You may be interested in the article below for writing grant proposals.
Eugene
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The Digital Beat v.1 no. 16
By Andy Carvin
Technology Professional Development for Teachers:
Overcoming a Pedagogical Digital Divide
Introduction
Going Online: The Status of America's Schools
Now That We've Wired Our Schools: Are Teachers Prepared?
Different Teachers, Different Attitudes:
Constructivism and Technology Use
Innovating Professional Development
Conclusion
Introduction
Over the last five years, the United States has increased its priorities
concerning the use of technology in schools. Though technology is by no
means a new addition to the K-12 classroom, the explosive growth of the
Internet has led to a multi-billion dollar commitment to wire America's
schools and integrate digital communications into all levels of curricular
activities. At the federal level, the E-Rate program has to date funded
more than 45,000 schools with over $2.5 billion in telecommunications
subsidies in order to connect these institutions to the Internet. At the
local level, grass-roots campaigns such as Net Day have mobilized
volunteers to wire schools within their communities in order to take the
first steps towards connectivity.
As the Benton Foundation underscored in its 1997 Learning Connection
report, access to hardware is only one component of providing quality
educational technology to schools. Now that Internet-based instruction is
beginning to percolate into classrooms, attention must turn towards
preparing America's teachers for using Internet technology successfully.
The challenges and issues policymakers must face include educators' varying
attitudes towards instruction, the importance of interaction with their
teaching colleagues and the need for innovative professional development
approaches.
Going Online: The Status of America's Schools
According to the National Center for Education Statistics' most recent
report (February 1999), 89% of US schools had at least one Internet
connection within their campus. This connection is not necessarily
accessible to students, though. For example, a modem-connected PC in the
librarian's office counted as a connected school. The same report found
that 51% of instructional classrooms were connected as well: in other
words, just over half of all classrooms contained at least one Internet
access point for either the teacher alone or for both teacher and students.
These connection rates can be compared to statistics as recent as 1994,
when only 35% of schools and 3% of classrooms were connected. By the end of
the current school year, NCES estimates that 99% of all schools and 88% of
all classrooms will have at least one connection to the Internet.
It is worth noting that the NCES data warn of the digital divide that still
exists between low-poverty schools and high-poverty schools. In 1998,
though 51% of classrooms nationally were wired to the Internet, only 39% of
schools with high levels of poverty were online. In contrast, 62% of
schools with low levels of poverty were wired. With the help of the $2.25
billion in annual subsidies from the federal E-Rate program, though, it is
hoped that those schools lagging behind in terms of connectivity will soon
be able to catch up.
Now That We've Wired Our Schools: Are Teachers Prepared?
Despite all the effort that has been placed on wiring America's schools, we
are only beginning to see the attention of policymakers turn towards a
greater question: what should we expect of schools, teachers and students
once they all gain access to the Internet? It is easy to envision schools
where educators transparently integrate new technologies into their
teaching styles, but in truth schools are only beginning to address what
needs to be done to prepare America's teachers to use technology
successfully. A February 1999 report from the US Department of Education
noted that only 20% of America's teachers feel comfortable in integrating
technology into their lessons. This should come as no surprise since few
teachers have had ample opportunity to be exposed to successful technology
integration techniques. Hands-on professional development activities
targeted towards technology integration are very much a new addition for
most schools.
According to the Milken Exchange on Education Technology's 1998 Progress of
Technology in the Schools study, teachers on average receive less than 13
hours of technology training per year, and 40% of all teachers have never
received any kind of technology training. Assuming it is offered at all,
this amount of training is far less than what many experts believe is
necessary for a teacher to develop tangible technology integration skills.
As the Department of Education noted in its 1994 Prisoners of Time report,
"New teaching strategies can require as much as 50 hours of instruction,
practice and coaching before teachers become comfortable with them."
Professional development of any kind requires a significant cost
investment; to date, most schools have not chosen to make such a
commitment. While many technology integration experts recommend that
anywhere from 25 to 35 percent of a school's overall technology budget be
dedicated to professional development, most schools on a national average
dedicate no more than three percent of their technology budget. In most
cases, it seems professional development is budgeted as an afterthought
when compared to the costs of equipping schools with the technology itself.
Different Teachers, Different Attitudes: Constructivism and Technology Use
Along with the obvious need to equip teachers with broad technology skills,
professional development programs must also consider teachers' varying
attitudes towards pedagogy and their interaction with their colleagues.
