eSN Special Report: 21st-Century Teacher Education
eSN Special Report: 21st-Century Teacher Education
Responding
to a key need, schools of education are ramping up efforts to prepare
future teachers to integrate technology into their instruction
Primary Topic Channel:
Professional development
When
Sandy Armstrong was studying to become a teacher, technology
instruction was limited to learning how to use an overhead projector or
run a reel-to-reel movie over a player's spindle. This was 1989.
Computers and advanced technology just weren't part of the vocabulary
or the curriculum in Armstrong's pre-service program at Auburn
University in Alabama.
Fast-forward 20 years and Armstrong is now the technology guru for
the Auburn Early Education Center, a public kindergarten that is held
up as an example of a 21st-century school, where gadgets and
sophisticated software are abundant and seem to truly improve the
classroom experience. In addition to other cutting-edge technological
tools, a SMART Board--an electronic, interactive whiteboard on which
text and images can be drawn, manipulated, and moved, then saved and
formatted for eMail distribution--is set up in every classroom.
It's Armstrong's job to make sure the school's teachers know how to
use the technology. And that's where she has a flashback, like she's
living in 1989: More often than not, the teachers who come to her
school--fresh from pre-service programs in Alabama and
nationwide--don't know how to use and make the most of technologies
like SMART Boards.
This lack of training might not seem to matter much if the teachers
go to work in school districts that can't afford high-tech tools. But
the reality is that an increasing number of schools--large and small,
wealthy and less so--are integrating technology into their classrooms.
And the disconnect between the technology that exists in schools today
and the training that pre-service teachers often receive "does the
teachers and their classrooms a great disservice," Armstrong said.
"Teachers are not prepared to use the technology," she said. "It
still amazes me so much, because the push is technology--but not at the
universities where people learn to become teachers."
In response to this trend, and the ever-more technically
sophisticated classroom of the 21st century, some education schools are
stepping up their efforts to train the next generation of teachers to
be ready to integrate new technologies in the classroom.
"We can, and we should, prepare teachers how to use interactive
technologies and Web 2.0 applications," said Bret Gensburg, adjunct
faculty member in the College of Educational Foundations and Leadership
at the University of Akron, and founder of instructional tech company
Eagle Technology Integrations. "In addition to those skills, we need to
ensure that today's pre-service teachers are ready and open to the
technological changes that will occur in their professional careers."
Because the fact is, technology is part of K-12 student life outside
the classroom and is increasingly proving to be beneficial inside the
classroom, said Tom Greaves, chairman of the Greaves Group, a strategic
educational consulting company.
"Cutting-edge technology is essential," he said. "It is widely
accepted that an individualized or personalized education experience is
the key to dramatic improvements in student performance. It is also
generally accepted that full personalization is impossible in the
current model of a teacher standing in front of the classroom lecturing
and students limited to using textbooks. Full personalization requires
the use of digital media."
(Click here to see how the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education is preparing teachers for 21st-century classrooms.)
K-12 schools and districts are catching on to this idea and are
boosting their spending in response, with technology expenditures
expected to hit $21.9 billion by 2013--a 30-percent jump from $16.8
billion in 2008, according to Stephanie Atkinson, an analyst with
Compass Intelligence. "The Obama administration is putting an emphasis
on education spending, especially around technologies," she said.
One of the more popular technology tools for the classroom is the
interactive whiteboard. According to "America's Digital Schools 2008,"
a comprehensive report from the Greaves Group, the boards can help
increase students' motivation and participation, improve their social
skills, reduce the need for note-taking, accommodate different learning
styles, and increase students' self-confidence.
"Schools today need to connect with students who don't know life
without video games, the internet, and iPods," the report said.
"Interactive whiteboards appear to engage today's digital natives, with
increased learning as the outcome."
Interactive whiteboards "not only function as public display
surfaces, but can also bridge personal and public computing space by
enabling the sharing of information with students' personal devices,"
according to a recent whitepaper from SMART Technologies, maker of the
SMART Board. "Highly visual and engaging for today's tech-savvy
students, interactive whiteboards create a focal point for whole-class
learning. They also simplify the integration of multimedia in lessons
and can improve student achievement."
