Abstract:

Laura Reasoner Jones, who helped create the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards' Digital Edge program, shares her excitement about receiving a laptop for her in-home special education job. She provides informal training for her coworkers and emphasizes that technology requires curricular, not just how-to, training to be integrated effectively.

Jones, L.R. (2004). A computer nerd--and loving it. Teacher Leaders Network diaries. Retrieved from the Teacher Leaders Network 11 Apr 2008. Link: http://www.teacherleaders.org/old_site/diaries04_05/LJ13_04_05.html 

Full Text:

I'm getting a laptop! Did I tell you? I'm getting a wireless laptop from the school system and I am so excited I can hardly stand it! I feel like Lilly and her Purple Plastic Purse, because as you know, my laptop will "play a jaunty tune when it is opened."

When I get my laptop, there will be no more comments about how we are practically the last group in the county to get ours, or that we are itinerant teachers, so wouldn't it make sense for us to have them? There will be no comments on the difficulty of sharing two desktop computers among 13 people when we all are in the office on the same two half days trying to write IEPs and Local Screening reports. No, no comments at all, because I am getting a laptop!!!

When I get my laptop, I am going to load it with all of my approved children's software that I have been collecting and show parents some great programs to buy and how to use them. I am going to download all the forms that I have put on our Blackboard site for teacher use and write my IEPs and Local Screening reports on the computer. I am going to set up a screensaver with my favorite dead people pictures. I am going to show my students' families their digital portfolios every two months and get their feedback. I am going to take in my old scanner and teach my co-workers how to use it. I am going to be so happy!

I am such a nerd. But I love my computers. I have two Apple PowerBooks—a refurbished one from the NB grant project that has my Final Cut Pro software for my video editing, and a new one I bought this summer after years of saving. That new PowerBook is going to burn my DVD Christmas presents for my family. My husband has a laptop, we have a desktop, and when Julie is home, she has her desktop from college. And I can't forget the 10 dead computers downstairs waiting for my spring session of my girls' math/science club when we take them apart. My family is kind of wired, or rather wireless, with our DSL router that I set up myself.

From pitiful to fearless
I love being a nerd. I take physics tests on the Internet for fun. I didn't come by this easily, though; I am definitely a self-taught nerd. I got this way because I was lucky enough to be chosen by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards to create the Digital Edge Learning Interchange. Believe me, they didn't hire me for my technology skills; they hired me for my interest. In fact, when the Apple people handed us our new iBooks to use in our projects, I spent the first five minutes turning it over and over in my hands trying to figure out how to open the cute little thing; everyone else in the room had theirs open and had signed onto the Internet. It was pitiful.

But I was given an incredible gift with that job: the gift of time. I had two years in a cubicle with three computers and I had all the time in the world to learn, experiment, and play with technology. That's the only difference between me and the other teachers in my program. I had access and time, and I now have no fear.

We Home Resource teachers are a particularly non-tech-savvy group. I came back after two years away to a great group of women who are very interested in learning about technology but just do not have either the experience with computers that they really should have or the time to learn. I try to be very patient because I remember very clearly what it was like not to know how to do things, and I also remember being afraid that I would break things — two feelings very typical of female teachers.

In fact, as a group, we mirror the teachers surveyed in the AAUW report Tech-Savvy Girls. We are interested and intrigued, but also a little afraid and intimidated. As a group, we also need to be shown the usefulness of the computer as tool to make our jobs easier before we will even attempt anything. This is a quote from that report, and I think it holds true for our teachers, too.

    Some feel belittled in their roles as teachers by the mysterious and sometimes erratic presence of computer technology: [One woman said] "I have tried to avoid using technology because (1) The administration sets it up and expects teachers to know how to use it without ongoing training‹both in the technological AND curricular aspects, and (2) It is embarrassing to look incompetent.

According to the Education Week Technology Counts report, Virginia is one of 13 states requiring technology course work for certification. When I read that, I had to seriously think about what course work I had to take; then I remembered the infamous technology standards we all had to pass to be recertified. To put it politely, demonstrating competencies and truly integrating technology into instruction are not exactly the same thing. For our staff, it was even worse, as things like state technology standards never fit us anyway and we end up jumping through hoops that we will never be able to relate to our daily jobs anyway.

So, I am going to give monthly informal inservices for my co-workers to become more comfortable with their new laptops and try and make this wonderful new technology tool relevant to our jobs. We'll do sessions on email, scanning, digital camera use, cool software, and the like. I am going to put all of the instructions on registering for professional development classes in one accessible place, instead of the four different Internet sites we have to go to now. I am going to make it easier, and by default, more fun.

People seem very interested. They have really liked the Blackboard site I developed because it gives them access to county forms and multiple teacher-made resources wherever they are, even in students' homes. As a program, we are slowly making it into the 21st century.

When I get my laptop, like Lilly, I will run and skip and hop and fly all the way home. Did I tell you I'm getting one?

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