Does MS Photo Story 3 Make a Difference? The Views and Experiences of a Group of Norwegian Secondary School Teachers

Abstract

This paper examines views and attitudes of secondary school teachers on the role of MS Photostory 3 as a learning-enhancing artifact. The examination is based on the analysis of empirical data, collected from an ongoing project involving teachers and pupils at a Norwegian secondary school. Two teams, numbering a total of 9 teachers, participated in training programs from August 2007 to June 2009, with the objective of enhancing the teachers’ ICT competence. They agreed to use MS Photo Story 3 as a presentation tool in a number of subjects for a period of two years. In parallel with conducting training programs for the teachers, qualitative data describing teachers’ views and attitudes were collected during regularly conducted focus-group interviews with teacher teams, by studying teacher-produced reflection notes and by participant observations of teachers and pupils in classroom activities. A main finding is that it was necessary to upgrade the teachers’ computer skills on a very basic level in order to give the teachers confidence to use ICT in their teaching. Insufficient ICT competence and low confidence among the participating teachers has considerably hampered the utilization of the ICT’s learning potential.