TechCast Ep. 3 | Technology Fear and Resistance

Today's episode of Digital ATDN's TechCast focuses on overcoming technological fear and resistance. Three guests share their own experiences and strategies for overcoming these fears. They discuss their backgrounds in education and how limited exposure to technology in the past contributed to their fears. They also talk about the importance of learning and adapting to new technology, using resources like YouTube videos and webinars. The guests emphasize the need to practice and make mistakes in order to improve. They also touch on the challenges of teaching technology to students while trying to improve their own skills. The episode concludes with a discussion on the differences in tech skills needed for working with job center clients versus adult education students. Hello, and welcome to Episode 3 of Digital ATDN's TechCast. Today, we will be talking about overcoming technological fear and resistance. My name is Brianna Patriarca, and I'm a technology specialist for Digital ATDN and EastCon. Today, I'm joined with three guests who are going to talk about their own technological fears and resistance, as well as strategies they've used to overcome them. Firstly, thank you for joining me today. And if you want to take a moment to introduce yourself. Sure. My name is Tarek Jones. I have been an adult education educator for almost 10 years. I did the first eight years as a substitute GED teacher, and now I am currently have my own class. Tarek, can you tell us a little bit about your other role? I am an employment specialist with the American Job Center. So I work with clients helping them to find employment and also to teach them roughly how to job search. Hi, I'm Wendy Hartling. I currently work at EastCon. I teach English as a second language and family literacy, and I have been teaching since 1988. My name is Donna Seizenski. I work here for EastCon, and I've been here for about six months. I teach adult basic education, especially English as a second language. Wendy and Donna, I know that you both have similar backgrounds, and prior to coming to EastCon, you both worked in the prison systems teaching adult ed. Can you talk a little bit more about that and how that experience may have contributed to your technological fears and resistance? When I started teaching, technology was a mimeograph machine where you would make a carbon paper and put it around a barrel, and it basically, like a printing press almost, made copies onto paper. In school, in college, my technology instruction in my class, my tech class, was basically using an overhead projector. So that was what I knew about technology back then. When I started teaching adult ed here in Connecticut in 2006, I started teaching in the Department of Correction. In the Department of Correction, there's no internet. I started learning about it and started recording things to use, but that was it. That was my introduction and my experience in technology. Coming here and starting to work at EastCon was a little bit different. At first, my question was, what's wrong with paper and pencil? Why can't I have them look through magazines easy, cut and paste? What's the difference? Why do I need to put somebody on a computer, and instead of having them do it and touch it and feel it and have that kinesthetic part of it, why do I need to put it onto a computer screen? I remember talking to my boss and saying, that's gratuitous use of the computer. We really don't need it. So I think it's just a function of my age and experience. I was an educator for 25 years for the Department of Correction. I worked as an English as a second language teacher, a special education teacher, and adult basic education. Because the inmates slash students were not allowed any interaction with a computer that was hooked up to internet, we used older computers for word processing. Anything that was on a CD, we could use a program like that. Tape recorders, I had a projection board, but their use was limited, so therefore my use was limited, too. I didn't need to learn how to do anything to progress past that for 25 years. We had access to internet maybe once a day when we would leave our classroom and go to the office to use email, put in our payroll, and then it was locked back up again, and that was it until the next day when we would do that all over again. Therefore, I have a lot of fears, and I am way behind the eight ball with technology. So it has been a very stressful but very educational six months here at East Con when I had to jump into this decade with technology. And, Derek, what about you? What are some of the technological fears that you've experienced? One of the fears that I had is not knowing enough for it to be effective for the students that I'm working with to use. That was a very, very big fear for me. Are they going to be able to use it? Am I using Google Classroom in an effective way? I don't have any training on it, so am I using it to the best of the platform's ability? That was the biggest fear that I had. Thank you so much for sharing those. So, Donna, you mentioned having to catch up very quickly to the modern world and to technology and moving from your experience working in the Department of Corrections to moving to adult ed at East Con. Can you share some of the strategies that you used to overcome your technological fear and resistance? From day one, they had me learn a lot of different skills. I had to learn LACES, the attendance system, their e-mail system, Google Docs and Google Drive. I did not know Burlington English, the ventures with their QR codes. I had to teach a customer service class and an entrepreneurship class using Google Classroom. I had to take a class in entrepreneurship to teach the class using Google Classroom. I had to make PowerPoint presentations, use the new digital whiteboard, the view board, and North Star digital