2 authors: Gina Biancarosa University of Oregon 49

Practical Challenges to E-reading Technology Use

Maximizing the potential benefits of e-reading technology also poses practical challenges. To realize fully the technology’s promise, schools will need to buttress infrastructural supports, including professional development for teachers, systems for upgrading and maintaining technology, and efficient and secure data systems.

Professional Development

Technology has made its way so quickly into so many facets of modern life because of its utility. Being able to pay bills, order clothing, send a message to a friend, and read a newspaper article within less than an hour and without leaving home is appealing to many people. The technological advances that have made their way into education have done so for the same reason. The overhead projector enabled teachers to share informa- tion more efficiently with their classes while interacting with students more directly. The scientific calculator allowed students to learn more advanced math and science concepts by using more efficient methods of calculation. Teachers and parents now routinely commu- nicate by e-mail. For e-reading technology to realize its promise fully, it must be genuinely useful to both the teacher and the student.

All too often, integrating technology into education has meant simply adding it to the existing curriculum and pedagogy, thereby limiting its usefulness for teaching and learning. Rarely is technology an organic part of a lesson plan, especially as more and more requirements to administer in-class accountability tests absorb already-limited class time. According to Project Tomorrow 2010, the educators who see technology

as being important to a district’s core pur- pose are those who are farthest from daily

engagement with students. Some 60 percent of district administrators and 55 percent of school principals endorsed the idea of tech- nology’s importance, but only 38 percent of teachers and future teachers did so.⁶⁰ In fact, educators often view technology skills not so much as a means for advancing learning and supporting instruction, but as just one more item on the list of things that students must learn, that teachers must make time to teach, and that administrators must squeeze into an already overly restrictive budget.⁶¹
teach or provide practice in basic skills.⁶³ Most important, two-thirds of teachers reported little to no technology-related professional development in the preceding year.

For teachers to see e-reading technology as useful, they need help adjusting to and capitalizing on the changing technological landscape. They need not only to see the potential benefits for themselves and their students, but also to be able to build the knowledge and skills to realize these benefits

and to have opportunities to collaborate and
innovate with colleagues to develop and