Recent work conducted by Professor Hank Becker at the University of
California/Irvine may help shed light on some of these issues. Becker's
landmark Teaching, Learning and Computing 1999 study
(http://www.crito.uci.edu/TLC/), developed in conjunction with Professor
Ronald Anderson of the University of Minnesota, is one of the first
national studies to examine the complexities of how teachers use computers
and the Internet in their instruction. Several of Becker's findings are
worth exploring.
In schools where Internet access is readily available there is a
significant range in how teachers have their students utilize the
technology. When the Internet was available directly in the classroom,
nearly 50% of teachers reported having their students use the Internet to
conduct research; in other words, tracking down information and looking up
sources of material was fairly common. Yet only 7% of teachers had their
students use email at least three times during the school year; 6% of
teachers had their students participate in an online project with other
schools; and 4% of teachers had their students publish on the Web. The
Becker study also noted educators' modest interest in publishing their own
materials on the Web, with only 18% of teachers publishing online. This
would suggest that while teachers are beginning to embrace the Internet as
a source for supplying information, the majority of educators have yet to
explore its interactive potential. Student email communications and
Web-based collaborations are still not as commonplace in the classroom as
one might expect, even when there are no obstacles to Internet access.
One potential reason for this disparity in Internet use might be found in
Becker's discovery that an individual teacher's general attitudes towards
student learning may directly affect how that teacher utilizes the Internet
in his or her classroom. Professor Becker analyzed computer use in terms of
teachers' personal association with constructivist learning techniques. Put
simply, the educational theory of constructivism suggests that students
learn best when they are engaged in the learning process, actively
constructing their own knowledge through collaboration, critical thinking
and inquiry. Constructivism can be contrasted with more traditional
teaching approaches in which students are expected to learn through rote
memorization and repetition. According to Becker, the majority of those
teachers who used their Internet computers regularly considered themselves
constructivist, with a heavy focus on student-centered learning. Teachers
who are more comfortable with face-to-face interactivity and collaboration
among their students are therefore more likely to translate these teaching
styles into a technology-based setting. On the other hand, the majority of
those teachers who had Internet access but did not use it in their teaching
considered themselves traditional and not constructivist, preferring their
students to learn through more conservative teaching techniques. This
result suggests that teachers' attitudes towards constructivist pedagogy
strongly affect whether or not they will encourage their students to use
Internet computers, even if access is ubiquitous.
Becker's research also suggests that those educators who are comfortable in
actively engaging with their teaching peers are more likely to engage their
students in similar ways. As Becker and Margaret Riel write in one of their
reports from the TLC study:
"Teachers' instructional styles mirror their own interaction patterns....
Teachers who learn from their peers, lead their peers, and present their
ideas and opinions to their peers are more likely to have their students do
the same in the classroom. They conduct their classes in a manner similar
to the way they conduct their professional activities." (TLC '98, Snapshot
#3: http://www.crito.uci.edu/tlc/findings/snapshot3/)
In other words, those teachers who have taken advantage of interaction
opportunities with other teachers on a regular basis are more likely to
encourage their students to interact in similar ways as well. This point
may be one of the factors that are beginning to dispel the myth that older
teachers are less likely to use technology than younger teachers. According
to the TLC study, older teachers were more likely to engage their
colleagues via email than younger teachers. (Education Week's recent
Technology Counts '99 study found a related result in which older teachers
were no less likely to use computers than younger teachers.) One possible
reason for this is that older teachers have had more opportunities to
develop networks of colleagues inside and outside their school, thus giving
them more reason to use the Internet to interact with these colleagues.
Younger teachers, on the other hand, may lack such networks, especially if
such networking opportunities were not available to them during their
pre-service studies. This raises some intriguing issues as to what kinds of
networking and interaction experiences must be given to young teachers
before coming out of their colleges of education, as well as during their
early in-service teaching years. What do we do to get them more involved
with their colleagues? What do we do to make them a part of a bigger
educational community?
Innovating Professional Development
Hank Becker's ongoing research demonstrates the complexity of the many
issues surrounding professional development and technology integration.
