Fear of the unknown can be one of the biggest detriments to technology in education. Many veteran teachers are apprehensive when it comes to utilizing new technology. Recently I presented during one of our professional learning days about the Senteo Smart Response software. Most of the teachers in the session were veteran teachers who are used to giving typical paper and pencil assessments with the most technology used in those assessments being a Scantron assessment. I had to convince these teachers that using the Senteo is simple and much more efficient than those typical paper pencil tests, as well as a way to help our environment. None of the teachers were interested in doing it this way, they all complained that it would be much more work for them to convert their old assessments to Senteo assessments, for every good reason I had for them to use the Senteo they have five reasons why it would be too hard. They had entered the room with preconceived notions and were prepared to argue their stance for their old way of doing things. If I had known about the ARCS model, this professional development session could have gone a lot better. I would have first gained their attention by randomly selecting one of their assessments to quickly input into the Senteo assessment. I would have also gotten the members of the session actively engaged by asking them to bring their laptops so that they could practice using the software (Driscoll, 2005). I would also get the teachers to see how useful this will be for them in the future, I would create a folder on our common shared drive for teachers to input their Senteo assessments so that they can be modified in the future and used by other teachers as well. I would build confidence by modeling the simplicity of using Senteo and creating a step by step tutorial for teachers to access after the session was over so that they could be sure that they understand how to use the software. To create a sense of satisfaction I will have each teacher create a Senteo assessment that they can immediately use in their classroom.
If I only knew back in January what I know now, I am certain that this professional development session would have gone a lot better, and the teachers would have left with a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction and hopefully most will have gone back to their classrooms and begun using Senteo.
Driscoll, M. P. (2005). Psychology of learning for instruction (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc
