This is a Purot.net wiki
Pages

5.1 Field study

To get started with our task, we felt the need to find out more about primary school teachers’ view on technological tools. We were also interested in learning more about the skill level of most teachers and how they perceived the skill level of their pupils. To find out more about these topics, we interviewed three primary school teachers from the north of Norway.

Regarding the use of technological tools in primary school, the teachers’ main concern was the scarce resources available at their school. They have computer rooms available, where the teacher has to schedule time slots for his or her class. These time slots are not in abundance, since relatively few computers are shared by the entire school. Because of this, teachers seldom dear to make too many lectures dependant on computer use. The teachers we interviewed had somewhat different opinions regarding the additional learning effect of using technological tools. While two of our interviewees thought the effect was substantial, especially when it comes to motivating learning, the last teacher believed the effect was modest, and seldom worth the extra effort.

When we asked the teachers about how they perceived the technical skill level of their colleagues the answers were quite similar. They all believed that there was a large spread between the skill levels of different teachers. This was confirmed when we asked about their own technical abilities. While one of the teachers felt that she had a good take on computer use, both for teaching and in private, another felt intimidated by using more technical tools than necessary. Still, they all agreed that most of the tools they felt comfortable using were too time consuming to use often.

The teachers were very enthusiastic about the skill level of their pupils, and said that they rarely had experienced that the children was not able to master tools that were used. Commonly, the children had either used the tool previously, or they would catch on to it very quickly.

Discuss & brainstorm