literacy all in six months. And I used, as my resources, people first. But you can't bother people all day long with questions, and I had many of them. My biggest resource was watching YouTube videos. And then I branched out to some webinars. Also, I went to in-services. I believe the best resource, though, is just you have to practice and use it and use it and make mistakes and then use it again. And I'm trying to think of myself as not someone who doesn't know technology, but as someone who knows one more thing about technology today that I didn't know yesterday. Otherwise, it just feels really overwhelming. Donna, that is such a great outlook to have when approaching really learning anything. You also touched on the idea of failing forward, which is that it's okay to make mistakes, and it is a crucial part in our learning process. Wendy, are you comfortable failing forward in your classroom? And if so, how do you use that as a tool for learning? Well, I'm comfortable with it. But the students aren't necessarily comfortable with it, many of them. It's difficult. They feel that failure is failure instead of a step in the learning process. And it's just about motivating them and saying, yeah, I made these mistakes, too. It's a learning curve. You have to just keep trying. The more you do it, the more you'll get used to it, just like using English. Like I said, I'm a teacher. Making mistakes is great for my students. I hope they make mistakes so that they can learn from it and others can learn from it. But they are very hesitant to try and very upset when they fail. Just to reinforce what you said as well as what Donna said earlier, I think it's really important that we consistently model this idea of failing forward and that we are approaching failing forward in a positive way because that's how they're going to learn, and it's going to reinforce to them that it's okay to make those mistakes. So, Derek, can you talk a little bit more about some of the differences between your two roles? So, you know, the tech skills that are needed in working with your customers in the job center versus your students in the adult ed classroom? One of the differences between working with those clients with one-on-one versus with students is their level of digital literacy. Working with the job center, usually those that I work with are very digitally literate and can navigate certain technologies, whereas the majority of the students that I work with in them pursuing their diploma, a lot of them may not have access to specific technologies. So because of that, they may not be exposed. And so that's been one of the challenges that I've had to deal with in assisting these ones to be able to work towards their diploma. Derek, so I know working with you in the past that you are very tech savvy. One of the challenges that I know a lot of teachers face is when the content area is very intuitive for them and they just understand it instinctively, it can be a challenge to teach lower-level students those concepts. Being tech savvy, is this something that you've experienced? I've certainly had to deal with that. I'm dealing with that currently now. And so because of time constraints, the best strategy that I have been able to use is modeling when it comes to using specific technology within the classroom. I find that that strategy is most effective because students are able to copy what I'm doing. At the same time, they're able to practice. And so using the various senses, they're able to retain some of that digital literacy. Donna and Wendy, what are some of the challenges that you face in teaching technology to students while also trying to learn and improve your own technology skills? I think I looked at what was the most important thing that I need to do today or this week, especially in the beginning when I was a little afraid of all of it. And then I had a basic structure for my classroom and saw what the students needed. And then I've tried to introduce it slowly along. As I felt comfortable teaching what I had to teach, I branched out and looked at the other programs like Burlington first. And that helped doing some small groups. They can work on that independently. So once I figured it out, they figured out just as fast, if not faster than I did. And then branch out to North Star because that's a great tool. And then as problems came up, I would Google them. So I can listen to it and watch them do it on their screen. That's been really very helpful for me. Sometimes if it's reading, get lost in the details. And then it doesn't really make much sense in the big picture. Honestly, what do I do with students? And where do I send them? And OK, here's PowerPoint. How do I teach them PowerPoint and overcome their concerns about it? Because not everybody has been exposed to computers. Really presented a puzzle for me. I didn't know really what was available as a resource other than things that I could make copies of or things that I could project onto a screen. I just will Google things and say, how do I do this? Or what can I do that? And especially now with AI, what's the best way to teach the to be verbs to students? And it comes up with things that you can use and the sites that you can go to. And so it's kind of a matter for me of using technology to find technology. What technology are you interested in learning more about? Derek, why don't we start with you? Google Classroom, definitely. When I accepted the assignment to have my own class again, one of the technologies that I saw was being used is Google Classroom. And so because I was previously in a substitute role, I wasn't required to have or to even know Google Classroom. But now I have to know it. So I'd like to get a little bit more training. It doesn't appear to be organized in a way where students don't get lost, I guess, is the best way. But in saying that, that might be just my lack of familiarity