Even when teachers are provided with ample access to technology it may not
be enough to simply train them how to use it. Teaching an educator how to
use Netscape or conduct an Internet search only scratches the surface of
what he or she needs to know in order to successfully utilize the Internet
in the classroom. In many respects there is a pedagogical digital divide at
play: numerous teachers have not been exposed to constructivist teaching
styles or community-building professional development opportunities among
their peers. In order for teachers to embrace the Internet effectively they
must be given opportunities to experiment and explore, to interact with
each other, to learn the benefits of collaboration. Professional
development must be an ongoing activity among a community of educators
rather than a sporadic attempt to introduce educators to new software tools
or the latest Web site.
The education world is not devoid of such attempts to approach professional
development as a community-building activity. One pioneering model can be
found in the Online Innovation Institute (OII), founded in early 1995 by
Internet educators Ferdi Serim and Bonnie Bracey. OII has developed a
train-the-trainers model for professional development in which they
cultivate local technology leaders to guide reform efforts and mentor
others. Participants in OII workshops learn technology integration through
a method that might be termed as professional development by passion: OII
participants are encouraged to explore the teaching subjects that matter
most to them and to form community groups based on similar interests. For
example, biology teachers with a passion for genetics and the work of
Gregor Mendel may join together to form such a group. They are then
introduced to technology using a constructivist approach in which
participants create online lesson plans and other relevant content based on
the subjects they have chosen. Instead of learning Web browsers or search
engine skills as ends in themselves, they learn them in the context of the
very subjects they care so much about. Not only does this give them a
tangible example of how the Internet can work within their personal
teaching styles, it forges a lasting community of learners that can
continue to collaborate and help scaffold each others' progress as they
gain more technology skills.
Though one of the first innovative professional development models, the OII
approach is now joined by countless other programs to explore new ways to
foster successful technology integration in the classroom. In August 1999
the US Department of Education awarded its first round of Preparing
Tomorrow's Teachers to Use Technology Grants (PTTT). The PTTT program
supports innovative approaches to professional development, funding teams
of higher education institutions, school districts, state agencies and
other educational organizations, with a special emphasis on preparing
pre-service teachers. The program funded three levels of grants. Capacity
Building Grants, averaging $135,000 and lasting one year, were awarded to
139 consortia to lay the groundwork for technology-focused professional
development programs. Implementation Grants, averaging $390,000 and lasting
three years, were given to 64 consortia to improve existing technology
training programs. Finally, Catalyst Grants, averaging $640,000 over three
years, were provided to 22 national, regional, or statewide consortia with
the expertise to implement large-scale professional development programs.
The US Department of Education hopes that over two million educators will
receive the benefits of these 224 projects over the course of the next ten
years.
Conclusion
As more of America's schools enter the digital age, policymakers,
politicians and parents will undoubtedly expect an accounting of education
technology and its impact in schools. While much progress has been made to
date, it is imperative that more attention be paid to successful
professional development strategies and their implementation at the local,
state and national levels. The Department of Education's PTTT program is an
excellent first step for investing in innovative professional development
activities. Pre-service as well as in-service teachers will both need to
learn how to apply new technologies and adapt them into their teaching
styles. Through a project called Future Learning, the Benton Foundation has
begun to convene creative thinkers from the fields of teacher education and
education reform in order to explore these issues.
Commercial providers of professional development also have an opportunity
to implement cutting-edge training techniques. As companies invest in the
education technology market, the more they will all need to demonstrate
that their professional development offerings lead to measurable results.
Benton's Future Learning is also bringing in corporate innovators already
at work in identifying the issues with which teacher colleges will need to
contend in the digital age. Through this and other initiatives,
professional development will hopefully begin to occupy a more privileged
position as policy leaders set education priorities. The discussion over
professional development must also occur at the community level: parents,
teachers, administrators and local leaders must understand the complexity
of education technology integration and the need to craft broad strategies
for its success.
When it comes to education technology, no school can afford to ignore
professional development. Not every teacher will adapt easily to a
technology-rich educational environment. The current lack of national focus
on professional development inhibits the advancement of the Internet as a
powerful ally in the quest for education reform.
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Andy Carvin (acarvin who-is-at benton.org) is author of the pioneering education Web
site EdWeb: Exploring Technology and School Reform (http://edweb.gsn.org)
as well as the moderator of WWWEDU (listproc who-is-at ready.cpb.org), the Internet's
longest running email discussion on the role of the Web in education. Andy
recently joined the Benton Foundation's Communication Policy and Practice
program.
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