Technology and teacher education
i am one of the select few individuals working this summer to revamp and update our teacher education program. i get to help figure out how to best provide our future teachers with the strategies, skills, and know-how to use technology in their future classrooms. wow. currently, we have a single technology course for preservice educators that is required. it is a prerequisite for getting into the College of Education and is taken before any students can apply to the COE. i hate this model. getting a college sophomore in ED 205 who doesn’t have experience with lesson plans and who doesn’t have teaching experiences to draw makes much that is taught in ED 205 seem like an abstract concept. so, i have much higher expectations for the new model we create.
in the best case scenario, the various classes and professors in the COE would work together to teach all of the ISTE NETS-T (that’s the standards for teachers with regard to technology in education) and a technology course wouldn’t be necessary. i spent much time reading up on things in the Journal of Computing in Teacher Education. the bottom line is what i already knew . . . that most college of education faculty are not prepared to teach their students the various technology standards or even a decent sized nugget of the standards. thus, an educational technology course is still fairly necessary. but, i am going to push for some of the easier standards to be transferred to other courses. i am going to make a case that other professors should be modeling the use of technology in their teaching and some standards rely on access to classrooms, so they are more ideal for student teaching.
we had our initial committee meeting and i think (still early) that our technology course is going to be moved away from being a prerequisite. in fact, the course might now be moved to occur in the semester before student teaching. this is also the semester that will occur after a semester where students go into the classroom for a field experience called student assisting (not as interactive as student teaching, but not a passive experience either). i am quite pleased with the potential of this model. our students will have actual classroom experiences to draw on when doing the ED 205 requirements. i am keeping my fingers crossed the end model turns out this well. but, our whole College of Education is just now being emailed the minutes and results from our initial meeting. hmmm.
Technorati Tags: ed tech, undergraduate, teacher, preservice, technology in education
September 23rd, 2007 at 8:23 pm
I have to agree that without proper background experience, to college sophmores ed 205 can be quite abstract. However, I don’t think it should be this way. If students were to learn more useful things in ed 200, maybe ed 205 wouldn’t seem so abstract. Ed 200 was the easiest class I think I’ll ever take and it was quite useless. I don’t remember anything from that class, and I did pay attention! I believe we only did one lesson plan. One! How can any student thinking about becoming a teacher learn anything from doing one lesson plan? And how can ed 205 professors make any progress with their students if their students still don’t know how to properly write up a lesson plan? And, for that matter, how can a student with no teaching experience be expected to write up a working lesson plan?
I’m very happy that you’re taking the steps to make our education program here at Grand Valley even better. I think the best way for students to be technologically proficient is by requiring every education professor to teach tech ed, like you suggested. Hopefully that’s what will happen for future students, until it actually does, however, I’ll keep my fingers crossed.
October 19th, 2007 at 11:23 am
I do agree that because students taking this class tend to be young and without teaching experience it is very difficult to try to be able to put some of this in context and figure out how it can help my teaching in the future. I took Ed 200 over the summer and our professor watched a lot of movies that I felt did not really apply to what he was trying to tech. I also think that because these first few ed classes can be gen eds you get a lot of students who are trying to apply something that they may never use because they are not going into teaching.
I know that technology is an important part of the educational process but i feel that it is very difficult to apply, though I am happy that it is required that we become more familiar with technology before we are actually in the teaching role becacuse then we will be more adept at using it.
October 19th, 2007 at 5:13 pm
I too wish this course was tied closer with students assisting and/or student teaching. I took ED200 at GRCC and I don’t recall being taught anything in regards to technology and students. We did create a lesson plan but personally I don’t feel even that was enough.
I would like to see how using a computer is directly related to teaching a class. What programs would be used for grade keeping, attendance, etc. This is the information I feel would be necessary for future teachers who are willing to use technology to help accomplish tasks.
October 21st, 2007 at 10:16 am
I agree with what you are saying. I have had classes where we have had to create, and present lesson plans, and units. However, never once did we have to use any type of technology to do so, outside of having our lesson plan typed out, and making a copy for each classmate. Most commonly, students made creative manipulitives, and used the whiteboard. However, I do not think that it is nessesary to make ED 205 a class that is taken right before student teaching. I think that simply requiring that students have some field hours in the classroom before taking this class would work.
In response to this topic, I think that it would also be important to give students some instruction in how to handle classrooms where there is no technology. Classrooms that are limited to an overhead projector from the 70’s and 80’s do exist.
October 21st, 2007 at 5:08 pm
I personally have been kind of stuggling with ed 205. I know I am not very tech savvy and therefore this class has been kind of rough. Hearing about the new plans is kind of exciting, although I wish they could have been a bit sooner. I think that ed 200 was so easy, that I believe this class was going to be a breeze. Now I am figuring out that I was wrong. Ed 205 has been difficult for me because I like having face to face contact throughout the week. I think that I like making sure I am doing things right before I turn them in.
So I believe that making ed 205 right before student teaching is a pretty good idea…for me anyways. I think that having the technology fresh in my mind would make things easier as you begin your student teaching. I also think that being diverse in these areas would also be helpful. Learning about many tools and mastering them is a good thing.
November 20th, 2007 at 3:21 pm
i think that moving the course to be just before student teaching is a good idea…but i’m not sure how i personally would like it. i think i would like a little more time to become a part of the ed tech community, i would like to have a little more time to get comfortable with all of the new technologies that i have learned before i get thrown into a classroom with a bunch of kids. i was thinking that because most student’s experience in ed 200 is that it’s so easy, that maybe the COE could incorporate a few weeks on what ed tech is and how it’s growing, into ed 200. i think if we got at least the basics out of the way in ed 200 then more students would be able to comprehend the concepts covered in ed 205 a little easier. this is something that i have been struggling with a little bit, and i think if the COE offered some sort of ed tech in an earlier course then that little jump start would have made the class a little easier.