employability benefits the students and their parents developing self sufficient individuals prepared for the 21 Century employment opportunities. Those students are then going to become productive members of the community in whatever roles they serve, here or elsewhere. This can also benefit the educators and administrators guiding the students through their education. All students will have to know how to deal with technology in almost every aspect of their adult lives whether it be working or furthering their education. Start with basic technology integration with projects that require individual comprehension and group activities that teach technological collaboration. In corporate settings corporations integrate tools such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams which allow colleagues to collaborate and communicate on projects with distance being irrelevant to the tasks at hand.

The intent of the T3 Framework for Innovation is to streamline pedagogical practices. Adding a level of automation and digital content does free up educators to focus on facilitation and scaffolding the instructional paths of our students does give more opportunity for one on one instructional attention. The design of studies to encourage students to be inquisitive, investigative, and enabling the ability to hypothesize and reach solutions to real world problems should be the goal of all educators (What Is the T3 Framework for Innovation?, 2019). Students in some fields of study and indeed their adult lives will need technological and digital literacy and competency when moving into their adult lives this is true. Microsoft posits that “Education in the 21st Century is to creat an approach that is agile, adaptable and in tune with the lives of young people outside of the classroom and their future employability.” It presents good ideas in a biased report intended on creating future employees. Not every student is going to work for Microsoft, in my community many students after high school don’t even leave Sallisaw or seek higher education. It presents some very good plans about reforming education with technology implementation at its heart but doesn’t explain how to pay for it. A one size fits all approach to technological implementation does not seem an efficient and cost effective approach especially when educational funding cuts are so prevalent in 2025.  

I have a technology bias in my field of study. The arts can be enhanced by technology, and there is an entire degree path of art that is technology based. However attempting to integrate technology into every aspect of the visual arts is counterproductive when it comes to developing and honing the skills required to manipulate media outside of the digital realm. The main question I ask when technology is offered into artistic pedagogy is how will this benefit and enhance the instruction or will this be a waste of time and money as it adds no value to the instruction at hand? Technology cannot replace the feel of traditional media nor the developed skill required in how to manipulate it. Technology can be a useful tool in the creation of a painting, I personally would draw up the image I intended on painting and using a projector to transpose the image onto the canvas and sketch it out before applying paint. But the technology used in printmaking is almost as analog as a horse and buggy. Technological integration into printmaking pedagogy loses its value past instructional materials because the students have to manipulate objects and media in order to create the desired image using the techniques required to master the skill. An assessment of value would need to be done in the field of study that the technology is being integrated into. Science fields, technology integration adds immense value to the pedagogy. But not all fields of study benefit from technology integration (Magana, 2017).

The main question of introducing new technologies into the schools is how will we pay for it. The idea of developing educators into technological leaders in the schools is detailed and well thought out but I do not see where the resources needed will come from. Money will be needed to cover the costs of devices and training, not to mention the infrastructure and departmental expansion to maintain any new devices introduced into the pedagogy. Educators are already spending their own money on necessities for instruction, the cost of integration cannot be placed on the educators backs. Administrators who assess budgetary allocation can work on what is fiscally possible, but cutting here to pay for that there just means that somewhere else there will be a shortcoming. Previously we have discussed the existence of sources of funding through grant programs, but those are not guaranteed to be awarded to our educational institution. The surefire way to ensure necessary funding is awarded to our schools would be in proposing taxes at the local level to cover the costs. Just mentioning the term “adding a tax to cover the cost of” X, Y, or Z will be met with resistance from the residents expected to pay the tax, especially if it is going to benefit a school their children doesn’t attend. Then the financial responsibility for personal devices for students to integrate into the new curriculum would lay on individual parents to provide. Families from lower Socio-economic lower income households would not be capable of complying meaning their children would receive a insufficient education in relation to children from higher income families who can afford to provide the necessary materials to engage with the new technologically infused course material. Plans can be made and presentations be offered but getting the general public to attend, engage, ingest and then vote in favor of the proposal will be the most difficult task. 

Sources

What is The T3 Framework for Innovation? (2019, January 19). Magana Education. https://maganaeducation.com/what-is-the-t3-framework-for-innovation/

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Magana, S. (2017). Disruptive Classroom Technologies: A Framework for Innovation in Education. In Library Union Catalog of Bavaria, Berlin and Brandenburg (B3Kat Repository). University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781071872628