Laying the Foundation of Teaching in Digital Era: What Happens to Teachers when Technology Changes Rapidly

Abstract

Teachers may not always obtain professional training to improve themselves. Frequently, they have to learn
by themselves, explore ways by their own, and do some trials and errors. They can be successful or fail.
They have to do their own learning journey. This frequently happens when teachers have to work with ICT.
The flourish, popularity and reputation of ICT in education seem very appealing, but at the same time
provide new challenges. The Interactivity, creativity, affection, cognition, speed and transferability features
of ICT may tempt teachers to use it in their teaching. However, teachers may face difficulty when they have
to change by adopting new technology, but they do not know what to do, where to start and who can or will
happily help them, especially when other teachers are busy with their own works. This indicates that the
coming of ICT bring joy, but also difficulty for teachers. This ICT learning difficulties/challenges are
heightened by the nature of ICT which changes and expands rapidly. In this study, I intend to express my
reflection on my own teaching practice and my analysis on one of my colleagues teaching experience in our
ICT self-learning: what issues we encounter, what we obtain and miss in our learning journey, and what
aspects affect our learning. We find that professional help for teachers does not always come when it is
needed. There are many times when teachers should face their teaching field independently (without
professional training). However, we find that embedding ICT into teaching-learning now becomes not only
a trend, but also a need. To do this, teachers should be explorative, adaptive and reflective learners. There
are many challenges that we have to face during the learning process which relate to teacher, students and
environment aspects which require us to do exploratory, experiential and social learning. Genuine learning
may come from self-learning on what we need in our teaching practice and observation on what
environment provides or not provide for our learning.