In today’s world, technology intervenes in almost every aspect of our life.

People have to deal with technology most of the time. Teachers as a category of the
society deal with new technology at school. They work with new generation that is
may be more technology literate. The question that arises through many literature
material is “Why does the teacher need to avoid technophobia without getting to the
extreme of technophilia?”. My focus in approaching the answer will be about the use
of information technology at school.

Lloyd and Albion argue that teachers who cannot ‘see’ how technology can be used in
meaningful ways in their classrooms are seeing a world in which tools and outcomes
are conflated into one. Their view is one which sees an incomplete world and leaves
them with either no or limited processes to enact change. Research shows that lack of
skills and understanding of the technology are the factors that make the major
contribution to develop their technophobia. This review is positioned within an
empathetic understanding of teachers’ beliefs as a “messy construct” (Pajares, 1992)
and we see a teacher’s role as being something that is “ambiguous and ill-defined,
hedged about with uncertainty, inconsistency and tension” (Nias, 1999, p. 237). The
behaviours of the technophobe teachers described by Lloyd and Albion confirm the
contention that to adopt and integrate technology in the classroom “is complex and
involves the head and the heart, the personal and the professional” (Day & Roberts-
Holmes, 1998, p. 29). they usually do not believe that they have a problem nor they
need cure.

Typical examples of technophobic teachers are teacher A, B, C and teacher D

introduced in Lloyd and Albion paper. Teacher B (in interview) offered “before I do
anything with the kids, I have to be confident that, if something goes wrong, there’s a
chance I can fix it. If I don’t have that confidence, then I don’t put myself in that
position.” Teacher D demonstrated expertise by instructing the students to defer all
requests for assistance to her. She did not encourage or seemingly allow any peer
tutoring or collaboration. Teacher C believed that his Year 3 students lacked the
reading and comprehension skills needed to use the Internet and forcefully added,
“Let’s face it! The way these kids use computers, they’re likely to end up with it
crashing.” Teacher A hinted at the potential for malicious damage in speaking
disparagingly of “the type of child in my class.” Teacher A’s students had to prepare
emails as handwritten texts before they could be word-processed and then pasted into
an email client. ICT did not fit what these technophobic teachers held to be the
normative and conservative functions of schooling. In the cases presented in that
paper, Lloyd and Albion in conclusion, they have noted that activity systems become
dysfunctional when components are misapprehended or poorly understood. Being
unable to progress or change may have more to do with a problem of perception of
roles rather than technophobia or other neurotic reactions.

Technological tools such as Hypermedia and Web 2.0 can help learners jointly or
individually explore facts, concepts or knowledge domains and immediately
transverse to interesting links or appealing presentation formats. Adaptive educational
hypermedia holds great promise in addressing the diversity of student interests,
knowledge and skills. Snowman (2009).

Santana introduces technophilia as placing technological advances as the solution

and the means to improve performance in different kinds of activities. A typical
technophilic view of Bill Gates:"Over time, the new machine finds a place in our
everyday lives because it not only offers convenience and saves labor, but it can also
inspire us to new creative heights. It assumes a trusted place beside our other tools. A
new generation grows up with it, changing and humanizing it - playing with it"
(Gates 1995).
Gates focus on PC's pointed to the niche which would make of him an important
entrepreneur: software. The interaction between men/women and machine. is
mediated by the software. To develop a software you need more human reasoning
than capital. Software is a deposit of human systematization of different kinds of
reasoning to function as a tool to support the user's further reasoning. Thus, Gates
realised that his chances to launch his enterprise were in the high skills required by
the software niche. In different parts of "The Road Ahead", he points out the
importance of having "smart people" working with him. In reality, most of his
competitiveness has been based on the performance of labor, in this case, highly
skilled labor. This might be the reason why he puts so much emphasis on the
improving quality of education, through the use of technology. Gates clearly sees the
role of education in the present context of the Information age. He recognizes the
need for a life-time learning. As it was mentioned before, the issue now is "learn how
to learn". That is the difficulty to be faced by technophilics. The technology by itself
can not be the saviour. However to benefit from the technological advance it costs
intellectual effort and it requires certain level of knowledge and skills.

It is obvious that technology is a great advantage for humanity. However, it should

be employed moderately and thoughtfully to enhance creative thinking. The teacher
may benefit from technological tools. Students are almost always ready to use new
technology. The role for teacher is to direct them in the right path in the midst
between the two extremes technophobe and technophil. By establishing realistic
context for student's learning. The teacher may provide a holistic, complex problem
in which he/she grounds their learning. In order to encourage learner autonomy,
students plan, monitor and evaluate their actions. One good strategy is that the
teacher models the questions students should ask themselves during the self-directed
learning process Cennamo(2010). Teachers who adopt strategic approaching to
technology in education are most likely have successful use of these amazing tools
which are indeed the greatest achievements of humanity.
 References

Cennamo, K. S., Ross, J. D., & Ertmer, P. A.(2010). Technology Integration for Meaningful
Classroom Use: A Standards-Based Approach. USA:Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

Day, C., & Roberts-Holmes, G. (1998). The best of times, the worst of times: Stories of change and
professional development in England. Change: Transformations in Education, 1(1), 15-31.

Gates, B., The Road Ahead, Penguin Books, New York, 1995.

Lloyd, M. M., & Albion, P. R.(2009). Altered Geometry: A New Angle on Teacher Technophobia.
Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 17 (1). pp. 65-84.

Nias, J. (1999). Understanding and preventing teacher burnout: A sourcebook of international

research and practice (pp. 223-237). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Santana, B., (1997). Introducing the Technophobia/Technophilia Debate: Some Comments on the
Information Age. Retreived from
http://www.ub.es/prometheus21/articulos/obsciberprome/santanab.pdf

Snowman et al. (2009). Psychology Applied to Teaching.Qld:John Wiley & Sons Australia.