My research proposal

Being an Old Fashioned-Girl in a Digital World
Tanisha Blackmon
The title of my project is “Being an old-fashioned girl in a computer world: The challenges female teachers face with computers today.” I chose this topic because I have noticed that this is a not only common problem, but also a constant one. When you think of the word “teacher”, most people immediately refer to a female figure with an apple and a piece of chalk in her hand. This is because if you look at the percentage of teachers, you would see that most are women. Therefore, I chose to focus on the majority. Today, many teachers struggle to learn how to use computers, comfortably. While many teaches are from the “old days”, computers are the newest and most ever changing products on the market. Yet, teachers are responsible for learning how to use computers and also teaching these techniques to their students. This is only one part of the problem.
Another issue that teachers face is the level of intelligence their new students are coming into their classrooms with. Today, most students have access to computers either at home or in their school library. The students are more open and comfortable with learning about computers and technology as opposed to the teachers. So let’s say that I am a teacher who does not have experience with computers but my entire class has some computer knowledge and the school has just provided me with new computers and computer programs that they feel are necessary for my curriculum. How will I teach the students something that I don’t know? Furthermore, if my students realize that I don’t know what to do, how will the students respect my authority and role as a “teacher”? These are just a few questions that I plan to hopefully get solutions to and help other teachers understand that they are not alone.
The third concern deals with the requirement of computer usage in the classroom. Let’s say, for example, that I am a math teacher who has been forced to make computers a part of my curriculum and I do not have a problem with it. However, my students are having trouble learning and it takes twice as much time teaching them how to log in than it does to actually use the required program. What do I do? Do I put off the assignment until every students is comfortable with the computer? How long would that take? Do I say forget the whole thing because I see that it is a problem and ignore what I was told to do by administration? This is another concern that I think is important. I think schools should have some sort of developmental training for the teachers who are having trouble as well as training for the students. This training should be done outside of classroom time, which would allow more learning time in the actual subject. As a part of my research, I plan to create a survey for female teachers focusing on these concerns.
The last challenge I will talk about deals with computer writing vs. paper writing. Many students (even me) do not use paper to write essays or even first drafts. Microsoft Word has now become our “process of writing” and I must honestly say that my process has changed due to technology. When it comes to writing a paper, there are two different writing processes I use, depending on the type of paper. If it is an essay, I don’t make a web or even an outline. I use most of my time thinking about my topic. After this, I’ll sit at my computer and begin typing. I type any and every idea that comes to mind. Then I sort them out, structure the sentences, and write my introduction last. Once I am finished, I print a copy and begin revising. After I make the corrections on paper, I then go back to my computer and insert the changes.
On the other hand, my writing process for a research paper is completely different. Although I don’t use an outline, I do spend some time actually writing a draft. This draft is written on paper instead of a computer screen. Since I spend a majority of time in the library, getting my research from books, I prefer to write my research draft. Given that research papers tend to be known as “boring writing”, I act as if I ‘m writing a poem (which I always write out on paper first) to make the introduction interesting, capturing the attention of my readers instantly. After the draft is written, I type it on my computer, print it out, and then make corrections. This process takes twice as much time as the other. From this point, I continue my process just as I would the “computer process” method. This is the only time that I write out a paper, and honestly, I don’t think I write the entire paper out. Once I get to a computer, most of it usually gets changed anyway. Just as I do this, the majority of my peers use computers just as much, if not more. Is this a problem? Maybe. Does this change the words students would use in their papers and, more importantly, the way they write as a whole? I’m not sure. However, I plan to do more research on this topic and find out how challenging this is for teachers. Any thoughts, comments, concerns, please let me know.