2 authors: Gina Biancarosa University of Oregon 49

Teachers most commonly

report that what prepared them to make effective use of technology for instruction was not training, but independent learning.

Not surprisingly, when researchers surveyed schools that had high access to, but low use of, technology, they found that teachers had limited time to find and evaluate software; that computer and software training was inconveniently timed or was too generic and not specific to the needs of teachers; and that most teachers were using the technology without fundamentally changing their instructional strategies to take full advantage of it.⁶² In addition, the most recent federal survey of teachers’ use of technology found that although many use it for record-keeping, relatively few use it for instruction. Generally speaking, teachers in schools serving large numbers of low-income students use technol- ogy less for instruction than do teachers in schools serving fewer such students, except to

integrate best practices.⁶⁴ The extent to which an individual teacher uses technology depends on how long it takes to learn to use it, how convenient it is to interact with it, and how well the technology interacts with other devices. If technology is to be used in the schools, it must offer user-friendly and intuitive interfaces, portability of content between devices, and timely, skilled response to technical challenges both by developers and by schools. Ongoing professional devel- opment, including training and testing of new technology as it becomes available, helps accelerate the learning curve for teachers, so that they can focus on using these tools to improve instruction.

Evidence on the best approaches to and efficacy of professional development in support of e-reading technology use, however, is in short supply. Teachers most commonly report that what prepared them to make effective use of technology for instruction was not training, but independent learning.⁶⁵ Indeed, some have argued for a coaching or mentoring approach to professional develop- ment in using educational technology effec- tively, with development focused on problems of practice.⁶⁶ But, again, evidence about how

effective coaching models are in professional development of that sort is minimal,⁶⁷ although some research does suggest that coaching models in literacy instruction more broadly improve literacy outcomes for students.⁶⁸