Two More SITE Sessions: Teacher Trust in Technology and Podcasting in Spanish Class

Why Do Some Teachers Trust Technology and Some Don’t?
Andrea Francis, Michigan State University

  • Reasons for Exclusion
    • Lack of social and institutional support
    • Lack of funding
    • Lack of adwquate training for the task
  • Psychological Factors
    • Fear of using digital technologies
    • Inability to overcome “functional fixedness”
  • Why do some people trust technology and others don’t?
    • Trust
      • Measuring trust: benevolence, reliable, competent, honest, openness; vulnerability and confidence of the truster
      • We have measures of trust for people, but what about artifacts? Is my cell phone benevolent? Is my computer honest?
      • The protean nature of digital technology
      • Trust and the Intentional Stance (Demmet, 1987)
        • Physical stance — the apple falls because of gravity
        • Design stance — a programmer creates something for a reason
        • Intentional stance — where a human takes on the feeling that the artifacts has intentions
      • Examples
        • Turkle (1984) — story of Robert and merlin
        • Nass and Moon (2000) — computers as social actors hypothesis; following a social script
        • Mishra (2006) — praise and blame (if you praise them for a difficult task, then they have more self-confidence). Students preferred praise irrespective of the difficulty of the task
    • Trust in computers involves one party’s willingness to be vulnerable to another party based on the confidence that a digital technology is reliable and predictable.
  • Survey to capture the construct of “trust” in digital technology
    • Trust in technology in general, computers in particular, and other technologies (cell phone, GPS, etc.)
    • Reliability of particularly technologies and competence in using technologies
    • Create composite scores for trust in technology, computers, devices — look at this in relation to other variables
    • Look at predictive validity to see how teachers who use technology in classrooms may use it better when they become teachers

I Podcast, You Podcast, Together We Podcast: Podcasting as a Learning Tool in Second Language Classrooms
Kim Tohill, Blue Mountain High School, Pennsylvania, PA

  • Over half of the people had heard of podcasting, forty percent had MP3 players, only 10% actually downloaded a podcast before
  • Many teachers didn’t think that podcasting applied to their subject area, didn’t have enough time, were unfamiliar with the technology, or that the school didn’t have the materiasl
  • Language immersion for students since they are only in the Spanish classroom for a few minutes each day
    • Why not use podcasting to get them to get immersed in the language from other news and entertainment sources in the target language?
    • Podcasting as mobile language immersion; also looking at native speakers from other countries who have posted videos to YouTube
    • Students post their podcsts online so they can listen to one another and do it, rather than in front of the class or in front of the teacher
      • Many didn’t take the time to listen to themselves; some did attempt to do it again and again until they got it right
      • Most of them preferred this type of communication rather than speaking to their classmates in a language that is not thier own
      • Creates an “audio portfolio” that captures their voice over time; teacher can return to it as many times as needed
      • Field recordings and virtual tours; situational dialogues amongst more experienced speakers
      • Podcasting Links, including Gabcast and Podomatic