CJ Day
Staff Writer
A University of Wyoming faculty member has been selected to serve on a nation-wide committee designed to help schools properly address their technological needs.
Barbara Hickman, an assistant professor in the College of Education, will serve on the steering committee of the EdTech Genome Project. The project was sponsored by the University of Virginia to bring interdisciplinary expertise to educational technology. The selection process was very intensive, Hickman said, and she said she is proud to have been chosen.
“It was a really competitive process,” said Hickman, “and it’s been about a year since I first applied. My expertise dovetails nicely with the group’s goals, and I think coming from a rural area, I had a leg up.”
Hickman’s expertise is in the area of implementation science. She studies how exactly school districts work educational technology into their curriculum, and whether or not those technologies are working as intended. In recent years, there has been a disconnect between the amount of money school districts spend on technology and the benefits of that technology.
“When we see schools implement new technology in the classroom, we have to ask what problem this is trying to solve,” said Hickman. “A good example of this is interactive whiteboards. Schools spent a lot of money on these things, but was it to solve a specific problem in instruction? You could teach without one.”
The EdTech Genome Project’s main focus is to solve this disconnect. Hickman will work with instructors, classroom teachers, tech designers and administrators from across the country to figure out a systematic way for schools to analyse their tech needs and find the solutions that will work for them.
“We’ve been noticing this problem for a while, that schools spend all this money on educational technology and don’t really see the benefits,” Hickman said. “And that’s bad for everyone, even the tech companies don’t want schools buying things they don’t need.”
Hickman said she hopes her presence on the committee will bring a much-needed rural perspective to the discussion. Rural schools often lack the resources and manpower that larger school districts have, making the implementation of new technology more difficult.
“A rural school, they might have a principal, a secretary, and that’s it in the way of administrative staff. Everyone in that school is already doing everything they can, you can’t add anything more,” said Hickman.
Ideally, the project will not come up with a one-size-fits-all solution, but will instead find a solution that can be tailored for specific situations. While it is still unclear on how much this project will end up helping schools implement new technology, Hickman said she is excited to get the chance to help.
