One of the most important issues in education today is the role of technology in the classroom. Today's students have more access to digital technology than ever before, and they have grown up with advanced video game systems, cell phones, and the Internet as their constant companions. A recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation showed that children between the ages of 8 and 18 spend an average of almost eight hours a day consuming media. What's more, because many children interact with several media interfaces at once, they are able to consume nearly eleven hours of media during that time.¹ These totals do not include the time they spend texting or using the computer for schoolwork, which means that the actual amount of time that our students spend with media and technology each day is even higher. Given the integral role that technology plays in the life of the modern student, it is both inevitable and important that this technology should make its way into the classroom.

Unfortunately, many teachers are not able to effectively integrate technology into their teaching. Study after study has shown that young teachers who have grown up with technology are often uncomfortable and unsuccessful using technology in their teaching, and older teachers face even more and greater challenges than their younger colleagues.² There are many reasons that teachers are not able to successfully use technology in their classrooms. Some teachers are still not comfortable with digital resources such as the Internet. Others fear that they will lose the respect of their tech-savvy students if they demonstrate their lack of ability in the classroom. Many more are simply unaware of the resources and devices that are available for their use, or do not have access to these resources (often because of budgetary constraints). The largest reason that teachers are not able to use technology in their classrooms, however, is that they are simply not trained to. They do not know how to effectively integrate digital resources and methods with their classroom activities. In one study, a student teacher remarked, "It is one thing to learn and use a program or tool, but it's another thing to teach it to a room full of six year olds."³

Fortunately, it is entirely possible for teachers to learn to use technology in their teaching. By following a few basic principles, any teacher can become adept at helping his or her students to learn more quickly, thoroughly, and independently by integrating digital tools with traditional teaching methods. Here are some tips to get you started:

1. Use technology to make your life easier, not harder. Too many teachers try to add technology in on top of everything else they are doing in their classrooms. Teachers, especially music teachers, simply don't have the time to try to fit one more thing into our already precious time. Many teachers who attempt to use technology in this way become frustrated at the lack of visible results and distressed by the lost rehearsal time, and quickly give up on the technological tools. Those teachers who are most successful using technology integrate it as a refinement of rather than an addition to their current methods. By identifying one of your classroom procedures or a part of your teaching process that is not working as well as you would like it to and attempting to streamline or revamp that process using technology, you make technology part of the solution rather than the problem and greatly increase the chances that you will stick with the tool for long enough to see positive results.

2. Don't use your budget as an excuse. The fact that your district can't afford to buy you an interactive whiteboard is not a reason not to use technology in your classes. There are a huge number of free programs and other free technology resources available via the Internet, and more are being created every day.⁴ In most cases, all you need to use these resources is an Internet-connected classroom computer and an LCD projector. If you lack even these minimal resources, consider writing a grant or asking a local business to donate a computer and projector for your classroom. The benefits to you and your students are well worth the time spent finding programs and tools that you can use for little or no cost.

3. Stick with the tool for long enough to see positive results. You will not be able to effectively evaluate a new technology tool after just a few uses, just as you are not able to effectively evaluate an ensemble's ability to perform a piece after just a few rehearsals. Once you have decided to adopt a particular piece of technology or a resource, give it a chance to become a fully integrated part of your teaching before you pass judgment. You may not be able to recognize the full potential of a resource until you have become comfortable with it by using it over an extended period of time. This process may take a month, a grading period, or even an entire academic year. Of course, you should not continue to use a tool that is creating more problems than solutions, but the more time you can give yourself to become comfortable teaching with a technological tool, the better you will be able to judge its true impact on your classroom.

4. Be comfortable with your tools before you begin teaching with them. One of the best ways to become familiar with a new technology resource or program is to simply open a blank document (spreadsheet, database, Web page, etc.) and press every button in the program. Open every menu, look at every option, click on every icon... in general, act like a kid in a candy store. Try this even on programs you think you know how to use, like Microsoft Word or PowerPoint—you will be amazed at what those programs can do that you were never aware of. Most people are afraid to 'play' with computers this way for fear that they will cause irredeemable damage if they click on the wrong thing. While this may have been true in the early days of personal computers, today's programs and operating systems are designed to be extremely user-friendly and tamper-proof. As long as you remain within the confines of a single program or resource, you should not be able to cause any real damage, especially since you are starting with a blank document or page that doesn't contain any valuable information. If you choose a formatting option or other tool that causes a problem, simply close the window (without saving the changes), open a new blank document, and resume where you left off. We know as teachers that there is no better way to learn than by doing, and this is one of the best ways of 'doing' technology that I know. One caution: most programs will ask you to verify your choice if you attempt to make any changes that are too drastic. If you get a pop-up window asking you something like 'Are you sure you wish to proceed,' make sure that you really do want to proceed before clicking on 'yes.' If you are in any doubt at all, click 'no' and move on to the next button.

