Technology for Teachers

As we all get ready for Thanksgiving and many of us prepare to board a plane to visit family, I am reminded if Congressman George Miller's opening speech at our 2007 NCTAF Symposium. The Congressman compared schools to an airplane where students are asked to turn off their technological devices and disconnect themselves from the rest of the world. By pushing technology out of, or at best augmenting what all ready goes on in, the classroom we are not preparing students for the world of post-secondary education nor are we building a 21st century workforce. The jobs that K-12 children will hold require the ability to use technology in an integrated and collaborative way. Technology is how and where collaboration takes place, not simply a tool to accomplish the same workforce tasks. Rather than shutting technology out of the classrooms it can be used to build both the technical and soft skills necessary in today's
workplace: collaboration, critical thinking, computer literacy, and more.

The work must start with preservice teachers. Bringing technology into the classroom without teachers who are prepared to use it effectively is not useful. By embedding technology in each teacher preparation class teacher candidates have the integration of technology modeled as well as taught to them. NCTAF's Teachers Learning In Networked Communities project is helping to begin this process at University of Colorado Denver, University of Memphis, and University of Washington Seattle. Teacher candidates at each site participate in online communities of practice to communicate with their peers and professors during their preservice teaching. This develops their collaborative skills as well as building their knowledge of and comfort with online learning and communication. The teachers then take these skills into the classroom where they continue the community of support for teachers and build the technological skills in their students that they need to succeed.

What other work is being done to embed technology into teacher preparation programs that you know of?