Allen Brooks, the technology teacher and coordinator for San Elijo
Middle School in San Marcos, Calif., says his students "marvel and
enjoy watching something, anything, happen on the board. The more
creative I am, the more engaged they become."
Obe Hostetter, the instructional technology resource teacher for
Rockingham County, Va., believes "students definitely enjoy class more
and are more attentive" when lessons are taught with SMART technology.
"The interactive lessons help teachers involve students in their
learning."
Julianna R. Sciolino agrees. As the curriculum and technology staff
developer for the Erie 1 BOCES (Board of Cooperative Educational
Services) Western New York Regional Information Center in West Seneca,
N.Y., she has seen first-hand the benefits of classroom technology.
"The interactive whiteboards take cognitive processing to a whole new
level," she said.
The boards also engage the teachers who use them, the "Digital
Schools" report said. Brooks would concur. As soon as he plugged one
in, he "was hooked from that moment on," he said. "I found that the
more I 'played,' the more I learned, and the more I learned, the more I
adopted the technology into my teaching practice and assisted other
teachers with the same."
At Armstrong's school in Alabama, "we have a teacher who barely
could use eMail, and she now uses the interactive whiteboards all day
long," she said. "It's amazing, the difference it makes."
Training in the use of interactive whiteboards and other classroom
technology has benefits even for future teachers whose schools don't
have access to the best tools, according to Joe Walsh, associate
professor of instructional technology and director of instructional
technology in the College of Education at the University of Montevallo
in Alabama.
"We have teachers who may be going into schools that don't have
interactive whiteboards or LCD projectors but can still utilize
technology to increase the power of their instruction and the quality
of their instruction," he said. "Your proficiency with a wide range of
tools will make you a better teacher. You could have the opportunity to
spearhead a movement in your school, or find ways to integrate cheap
technology like digital cameras into the lessons. The training is not a
wasted effort."
About 85 percent of school districts use interactive whiteboards in
at least some classrooms, according to the "Digital Schools" study, and
11.8 percent have a board in every classroom. The most popular model is
the SMART Board, first introduced in 1991 by SMART Technologies, a
Canadian company that also produces interactive pen displays, digital
signage, wireless slates, and educational software.
In the company's earliest days, it was difficult to get buy-in from
districts and teachers, especially given that their schools had slow
modems, glitchy software, and slow processors. So SMART foundered until
1992, when the company forged a strategic alliance with computer giant
Intel. With the company's equity investment, SMART could afford to push
ahead with its development and marketing, and penetrate the U.S. public
school system.
"We liked the metaphor of a whiteboard, because that was something
many teachers were already using in their classrooms, and very
effectively at the time," said Nancy Knowlton, SMART's chief executive
and co-founder. "We could transition from the non-digital world to the
digital world. It was non-threatening, and took the whiteboards from
being static to the media-rich, web-enabled world they're in today."
Adoption started slow, with SMART selling about 1 million boards in
the first 17 years. But over the last two, the company has matched that
figure.
"But we still face many challenges," Knowlton said. "School budgets
are an issue. There are also hurdles to get over regarding how
districts would use these tech tools; they need a transformative
agenda, and to put these tools everywhere. And then there's teacher
readiness to use the tool. That's an important one."
Take Elizabeth Lorch, for example. She's a sixth-grade English
teacher at I.S. 528 in the New York City public school system, who got
her pre-service training by serving as a teaching fellow at Fordham
University in 2007. "They did a lot of philosophy, but zero
preparation for classroom technology," she said.
This lack of technology-specific instruction is only part of the
issue. The other reason pre-service teachers aren't getting exposed to
classroom technology like interactive whiteboards is because their own
instructors aren't using them -- the people who are teaching the future
teachers are more often employing traditional, conventional teaching
techniques themselves.
That was the case, in the past, at the University of Montevallo in
Alabama. "Our faculty, preparing these pre-service teachers, were not
really integrating technology into their courses," Walsh said. "We
would have a standalone course on how to integrate technology, but when
the students would go into their methods classes they weren't asked to
utilize the technology."
Now Montevallo's pre-service program includes technology in all
aspects of the curriculum. "In a social studies methods course, for
example, they may be asked to create a digital story," Walsh said.
