Welcome to the Ed Tech Course Support Web!
This website includes resources and information for
educational technology instructors, students, faculty, and program
managers in the Chapman University College Department of Education.
You will find the latest syllabi on the official University College
syllabus site:
http://www.chapman.edu/univcoll/syllabi. Instructors may also
wish to participate in the University College education division
Blackboard forum. Contact your local faculty or program manager
for more information. The SB2042 links focus on integrating
technology into all coursework throughout the Chapman credential
program. If you have suggestions, additions, or questions, contact
me - piper@chapman.edu.
Carla Piper, Ed. D. - Associate Division Chair of Educational
Technology, Chapman University College
Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers: Integrating Technology and Curriculum
Preparing teachers for the 21st Century has been a concern
for both political and educational leaders in this country during the last
two decades. In the fifth State of the Union address on February 4, 1997,
President Clinton challenged America to make teaching a national priority.
In response to the president's address, the U.S. Department of Education
developed priorities that focus on strategies to improve education. These
strategies called for a talented, dedicated, and well-prepared teacher
in every classroom, clear state standards of achievement and accountability
for all children, technological literacy for every young person entering
the workforce in the 21st Century, and a safe, disciplined school environment
(U.S.
Department of Education, 1997).
Public education reform was triggered a decade earlier
by a report, A Nation at Risk, which claimed that U.S. students
generally achieved at lower skill levels than those of other industrialized
nations (National
Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983). The Goals
2000: Educate America Act enacted by Congress in 1994, provided the
framework for education reform for the 21st Century. This legislation called
for the establishment of high-quality, internationally competitive content
and performance standards for all students, promoted the use of technology
to enable all students to achieve national goals, and emphasized the need
for teacher education and professional development. Teachers were to be
given the opportunity to acquire the knowledge and skills needed to instruct
and prepare students for the next century. They were to have access to
programs to improve professional skills and encouraged "to use emerging
new methods, forms of assessment, and technologies" (The
National Education Goals Panel, 1998, Goal 4, p. 1).
Three themes of significance for this study converged in
recent education reform documents concerning the preparation of teachers for the
21st Century: teacher accountability to professional content and certification
standards, performance-based authentic assessment for both teachers and
students, and the need for educators to have technological expertise. The U.S.
Department of Education's New Teacher's Guide stated: "The highest academic
standards, the best facilities, the strongest accountability measures, and the
latest technology will do little good if we do not have a teaching force of the
highest quality" (1997, September, p. 1). Providing well-prepared, technological literate
teachers who meet high professional standards has presented a challenge
to pre-service teacher training institutions.
The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) issued a report called
"Technology and the New Professional Teacher: Preparing for the 21st Century
Classroom" in 1997. The NCATE Task Force on Technology and Teacher
Education recommended that NCATE stimulate more effective uses of technology
in teacher education programs. In order to prepare students to teach in
tomorrow's classrooms, "they must experiment with effective applications
of computer technology for teaching and learning in their own campus practice" (NCATE, 1997). The International Society for Technology in Education
(ISTE)
presented guidelines for accreditation to NCATE for the use of technology
in teaching and learning in schools of education (1995).
NCATE has challenged higher education to incorporate technology
across the entire teacher education program, not just as a "computer literacy"
class added to the existing curriculum (1997, p.7). A study done by the
Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) entitled
"Teachers and Technology: Making the Connection," stated that far too
many colleges of education are teaching about technology as a separate
subject, rather than teaching with technology across the curriculum (OTA,
1995). A 1996 study of 56 colleges of education sponsored by the Northwest
Technology Consortium (NETC), resulted in two recommendations: technology
needs to be a pervasive part of how faculty teach; and preparation of pre-service
teachers to use and integrate technology in their future classrooms needs
to be emphasized (Queitzsch, 1997).
The NCATE task force stated that "today's teacher candidates
will teach tomorrow as they are taught today" (p.4). This report emphasized
that teacher education has the responsibility to prepare students for teaching
in the 21st Century, even though that future is impossible to predict with
the rapid developments in technology. The task force stated that teacher
education is in a time of transition, calling for experimentation and a
new attitude that is "fearless in the use of technology" (p.6). NCATE recommended
that teacher education programs provide early experiences for their students
and that technology be integrated into other education reform efforts (p.
8). This study focused on the use of technology as a tool for performance
assessment of teacher candidates as evidence of achieving certification
standards.
Carla Piper, Ed. D.
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What's New
Syllabi: pdf and Word doc files
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