with being able to really use Google Classroom in a way where my students can really benefit from. Through Google Classroom, I've also created a Google site with some of our teachers' help to see if that would be a better format to use, at least as far as the organization goes for content, kind of playing with both of them to kind of see which one is going to be better effective. Wendy, what about you? What technology are you hoping to learn more about? That's a really good question. And at this point, I say I don't really know how to answer. But in reality, right now, I'm struggling with what I'm doing. So at this point, I'm having difficulty looking forward to what I can learn next because I'm having trouble learning what I'm learning now and to even have a clue about what's coming next. I just I can't worry about that yet. When it comes, it comes. So what technology are you currently focusing on learning? Right now, I'm using HyperDocs. I'm really excited about that. I'm using a lot of Edpuzzle. I use the Google Suite, Zoom, of course, PowerPoint and Microsoft products, AI, as many things as I can find. I'm kind of throwing in there and seeing where it sticks. Donna, what technology are you hoping to learn more about? My next step would be to use AI. I would like to first use it to simplify the reading material for the big courses like customer service and entrepreneurship. If I could use AI to, you know, lessen that reading level a little bit and help the ESL students get through that, that's a priority for me. Digital ATDN did a professional development series called Knowledge Bytes, which focused on AI tools for educators to help with exactly what you mentioned. These AI tools can be used for differentiating instruction, content, and several productivity tools, and the recordings for that series are available on Digital ATDN's website. What advice do you have for educators who are experiencing technological fears and resistance? The one piece of advice I would give is, I guess, is more of a saying, and the saying goes, just do it. I love your intro for that. Just do it. Because with something that's new, it's obvious that there's going to be a little bit of hesitation and some kind of anxiety associated with learning something new, feeling of, well, if I try this and I fail, and sometimes as educators we forget that failing is part of the learning process as well. And also thinking about why we are learning this technology. Ninety-five percent, it's not for us, it is to help our students to work towards their goal. And having a positive mindset when it comes to learning new technology is going to be very important. Because, again, we're modeling for our students. So if we are resistant towards learning new technology, then how can our students be comfortable with learning new technology? They'll see that we're not comfortable with it or want to use it. That'll show. And so why would they want to, right? You know, I think that the advice that I would give is just jump in and start doing it. You can think about it and think about it and get more anxious and more anxious about it, which is what I did at the beginning. But once you get in there, you realize it's kind of friendly. A lot of it now certainly is pretty user-friendly. You know, I use Screencastify and I was able to make videos and edit them. Okay. It's not something I expected to be able to ever do. So just jump in, find what you can, talk to somebody, get some ideas about the resources online that are more user-friendly, and just go for it. I do want to say one thing that I think is really important when it comes to technology. It's not just teaching students about the technology, but it's teaching them the dangers that are inherent in technology. I know people who have been scammed by the voice replication that AI does out of a lot of money. So one of the things that I do with my students is actually a unit, and I have a speaker come in and talk about the things that you need to watch out for, the scams, how different things work, how to be safe, and how for their children to be safe. And I think that's a really big, important part of being a teacher of technology. That is an excellent point, Wendy. And I think that that is a great place to start if you're experiencing some technological fear and resistance. Having a basic understanding on what to look out for, how to safely navigate online, and how to protect your information and your online account is really important. You don't have to be a cybersecurity expert, and understanding those basics and routinely reinforcing that and those skills with your students is really important for protecting yourself and your students as they navigate that digital environment. There are resources available on teaching cybersecurity and digital citizenship skills available on Digital ATDM's website. Donna, what advice would you give to teachers that are experiencing technological fears and resistance? I would tell a teacher who has a little fear and resistance to take it very slow, if you can. Have a goal for yourself for the month, the semester, small things that you want to implement in your classroom and to change slowly. So once you feel confident and comfortable with your students at the beginning of the year, think about some new program to introduce or some new element of technology to try with maybe a small group first, and then introduce it to the rest of the class if it seems to be working. And just don't be afraid of it. Think of it as a challenge. Thank you Donna, Derek, and Wendy for joining me today and sharing your advice and experiences. I want to thank our listeners for joining us as we discussed overcoming technological fears and resistance. You can find more resources on integrating technology skills into your classroom and other open education resources by going to www.digital.atdnct.org. See you at our next episode!