September 2001 — Features
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Technology in Secondary Teacher Education
The integrated semester guarantees alignment of course material through the team-teaching and planning. Formerly fragmented topics are united around experiences, themes and issues designed by the faculty team. Unnecessary duplication of material is eliminated by planned and coordinated coverage of important concepts. Placing inquiry rather than response in the foreground, the curriculum is experiential and project-based. Student work is directed toward a capstone experience - a final exhibition that offers students the opportunity to integrate their learning from all the areas of study into a meaningful whole. This exhibition calls on students to present their beliefs and plans for teaching as they would to a hiring committee, incorporating the production of teaching documents and professional presentations.
Technology Integration
Since the implementation of I-STEP in 1995, the faculty teams have rotated and changed each year or semester, making program continuity an ever-increasing challenge. Even with the commitment to technology from the university, our professional college and the department, the major question continues to be how to meaningfully integrate technology into classroom instruction with the varying levels of expertise of the many faculty members who teach in I-STEP.
During the first year or two of the program, members of our Educational Technology faculty conducted guest presentations on technological tools available to classroom teachers. Some direct instruction in one of the heavily used but under-equipped computer labs was also included, with regular I-STEP faculty following along. Over time, one of the secondary education professors became quite technologically proficient, and if he was teaching in I-STEP, the infusion of technology increased. He designed an I-STEP Web page complete with assignments, additional resources, etc. However, few required assignments within the course curriculum necessitated student development of technological artifacts. And when he rotates out of the I-STEP faculty, much of the technology integration is lost.
Therefore, we decided last year to restructure one of the existing three-hour required courses into a new course titled Diversity, Technology and Literacy in Secondary Education. Based on the belief that schools should represent a force for social justice in our society, this course demands that students critically reflect on their personal and collective identities, and on the many faces of diversity and equity in today's schools and communities.
Focusing on major sociocultural and political issues related to schooling, students are asked to examine their own notions of why schools are the way they are, and to re-imagine the possibilities for the way they should and could be. Beginning with a focus on self, students progress through a series of assessments that help them understand the influence of their family on their current identities, beliefs and behaviors. Reflections are completed each week to monitor personal growth in developing an ethic of caring, valuing diversity, efficacy, etc. Shifting the focus to learners, classroom diversity and equity issues are investigated and experienced. Finally, shifting the focus to teachers and teaching, students are challenged to re-imagine current teaching practices that disenfranchise and marginalize many students.