Before you use a technological tool in the classroom, in front of your students, you need to be thoroughly familiar with how it works and what could go wrong. Practice! After you have gone through the above process of exploring the program, plan out exactly how you intend to use the tool in your classroom. Start with small applications and short periods of use, and work your way up. Do several dry runs without your students present, preferably in your actual classroom and using the exact computers and devices you will use during class. If possible, use the technology only on your 'teacher' computer for several days of actual classes before displaying it for the students to see. As with any teaching method, the more comfortable you are with a technological tool before you use it with your students, the more successful you will be.

5. Change one thing at a time. Change is hard. It's difficult to change anything about ourselves, but it is particularly challenging to change something that is as personal as our teaching style. In many cases, using the technological tools that are available to us requires actually changing the way that we teach. If you want your students to use an electronic student response system to respond to your questions during your classes, you will need to plan your questioning strategies in a different way than you might in a traditional lecture or rehearsal setting. If you want your students to use a computerized notation program to compose pieces, you may have to demonstrate score-writing skills on the projector in the computer lab rather than on the blackboard in your classroom. These adjustments require significant shifts in the teaching and learning process, both for teachers and for students. Trying to change too many things at once leads to frustration from both parties, and often causes an abandonment of all of the changes that were made.

During my first few years of teaching, my students hated the week following our state professional development conference. Every year, as I attended the various sessions, I would become more and more excited about the new techniques and resources that were being presented. When I returned to school, I would try to implement as many of the ideas that I had seen as possible, in the hope of completely revolutionizing my classroom and creating a learning community that would be admired by everyone who saw it. Unfortunately, what I usually achieved was to frustrate myself and alienate my students by haphazardly employing a variety of strategies that none of us were really prepared for. After about a week, I would conclude that these strategies just didn't work and my classroom would go back to exactly the way it was before the conference, as my students breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Instead of trying to completely re-invent your teaching, try to make your changes step by step. Choose one thing that you would like to work on and allow yourself and your students a significant amount of time to become accustomed to the change. Once you have become completely comfortable with the new tool or technique that you have chosen, you can move on to the next. In this way, you ensure that you are never trying to think about more than one new thing at a time, and your students are not forced to deal with more than one thing that you yourself are still trying to get used to.

6. Don't be afraid if you don't know everything about technology. Nobody does. Even teachers who focus on technology are constantly learning new things, even about programs and tools that they thought they knew well. The current state of technological development means that things are obsolete almost as soon as they are created, and that no one person will ever be able to keep up with all of the new resources that are constantly being created. What is important, though, is not how much you know, but how you use it. If you know enough about a technology resource to use that resource to help your students learn, that's enough. You don't need to be an expert to teach successfully with technology. You just need to know enough to accomplish what you want to accomplish. If a student asks you a question about the technology tools that you are using, and you are not able to answer the question, don't be worried! Tell the student that their question is not related to what they are working on right now, and encourage them to search out the answer on their own after class. Remember—nobody knows everything about technology, so you shouldn't feel bad that you don't.

Technology is an incredible tool, and we as educators are extremely fortunate to have access to it. In addition, technology is an increasingly important and integral part of our students' lives. It is extremely important that we find a way to use this tool in our classrooms, but it is also important that we do so in a way that ensures that it will help, rather than hinder, our instructional efforts. Simply using technology in the classroom is not enough. As experts in pedagogy and instruction, we must find ways of using technology that support and enhance what we are already doing in our classrooms. By limiting the number of technology tools that we use, choosing tools that streamline our classrooms rather than cluttering them, and remembering that what we know is more important than what we do not, we can help to make our classrooms some of the most interactive, connected, and engaging that the world has ever known. I hope that you agree this is a goal worth working for.

Resources

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End Notes

¹ Rideout, V., Foehr, L., & Roberts, D. (2010). Generation M2: Media in the lives of 8- to 18-year olds. Kaiser Family Foundation, retrieved from http://www.kff.org/entmedia/upload/8010.pdf
² See, for example, Coursund (1999); Dessoff (2010); Duran, Fossum, & Luera (2006).
³ Duran, M., Fossum, P., & Luera, G. (2006). Technology and pedagogical renewal: Conceptualizing technology integration into teacher preparation. Computers in the Schools, 23(3), 31-54. doi: 10.1300/J025v23n03_03
⁴ For a collection of free online resources for music educators, visit http://www.symbaloo.com/mix/MusicEdTech, or check out the NCMEA Technology page.