Technology "strands" across the teaching career

• General education courses
  
• Methods courses
  
• Secondary student teaching program
  
• Elementary student teaching program
  
• Extramural courses for practicing teachers

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Impact on Teacher Educators: Issues of access, training, and context

Renee T. Clift
Laurie Thomas
Ann Larson
Taku Sugimoto

• Communication Choice in Learning to Teach: Toward an Integrative Model
• Access
• Training
• Context

Access

• Loaning equipment and providing ongoing support promotes technology use among professors, students, and teachers
  
• Technical problems block technology use unless help is readily available
• Students, professors, and teachers value e-mail for easy access to instructors, supervisors, student teachers, and peers because it allows for a quick response
• Professors and teachers value e-mail because it saves time and money
  
• E-mail can be useful for discussing controversial topics

Training

• Technology is used more when built into "job" or task demands
  
• Technology instruction that is not connected to subject matter is not valued by students
  
• Students value modeling by instructors and teachers and sharing specific classroom applications
• Workshops stimulate interest, but support must be ongoing to promote technology use
  
• Professors, students and teachers learn what they need to know, when they need to know it -- not before

Context

• When hardware and software are not readily available, technology use is unlikely and causes frustration among people who want to use technology
• Communal sharing of knowledge promotes greater technology use and enthusiasm for professors, students, and teachers
• Elementary classrooms provide more opportunities to use technology than secondary classrooms
• When students move from a high use technology environment to a low use technology environment, they quit using technology for instructional purposes and give up trying to use technology
• When students only see technology used as a tool, they are seldom able to incorporate technology into their own curriculum

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Creating an "Electronic Classroom"

Engaging Undergraduate Education Majors in Early Teaching Experiences Through Electronic Mail and Conferencing

Engaging Undergraduate
Education Majors

• course professor
  
• classroom teachers
  
• K-8 students
  
• Teaching Teleapprenticeships staff
  
• undergraduates
  
• people resources
  
• Internet databases

Technical aspects

• desk-top personal computers in university labs and dorms
  
• e-mail (Eudora) and conferencing software (PacerForum)
  
• one or two training sessions at beginning of semester
  
• Classroom teachers trained through university supported program
  
• Classroom teachers trained K-8 students

Instructional Approach

• K-8 students posted questions
  
• undergraduates "assigned" to K-8 classroom
  
• undergraduates researched questions
  
• answers sent via e-mail or posted using conferencing software
  
• K-8 students asked follow-up questions
  
• additional questions posted and researched

What was learned?

• undergraduates other than education students wanted to participate
  
• value of both a private and public communication channel
  
• need significant involvement by course instructor
  
• instructor and/or teaching assistants need to monitor dialogues regularly
  
• easy-to-use software can minimize technical training
  . . .

What was learned?

• university/K-8 students value the opportunity to communicate with one another
  
• inevitable that some misinformation is communicated [teachable moments!]
  
• answers from university students need to be read, discussed, and modified before sent to K-8 students

Where can we go from here?

• more personal interaction between participants at beginning
  
• encourage university students to work in groups as much as possible
  
• groups share content information before sending it to K-8 students
  
• more involvement/presence by instructor
  
• continue to search for easy-to-use software that permits easy communication

---

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Teaching Teleapprenticeships in a Year-long Elementary Student Teaching Program

Social Integration of Technology

• "Literacy is profoundly social ..."

Recommended Changes
(December 1994)

• Level: too easy (8/40); too hard (4/40)
  
• More about uses in the classroom (7/40)
  
• More hands-on (6/40)
  
• Make the technology sessions optional (4/40)
  
• More small group instruction (4/40)
  
• Pre-assess level of knowledge (3/40)
  
• Introduce technology earlier in the sequence (2/40); earlier in the week (2/40)

Recommended Changes
(May 1995)

• More "hands-on" experience; less lecture/demo (8/40)
  
• Separate into smaller ability level groups - experts vs. novices (7/40)
  
• More relevant to uses in classrooms (4/40)

Recommendations

• Importance of integration
  
• Importance of support
  
• Small-group, hands-on learning

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

The emerging design and growth of the LRS

The DAISy model

• Network Media
  
• The role of the LRS in the TTA

The emergence of the LRS

• Fall 1992: Gopher server established
  
• Dec. 1993: FTP access added
  
• March 1994: AppleShare Server
  
• June 1994: Web server added
  
• July 1994: AppleSearch added
  
• Sept. 1994: MailShare server added
  
• June 1995: Second computer server

Intended audiences:

• Working groups
  
• Individual classes
  
• College of Education
  
• Professional educational societies
  
• K-12 educators and students
  
• Anyone on the Internet

LRS components:

• Publishing Mechanisms:

• Web Server
  
• Gopher Server
  
• MailShare

• Access Mechanisms

• AppleShare
  
• FTP

• Interactive Server Gateways

Emergence of the
DAISy model

DAISy, continued

• The server is centralized in how it is maintained, but it is decentralized in how information is shared and constructed.

Examples of LRS Authors:

• Teleapprentices
  
• Remote authors
  
• Area teachers
  
• Education Organizations

Why is DAISy essential?

• The server's relevance and "value" is determined by the people who use it.
  
• The LRS is an environment for collaborative authoring.
  
• The DAISy model permits apprenticeship of new authors in the construction of network media.

Networked Media

• Defines the visual, animated and audio resources presented and supported by a client-server environment.

Dimensions of networked media:

• Size and Time
  
• Expertise
  
• Platform
  
• User Preference

The roles of the LRS in TTA

• Course organization
  
• Workgroup collaboration (shared workspace)
  
• Publishing of educational resources
  
• Pre-publication of academic work
  
• Pointers to other resources
  
• ...

LRS supports TTA through:

• Mediation
  
• Peripheral Participation
  
• Personal and shared knowledge spaces

Challenges:

• Phenomenal growth of the Internet
  
• Ownership of shared resources
  
• Diversity of resources
  
• Copyright issues

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Conceptual Frameworks and Software Tools for Teaching Teleapprenticeships