April 2003 — Seeds of Innovation
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Teacher Models of Technology Integration
\par\par RETA also emphasizes the integration of technology into student-centered curricular activities during workshops that engage teachers in hands-on experience with a variety of hardware and software organized around a curriculum unit. Evaluators for the RETA project use a combination of surveys and a series of classroom observations to determine changes in teaching practices.
\par\par According to Hupert et al. (2002), evaluation data showed that "RETA teachers altered their own and their students' use of and experience with technology to a significant (.01) level." For example, teachers reported increases in the amount of time they used e-mail and the Internet. They also planned more activities involving technology for their students.
\par\par In addition, RETA teachers began to perceive their roles differently. During its fourth year, the RETA project evaluation reported "statistically significant indications that participation in RETA contributes to teachers altering how they teach lessons in classrooms, with teachers increasingly acting as facilitators during lessons or activities, and teachers increasingly using a group-work model for student participation" (Hupert et al. 2002). Figure 1, below, shows some of these observed changes in lesson formats during the school year.
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\par \par Collaborative Learning Applications
\par\par Several projects are employing an integration model focused on collaborative learning projects involving distant partners. Alliance+ TICG (www.k12science.org/alliance), with training sites in Arizona, Florida and Ohio, has developed a model for integrating unique and compelling Internet applications into its curriculum. These applications include telecollaborative projects that involve student-to-student collaborations; the use of real-time data, such as live air-quality data from the Environmental Protection Agency; and publishing of student work online as a means for authentic assessment.
\par\par The Lewis & Clark Rediscovery TICG Project (http://rediscovery.ed.uidaho.edu), a consortium of school districts extending from Wheeling, W.Va., to Astoria, Ore., uses the Lewis and Clark expedition as an interdisciplinary framework for the integration of technology. Participating teachers in two school districts in Montana have developed "Community Portfolios" describing 200 years of change along the Marias River, an important geographical feature of the Lewis and Clark expedition.
\par\par Another model of teacher integration of technology through distance learning is The BorderLink Project in California (www.borderlink.org). This project has dual goals of learning from classroom teachers and disseminating knowledge gained from their experiences to other teachers and schools. BorderLink's Innovative Videoconferencing Project has gone to the source - classroom teachers - and invited them to develop original, significant models for integrating videoconferencing directly into their everyday teaching.
