Why does everyone forget about training the teachers?

The chapter on Technology's potential in the classroom contained some great examples of technology being put to successful use in the classroom. But beyond the reading, I feel that the biggest question was still left unanswered. They briefly touched on the idea that teachers must be partners in innovation, and they need time to learn, relect, and adapt, as well as support from administrations. But there are two major pieces missing. In order for teachers to achieve any of those goals, they must be trained. On top of that, what if the teacher is reluctant? I found a fantastic resource on the web about dealing with reluctance.

http://www.techlearning.com/story/showArticle.php?articleID=18401198

The article talks about some great approaches to dealing with reluctance pointing out that in many cases, reluctance is a result of seeing learning results from the existing methods and pedagogy therefore seeing no reason to integrate technology. So it is incredibly crucial to get the enthusiastic teachers on board using technology. When something amazing is accomplished, those teachers will start talking about it thus giving many previously reluctant teachers a working model to base their own models off of.

But even in addition to those approaches, teaching training needs to be comprehensive, complete, and it must be ongoing. To me it is obvious that there has to be mass training inservices before and after the school year ends. But during the year as well, there should be trainings and maintenance activities that teachers and administration should be required to participate in. These can easily be held in half of an inservice day. One approach I will definitely use is to hold one or two mass training inservices right after the end of the school year. I know this will upset many teachers; but, instead of teaching them brand new software two days before the school year begins, I can teach them right after the school year ends giving them the entire summer to play around with the new software and of course contact me with any questions or support concerns at any point. This is a much less stressful way of implementing a new technology as well as giving teachers much more time to begin designing their learning environments to fully integrate technology.

In addition, there absolutely has to be support available at all times - especially when a new technology initiative is put in place. The author in the reading made a great point that I have to quote: "They [teachers] need collegial advisers rather than supervisors; advising is a partnership." I could not have said that better myself. If teachers are not supported, they will not be able to successfully integrate technology in the classroom. If they are not motivated, the same is true. One of the easiest ways for teachers to become motivated or stay motivated is to have the administration work WITH them instead of stop by the classroom and OBSERVE and EVALUATE them. Now, I am not saying evaluation is not important, but I am saying that administrators should be much more visibly working with teachers to achieve technology integration and providing any help they can along the way.

I apologize for straying somewhat off the topic of the reading; however, as wonderful as the Jasper Woodbury program, Project GLOBE program, and others of the like are, none of them accomplish anything better than traditional methods if the teachers have no idea what they are doing.