Calgary Journal Online

As technology evolves, educators strive to evolve with it.

Essentially, teachers are responsible for educating society, but who educates them?

How do they keep up with the ever-changing aspects of the world, such as technology?

Before technology became a major part of society, an education degree would be enough to get a teacher through their entire career; few updates would be required. However, since the emergence of technology into the classroom, teachers now need to constantly be educating themselves on new technologies that are available just to keep up with their students.

As technology has become more advanced and accessible to the public, educational institutions have, and are continuing to help teachers stay up to date with those technologies.

"We do a number of things: seminars and workshops," says Rod Corbett, a Faculty Development Consultant for the Academic Development Centre at Mount Royal University. "We also offer one on one individual sessions with instructors."
Corbett describes how the centre offers a "toolkit" to any educators that are interested. The toolkit contains information and software that Corbett has found and believes could be helpful.

"I look for something that is really easy to learn how to use, for both the instructor, and for the students...technologies that would help instructors give the students more of a learning experience," he said.

In the past, teachers were responsible for updating themselves; Sylvia Adams, a newly retired teacher of 32 years says, "I went to lots of workshops and I also attended summer school."

"It was my choice to attend, and I had to pay for them out of my own pocket, too," says Adams of the workshops.

She adds: "In later years they started to have Professional Days, where sometimes you would learn about new technologies and other things to help you in the classroom."

Now that technology plays a bigger part in society, changes to teaching educators have been made and it's something Hill sees in her program.

"Part of the teachers responsibility is to be in the know," says Hill. "We talk about continuous learning a lot in our classes: going to workshops, weekend conferences, and attending seminars; keeping up with the news, knowing what you're students are doing, realizing that, if you want to engage your students, you need to be at the same pace that they are."