Invisible Integration

My ultimate goal as a Director of Technology is to provide the support needed to help our teachers achieve what I like to call Invisible Integration. You might ask, "what do you mean by Invisible Integration?" Invisible Integration to me is when technology is not a thing by itself. Technology is not something our students do once or twice a week in a lab down the hall. Technology is not something teachers try to dream up new lessons for in order to integrate it. Technology is not something we use on special occasions for culminating projects. Technology is not assigning a Keynote presentation or iMovie project.

Invisible Integration is when technology becomes part of what we do everyday. Technology is the right tool to create the expected outcome for a lesson. Technology is what the kids choose to use because it is the tool that makes sense to them to complete the given task. Invisible Integration is when students are given a task and they may or may not choose a given technology to accomplish that task.

Is Invisible Integration achievable? Maybe not. Maybe Invisible Integration is one of those things we continue to strive to achieve, but it is always just out of reach. That's ok. Technology changes rapidly and there will always be some sort of learning curve for new tools. Students will always have to be taught to use those new tools at some point. Whether they teach themselves, each other, or are taught by the teacher is most likely dependent on the technology.

It makes more sense to me to do the teaching of those new tools in context and as invisibly as possible. Use the given tool because it makes sense to use it to achieve the desired outcome. Don't make using the technology the desired outcome, and then wrap content around it. Make the technology work for you; don't let the technology make work for you. Then, technology will begin to become invisible and utilized because it should be and not because we want it to be.