Being a certified technology (the subject) teacher, I replied to both Tom and the person who re-tweeted his statement.  I couldn’t find a screenshot of my exact statement, but I know it was something like “Ed tech isn’t a subject, but technology (former industrial arts) is.  Let’s not confuse them.”

Certainly I could’ve been more eloquent in 140 characters… perhaps sending a follow-up tweet explaining why the different uses of the term were personal to me.  It didn’t hit me until afterwards that some people might live in states/countries/provinces where there isn’t a mandatory “technology” class in their school.  This post was meant to educate people about the different uses of the term so that you understand where I’m coming from.

Confusion: Technology Education

No longer called “shop” or “industrial arts”, New York State (and many others) revised their standards and renamed the program to “Technology” in the mid-1980s. Wood shop, metal shop, plastics, transportation, electronics, drafting, principles of engineering, problem solving, and even some farming courses in the rural districts fell beneath this umbrella.  One year of technology is required in New York State by the time a student finishes the 8th grade.  Most schools offer the course .5 year in 7th and .5 year in 8th grade, most often splitting the year with either Art or Family & Consumer Science (formerly known as home economics).

In a technology education course there aren’t any rules forcing the use of instructional technologies at all.  I could teach (and did, years ago) a complete semester of technology never as much as touching a computer.  Technology (in New York) is based on seven key ideas:

• Engineering Design
• Management of Technology
• Impacts of Technology
• History of Technology
• Tools, Resources, and Processes of Technology
• Computer Technology
• Technological Systems

The term “technology” in this sense is defined as “anything human-made that extends our ability to do something.”  Hammers are technology, as are computers, ipods, doorbells, cow bells, underwear, and dynamite.  Technology is very much a course here in NY, and it has little to do with what we think of as technology in everyday vernacular.

To make things a bit fuzzier, NY doesn’t currently have any standards for Ed Tech.  Unlike most other states who have adopted the ISTE NETS standards, the only time many of us in NY hear the word “technology” is when referring to the course.  My district has adopted the NETS standards, but I’m going to guess fewer than five percent of the staff are even aware of this.  It isn’t state-tested, our teaching certificates don’t depend on it, it isn’t part of the observation process… and the implementation of educational technologies in the classroom doesn’t seem to be a priority for most administrators.   I’d love to discuss the ed tech support system in place but it’s pretty complex.  Suffice it to say many districts don’t have a single instructional technologist on staff and they contract all of their PD out to regional BOCES systems – which is good in some ways, but really limits teachers to the amount of support they have when they’re in the middle of class and something technical “just isn’t working”.

Local source of confusion: International Baccalaureate (IB) Technology

Our district is an IB district.  Not just one building or two, but all of our middle school students are part of the program and any high school student who wishes to pursue their diploma is free to do so regardless of the building they are in. I’m not going to talk much about IB itself here – there are plenty of resources online – but I did want to point out how they refer to technology.  IB Technology includes any subject or lesson based around their 5-step design cycle (Investigate, Plan, Design, Create, Evaluate).  In my district this includes business courses, technology courses, f/c sciences, and middle school health.  Even though the state of NY tenures us in our individual areas, IB puts us all under the same umbrella.  This just adds one more level of confusion to the word – especially since all of these classes are referred to as “technology” when we’re discussing schedules with our students.

Global source of confusion: Instructional / Educational Technology

This, of course, needs no explanation.  Generally referring to modern computer/media-based educational tools, this is what most of the people who read this post will think of when they think of technology.  In some districts and states there are people referred to as “technology integrators” – they aren’t going to show you how to use a bandsaw as part of your unit on 18th century capitalism, but they are going to help with setting up a blog or showing how Twitter can be an amazing source of information.

Another source of confusion: Information Technology (IT)

I can’t tell you how many times a friend or colleague has called me excitedly about a job opening they found.  ”Corning Incorporated is looking for a few IT people!  You should apply!”  Since I loved computer programming and networking, I’d actually be able to pull off one of these jobs if I had to.  However, IT is much more of a technical subject than Ed Tech, IB Tech, or Tech Ed.  <–and yes, I just differentiated between strands of technology by using the term “technical”.

IT is based more in the innerworkings of communication devices and systems.  An IT person can probably program a router, diagnose dropped packets on a VoIP network, or set up a DMZ area to keep hackers out of your important data.  They are the ones who deal with security, connectivity, and usability for the end-users.

Conclusion

I’m an IB technology teacher of technology education who  has a degree in (and an affinity for) educational technology and who has a bit of experience in the information technology world.  Does that win me an iPad?

The Technology Education department at the SUNY at Oswego never let us mistake the fact that we weren’t “education majors”, but instead were “technology majors”. I happened to be the president of the Oswego Technology Education Association (OTEA) during my senior year and one of the ideas that I pushed was to associate ourselves with the Education Club at the college. I couldn’t understand why we were all students in the school of education, yet our organizations barely knew each other existed. I officially joined the Ed Club and went to a few of their meetings myself, but during my tenure was never able to bring the organizations any closer together. While most of my technology classmates were working on their trucks, their houses, and their wood projects the Ed Club was inviting speakers to the school to discuss everything from learning styles to special education terminologies.

There were a lot of things that I never learned about education while in that program. Thankfully New York requires all teachers to obtain a masters degree before becoming permanently certified. Without that necessity there is no doubt I’d be an old-school shop teacher with little to no understanding of the education system (or the students) that surrounded me.

[note: from what I was told the Oswego Technology Education program has changed substantially in the last decade. I am speaking about the program before most of the current staff was hired.]

Although I was offered an assistantship to stay in Oswego for my masters, I elected instead to get something different. With a heavy background in computers and networking I decided that an Instructional Technology degree would fit me perfectly. So I enrolled in the program at SUNY Potsdam.

I was to be known as an “instructional technologist” once admitted into that program. We had thrown around the term of “Educational Technologist”, but the latest AECT definition for the field suggested that it was incorrect – so we made darn sure we used the “correct” terms when talking about our major.

The terms may seem interchangeable from most people’s points of view. Teachers deliver instruction/lead education, so the terms must mean the same thing. BUT – as I’ve been re-thinking my philosophy on education I’m realizing that teachers don’t need to be the “sage on the stage”. They can facilitate. They can lead the students to learning, but they can’t make them think. I like to think that my background and knowledge encompass more than just “instructional” uses of technology; I use technology to instruct but also to learn, guide, suggest, develop, and evaluate (amongst other things). Because of the breadth of the field I now consider myself an educational technologist… although since NY doesn’t have a certification for that I am (and always will be) officially an instructional technologist.

image courtesy of http://www.vecteezy.com

After spending all of my savings on these degrees you’re probably wondering why I’m still teaching technology (shop) to middle school kids. And you know what – sometimes I wonder the same thing.

My work background is that of a technology teacher. I’ve applied for administrative jobs and have been told that my background doesn’t lend itself to education in general – that it’s too specific. I’ve been told that I’ll never get an administrative job in my current district because “administrators are a dime a dozen; technology teachers are a needle in a haystack“. And now… with budgets the way they are… many districts in the upstate NY area are re-naming their technology coordinators as “technology specialists” and hiring civil service people for them. I spent 7 years in school, a boatload of money, and have worked my butt off for the past decade when all I needed to do was take a civil service test??? Really???

Do you have any labels that either hinder you, help you, or impact you in any real way? Do your labels reflect who you are, or do you reflect what your labels want you to be?

Anyhow, having been only to a handful of conferences before – all of them being technology-related – I wasn’t sure how I’d enjoy being somewhere with a bunch of math people.  Would I be a fish out of water?  Or would I put aside the content differences and see these pocket-protector-wielding pi enthusiasts as my equals?   (JOKE!)  It turned out that I felt very comfortable with everyone, but… definitely noticed a huge number of things that differentiated the overall crowd from my typical ed tech crowd:

First of all, it amazed me at how little teaching or pedagogical training these young math professors had.  I guess now is a good time to note that the majority of attendees were recent doctoral graduates who were now either looking for jobs or had been teaching at the college level for only a short time.  So back on topic…  Everyone seemed to know a ton about their subject (mathematics), but when it came to teaching strategies…  not so much.  How many of these college professors have taken a teaching methods course?  Or a educational psychology?  I’m going to guess less than 30% of them – and most of those courses would have taken as general ed requirements in undergrad school.  Teaching = simply Presenting Information?  Perhaps.

Eye opener number 2: Many of the profs that I talked to mentioned their “discipline problems” or “multiple preps” as if they were actually unexpected downsides to their current positions; a common belief seemed to be that better colleges wouldn’t have such problems, and it sure felt as if everyone was looking for someplace “better”.  I mentioned that many middle or high school teachers had upwards of 4-5 different preps in a semester AND had to deal with unruly kids (and parents) daily – I was then reminded by one young lady that “that’s why we got our doctorates, so we wouldn’t need to deal with that stuff”.  Hmmm…  not sure that was the general consensus, but certainly made me chuckle a bit.  Perhaps I need to go back to school!

Surprise number 3: there was a session based on “teaching with technology”, and it was not getting very good reviews.  Not because the presenter was bad, mind you, but because it was seen as “impractical”.  People were asking why they’d want to use technology in math class; a lot were saying that their IT departments were in charge (and the professors themselves had no control over it), some laughed because their departments don’t even allow calculators, and others shunned the session because “I teach math, not computers”.  I asked around if anyone knew about cramster.com, the Math Markup Language (mathML), or even twitter… I got a bunch of confused looks.  In fact the last thing that I was told was “if it isn’t laTeX, we don’t need it”.  A great way to end our conversation for sure

My sister, Bronlyn