"Technology instruction and integration is occurring outside our
technology classes."
About two years ago, Hostetter gave a presentation on SMART's
technology tools to the universities in his area. In the last year,
those schools--James Madison University, Eastern Mennonite University,
and Bridgewater College--have begun instructing students on how to use
SMART's software. "I have noticed that many students from these three
universities feel confident and ready to use SMART Boards when they
enter local schools for practicums," he said.
This kind of effort will allow future teachers "to actually
transform the classroom and take full advantage of the technology,"
Greaves said. "Effective technology requires careful planning and
implementation. Far too often, this step is overlooked."
To help address this situation and promote technology-assisted
education in the nation's K-12 public schools, SMART in 2008 teamed
with Florida Southern College in Lakeland, Fla., to make the company's
interactive whiteboards a more constant and seamless part of the
school's Teacher Preparation Program.
As part of the partnership, the college receives technology and
support from SMART in exchange for researching the use of SMART Boards
in the K-12 classrooms of the Polk County School District and working
with the teachers there to integrate the boards into the elementary
school curriculum.
"As recent adopters of SMART technologies, specifically the SMART
Board, there was a great need [in the Polk County schools] for
professional development in SMART integration for K-12 teachers," said
Jennifer Brown King, who--as assistant professor of education and
director of the Educational Technology Center at Florida
Southern--heads up the SMART Integration Project.
King's students go through four intensive weeks of SMART integration
training. After demonstrating sufficient skills and putting together a
mini-lesson that incorporates all the SMART tools, these pre-service
teachers are designated as "Tech Buddies" and are paired with K-12
teachers in the Polk County schools. The duos meet five times during
the semester.
(Read more about FSC's SMART Integration Project here.)
"On day one, the Tech Buddy team goes to the school as a formal
introduction to the K-12 teacher. While the teacher completes a
questionnaire, the Tech Buddy team surveys the classroom using a SMART
checklist in order to determine what technology is in the classroom,"
King said. "The data from the checklist and questionnaire are used to
design a specific training plan for the teacher over the next three
meetings. Then, the Tech Buddy team and the teacher mark their
calendars for the next four meetings and begin to collaborate on a
lesson, which the Tech Buddy team will teach on day five."
During days two, three and four, the in-service teacher is given a
primer on the use of SMART Boards, SMART Notebook software, and
maximizing teaching and learning through interactive strategies. "On
the final day, the Tech Buddy team teaches the mini lesson to the
teacher's students. Both the Tech Buddy team and the K-12 teacher
complete a SMART evaluation about the experience," King said.
This partnership benefits both the pre-service and in-service
teachers, King said. "The K-12 in-service teacher receives professional
development without ever leaving his or her classroom, while the
pre-service teacher is provided a realistic and authentic learning
environment in which to implement the SMART technology."
Later in the term, the pre-service teachers put together a unit of
instruction on a topic and for a grade level of their choosing, King
said. The unit is developed by choosing six chunks of instructional
content, such as a six-page SMART Notebook lesson or a peer teaching
lesson using a SMART Board; modeling the chunks of content by using a
SMART document camera to capture a worksheet; attaching other
technology tools, projects, and activities, like a related PowerPoint
presentation or a podcast; reviewing content in preparation for
classroom assessment using other SMART Notebook tools; and assessing
mastery of content by creating a 10-item test.
King's students seem to appreciate all the exposure to and training
with SMART products--and most say they'd never seen these kinds of
technological tools before enrolling at Florida Southern.
"When I was a K-12 student, there was little or no technology in the
classroom. Usually the most technological thing was an overhead
projector. I had never seen a SMART Board until I started FSC this
year," said Wendy A. Lacey, a freshman education major from Winter
Haven, Fla. "I think that, at this moment, there is not enough
technology in the classroom. I think technology is very important in
the real world of teaching. Right now kids love technology. It's what
they like, so why not use it to catch their attention and enhance their
learning experience?"
And the benefits to properly trained teachers, their schools, and
their districts are enormous. "Teachers can do things quicker and
easier and have everything at their fingertips," Armstrong said. "More
motivated teachers are going to be better teachers. I have seen this.
And I know that, after I taught with technology, I won't ever teach
without it again."
