How can we stimulate teachers to integrate technology in education?

Even though many schools, at least in western countries such as the Netherlands, have technologies such as digiboards and computers, these are often not integrated in the curriculum. Although sometimes they’re used in education, for example a teachers uses a digiboard to write something to the students, which s/he could also have done with a non-digital whiteboard, the integration is one step further. How could we stimulate teachers to do so?

I think one important way to stimulate teachers to integrate technology in education is by using their own resources (knowledge, skills, experience) to evoke their creativity on this topic. Teachers know a lot about teaching and have a lot of experience with it, which forms a good basis for the addition of technology to their teaching.

Of course, one way to help teachers to become creative, is to let them use the TPACK model when designing their lessons. This makes them able to think out of the box and be as creative as they want.

But another important issue here is that most teachers don’t know that much about technologies. Even if they would want to use more technologies, they wouldn’t know which ones to use or where to get them from. In this respect, I think that teachers should get (or find) more time to explore technologies, so that they know what they do, how they can be used, etcetera. Then the question is: which ones will they explore? There are so many technologies around, how do you pick one? Of course, there are so many technologies, so where would you start? I think the answer is: start with what you already have. In most Dutch schools, there are computers or laptops and often digiboards available, so thinking about how these work might be a really good start. 
Also, a meeting could be organized, to which the teachers can bring a technology from home (e.g. a digital camera, PSP, etc.), which the other teachers get to explore, so that they know about its functions. This would then form the basis for a discussion among teachers on how these technologies could be used in their lessons (in other words: what is the educational value of this technology?). Exchanging ideas and inspiring one another would be a great start, like a spark starting a fire. Getting to know the technology (thus increasing one’s Technological Knowledge (TK), as it’s called in the TPACK model) will help teachers to prepare for the next step: technology integration. Once you know what a technology can do, you can start thinking of ways for using it in your lessons.

Also, showing teachers some good examples of ICT integration in education might be a good inspiration for them to start thinking about how to do this themselves. I’ll post some examples here that will hopefully inspire teachers to start thinking about technology integration in their lessons!

http://www.biggle-toys.com/ (i-blocks: helping children who start to learn to read (Dutch))

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywMCY6eekCs (Augmented reality in 8th graders history project)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKGo9P44saM (Science teacher explaining how integrated technology in her teaching changed her middle school students)