Can't or won't -personal and practical obstacles in implementing eLearning

The presentation with the above title, accessed through http://elearning.spruz.com/ resonated a strong chord for me.

As a person of more senior years than the generation for whom technology is a natural part of life, accepting, learning and continually adapting and adopting has been challenging, exciting, overwhelming and informative all at once. Although I was ready to embrace early computer technology and jumped in to purchase one in the early 1980's, it has not necessarily been an easy road. After all I am a 'creative person' and don't have a mathematical technology brain! I loved the ease of performing word processing tasks, but games were never of interest and the thought of understanding all the terminology and how things worked and what to do when things went wrong were just altogether too daunting.

As a teacher, schools were slow to introduce technology, primarily because there was not a lot of money in public schools to do so and not many teachers had the training or the knowledge or the expertise to teach each other let alone the students. I am not sure whether it was the FEAR factor to which Kate alludes in her section on 'Barriers to eLearning'. In the early days I am not sure whether teachers really thought they would be replaced by these new fangled devices and we certainly never imagined their inclusion within the school life to the extent we now see it. Fear of not knowing what to do in front of children we are supposed to be teaching does ring bells. I was challenged through this presentation to consider whether my own feelings of being overwhelmed at times are in fact the " fear of change, a lack of willingness to take risks, fear of deviating from entrenched instructional practices and lack of assurance about the benefits of technology.....(Hunt, Eagle & Kitchen 2004; Weston 2005)".

I am so at one with Lachlan's comment "the sheer volume of associated technical knowledge and skills required to be 'across' all these new teaching and learning mediums, let alone being able to adapt effectively integrate said tools into existing curriculum, play a huge part in the stigma attached to e-learning by some teachers." I think that's where much of the fear comes from. It's something of an overwhelming sense of lack of being in control. That lack of control can include feeling that you don't really UNDERSTAND how things work and that learning and changing involve stretching the boundaries of one's current thinking patterns and perceived lack of comfort or capability, which will be seen by others, especially learners.

I believe that the biggest impediment to educators comfort and uptake of technology has much to do with the provision, or otherwise, of adequate and ongoing training. ICT is here to stay and if the past is anything to go by, the changes we will experience over our lifetimes will be so significant that not attempting to keep up in some way could indeed get us to a point of "I REALLY can't because I just am not thinking, learning, teaching in a way that is relevant anymore". This must be a much more daunting prospect, and something to be really fearful of, than the whole system of education from administrators down to be certain that at every level, there is certainty that everyone even part way willing to give it a go get a fair chance to do so.

Discussion and analysing of why we 'can't' or 'won't' can be helpful in that we see we are not the only ones feeling the same. From my own experience even small senses of achievement gained from actually doing are enough to prompt one into taking the next step. This is one area of education where looking at too big a picture is not helpful, as the picture has too many blurred areas and is altogether too large in it's entirety to pretend to grasp in one viewing.