First Attempts at Begin a Learning Specialist/Instructional Designer

First Attempts at Begin a Learning Specialist/Instructional Designer

As I explore the world of technology education, I've been given the opportunity to put on an Instructional Designer's pants. For my current situation it was not very hard to find something to improve at my school, we are behind in the technology game; we have very little technology to work with. Though the proposal I am proposing, to improve technological instruction is not very "out of the box"it is necessary. It is a challenge to introduce, use, utilize, practice all the wonderful options our students and teachers have with technology with out having devices to work with. So I am trying to get more devices in our school, while trying to understand why we are so behind.

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The process has been eye opening. Once I sat down with my administrator, the reason for our lack of tech was clear. The last administrator simply thought it was not a priority. The biggest challenge is and will be funding. The budget is tight and 97% of that is teacher salaries, not giving us much to work with in the end, after all the other spending a school needs to do to function. Though there is a plan in place to slowly increase tech, it is slow, 1-2 Chromebook charts a school year.

I have become even more determined to find funding than before. Before I began this, my thought was that I cannot do much about this money situation. But I have researched and found that if I really want to there is always a way. Mostly looking at outside funding from grants that could aid the increase of tech in our school. It's exciting to find a solution, if it actually works. It is a lot of work in the end to constantly look for money out there and hope that we have the right needs to receive it amongst all of the other worthy schools around the nation.

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Even with the excitement of finding a solution and the fear of not actually getting the money, the cause it worth it. From all the research I have been doing, there are theories that support having more tech. Theories, like constructivism, that talk about helping create a learning environment for our students the aid their critical thinking skills, help them use resources and create their own learning environment through collaboration. Sure, this can be down without tech, but tech is the future and something our students will need to navigate. Tech is here to stay, we need to give out students the tools to make sense of it so they do not stay in the dark. It exciting to think that as a technology specialist I could map out this process for schools and make sure that they are moving towards utilizing and teaching student's use of technology.