Which Came First - The Technology or the Pedagogy?
- By Dian Schaffhauser
- 09/09/09
A new spin on an old riddle goes to the heart of a
conflict between K-12 schools and the colleges of
education responsible for cultivating and providing
them with new teachers.
WHY IS A GENERATION of teachers more
knowledgeable about technology than any
before it arriving in classrooms with little
understanding of how to teach with it?
It's a debate that, according to Ann
Thompson, director of Iowa State University's
Center for Technology in Learning and
Teaching, has K-12 and higher ed engaged in
mutual finger-pointing. "School districts
say, 'If colleges of education just better prepared
new teachers in technology, we'd be
all set, but they're not doing their job,'"
Thompson says. "Colleges of education say,
'We're doing a great job, but then students
go out into schools and they don't have
access to technology or don't see other
teachers using technology, so some of this
prep goes to waste.'"
Thompson believes that on their end, colleges of education
can help cross that chasm by instilling in preservice teachers
a sense of humility for their first year or two in the classroom
and deference for veteran faculty members. "It's important
that they understand that they may bring a lot of technical
expertise, but that they have a lot to learn from the [other]
teachers in schools in terms of pedagogy and content," she
says. Thompson also concedes that higher ed has been guilty
of paying too much attention to the devices themselves. "We
all did at first: 'If we just teach teachers how to use technology,
they'll figure out how to teach with it.' Although it was an
understandable approach, it really wasn't the approach we
should be taking."
Glen Bull, co-director of the Curry School of Education
Center for Technology and Teacher Education at the University
of Virginia, is more blunt. "A Smart Board doesn't teach
anything," he says, noting that at his institution, knowing how
to operate a device is a baby step toward understanding tech
integration. "Five years of prep are what we think are needed
to take advantage of it."
Tying Technology to Topic
The five years of prep Bull refers to is the Curry School's fiveyear
program that integrates subject-matter education with
teaching expertise, coordinating students' undergraduate and
graduate work. The student's undergraduate major is matched by
that same area of concentration in the education program. With
the help of academic advisers on both ends, preservice math
majors, for example, will focus their education studies on math
teaching. At the end of the five years, students receive from the
university both a bachelor's degree in the given subject matter
and a Master of Teaching degree. The program has since evolved
to include technology as a content area.
Integrating Online Technologies
AT WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY IN DETROIT, Mary Brady, a senior lecturer in
special education and instructional technology in the school's College of
Education, believes the drift toward student-oriented online learning obligates
teachers to become engaged firsthand in web-based technologies if they are
going to be able to deliver their educational uses.
"In the state of Michigan, every high school student must have at least
one online class experience for graduation," Brady says. "What I say to
my students is, 'How can we have that as a high school requirement if
we've never walked in their shoes?' We have to take an online class to
be in a better position to train our students so they'll be ready for that
online experience."
Read about
the Florida Virtual School’s new effort to teach local
preservice teachers how to deliver classes online.
For that reason, Brady teaches her courses online. She meets students
face-to-face for the first night of class to introduce the use of the college's
learning management system, from Blackboard.
Students must then use
the LMS to create their
own web page.
Next, they sign up for a Skype account. Brady makes herself
available for student
meetings through the IPbased
phone service. She
also relies on TechSmith's Camtasia Studio, a tool that can capture
computer-based demonstrations with audio for playback. When one of her
students doesn't understand how to perform a particular software-based or
online activity, Brady will create a recording in which she demonstrates the
activity, and then send it off.
The university holds an annual conference in February, where new teachers
return to the school to share how their technology training has played out
for them. Brady says that some of them have reported using Skype to set up
scheduled times to be available to talk with parents, and others use Camtasia
to record lessons for students who are absent or who need further review.
Brady has just begun dabbling with the microblogging service Twitter, to send out quick alerts to her students, for example.
Although she hasn't had reports back yet from any of her newly certified
classroom teachers, she expects to hear that they're doing the same with
their students as well as parents-- reminding them about deadlines and
getting the word out about special events.