The Family Center on Technology and Disability

For years bridging the digital divide – the gap between children with and without access to technology -- was a concern for educators. Now, however, the shoe is on the other foot. Preservice teachers, not their future students, face a new inequality, declares Boise State University visiting educational technology professor Barbara Schroeder.  Along with BSU colleague Chris Haskell, Dr. Schroeder teaches her university’s lone undergrad technology course for preservice teachers. “Our biggest challenge is addressing digital inequality, the gap between teachers who know how to use classroom and consumer technology and those who do not.”

The conventional assumption is that all will be well when the “millennials” – preservice teacher candidates who have come of age in the digital era – take their places in classrooms nationwide. After all, the thinking goes, these teacher candidates are digital natives who are as proficient as their students at using the latest technology to communicate and to acquire and share information. There is no reason why that technological savvy would not translate to the contemporary classroom and to a technology-rich instructional epoch beyond.   

Dr. Schroeder and Chris Haskell offer a more unconventional view. Declares Mr. Haskell, a special lecturer in educational technology at BSU who collaborates with Dr. Schroeder in the classroom and on the web: “The current state of preservice technology, at least in the sphere that Barbara and I influence, is that students are aware of the traditional tools that are embedded on their desktops, but they possess very little to no knowledge of the full range of pertinent tools beyond those with which they have immediate contact, including Facebook.”

Facebook and YouTube, he continues, “are often their primary tools in addition to the tools that came with their computer. The students lack substantial knowledge about the rich Internet applications that are available elsewhere.”

Dr. Schroeder, Mr. Haskell and another colleague, Dr. Constance Wyzard, co-teach “EDTECH 202: Educational Technology, Classroom Applications,” the lone course offered by Boise State’s Department of Educational Technology to preservice undergrads. 

Says Dr. Schroeder: “Ours is the only course offered to preservice teachers in which they learn technology skills and about the integration of technology.” The course content, she adds, “is informed by a textbook, on which the three of us collaborated, entitled Digital Age Teaching Skills: a Standards-Based Approach (http://dats.boisestate.edu/).” The textbook, she continues, is written specifically for the course and is guided by the International Society for Technology in Education (ITSE) (http://www.iste.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=NETS) standards.

Their course, Mr. Haskell explains, “is designed around the creation of authentic products so that we offer instruction in the practice of teaching while introducing current technology-based teaching tools, like Microsoft Word.

“We teach our preservice students not just how to start a Word document but how to use more advanced features, how to collaborate with their colleagues by using Microsoft Word and some of the features, how to use Word to create more complex documents, newsletters, framed publications. 

“We show them the benefits of Google docs (http://docs.google.com) Excel and Google spreadsheet software and of presentations created with Microsoft PowerPoint and Google apps (http://apps.google.com). We’ve added presentation tools to the mix because Barbara and I have an interest in those tools.”

The presentation tools, he explains also include software such as Prezi (http://prezi.com/), SlideBoom (http://www.slideboom.com/) and SlideRocket (http://www.sliderocket.com/) – “all of which are web 2.0 tools that most of these students, whom we would consider digital native millennials, likely won’t have any experience in or knowledge of.”

A challenge, Mr. Haskell adds, is to increase the availability of similar preservice undergrad technology courses offering similar content nationwide to take advantage of the inherent technology capabilities of a generation of digital natives. “I think the momentum to develop these courses is gaining strength but needs improvement. Barbara and I find that the younger students, those who would be considered millennials or trans millennials, understand that and are interested in adopting available technology for classroom use. Certainly they’re more receptive than their immediate predecessors.”

Barbara Schroeder, Ed.D. and Chris Haskell, M.S., Speak
Even as a youngster Barbara Schroeder was fascinated by technology. “I loved computers and loved learning about computers and therefore elected to earn my Masters degree in educational technology.” A factor that influenced her decision, she says, was that the Masters program she selected enabled her to take most of the courses online. “This arrangement was very advantageous to me because I was a single parent.” After earning her Masters degree, she recalls, “it required just a little more work to obtain my doctorate in curriculum and instruction. The drawback to my Ph.D. program was that none of the courses were offered online.” Now as an online instructor and having taken courses online, she says she strongly favors an online environment.

“I think many people envision online courses to be more like the old-fashioned correspondence courses, where students received your learning materials and worked through them at their own pace, pretty much on their own except for feedback when they submitted tests to the instructor. Good online courses don’t look anything like this.

”Our EDTECH online graduate courses (http://edtech.boisestate.edu) are interactive and personal, with students really getting to know their classmates and instructors through the design of the course itself and also through the tools we use. Our online courses require that students check in at certain days or times, interacting through discussion forums, online chats, web meeting rooms and other interactive tools.”

Online courses, she adds, “offer instructors additional tools that face-to-face courses lack, the most powerful being data generated by the Learning Management System (LMS) (http://edtech.mrooms.org). By viewing data logs, instructors can quickly determine which students have not been interacting with the course and can follow up immediately to remedy any issues, she explains.

”Our teaching model is collaborative and networked, with students and teachers actively sharing and learning together. Our courses are designed and taught by our instructors, using Moodle (http://moodle.org/), an open-source application utilized by educators to create online learning sites, as our LMS. Students can subscribe via RSS (Really Simple Syndication) (http://www.whatisrss.com/), a format for delivering regularly changing web content to our forums, pop into a Moodle chat room, meet other students and instructors using Adobe Connect (http://www.adobe.com/acom/connectnow/), discuss issues through asynchronous forums and collaborate on documents and other files using Google Docs at Boise State. It’s a rich, collaborative, and engaging environment for everyone, and students form lasting friendships and professional connections through this experience.”

Dr. Schroeder has brought the full scope of her childhood love of technology to adulthood, using Twitter and blogs to reach her students.  The Cool Teachers website (http://coolteachers.org/) she operates with Mr. Haskell offers technology tips, training advice and opportunities and a popular podcast.

Chris Haskell began his professional life as a high school band teacher, which he describes as “like being an athletic director of all sports simultaneously – but I loved it.” He left it, however, when his mentor, Boise State bands director Dr. David Wells, age 67 then, was diagnosed with cancer. “His team asked if I’d be willing to return to the university to serve as the assistant band director and support him. I agreed to do so. I’d already earned my Masters degree in education from BSU and was a working teacher.”

Even for a band director, he remembers, “I was interested in the affordances of technology in my classroom and in my extended classroom on the Internet, from making instructional videos to having students evaluate their own performances. It was a good way to promote my program.” 

Dr. Wells died soon after Mr. Haskell returned to BSU, “but almost immediately my old department – educational technology -- asked if I’d want to teach a class on an adjunct basis, which put me back in the classroom again.  Suddenly I was face-to-face with preservice teachers. I realized fast that there was much that they did not yet understand about the culture of teaching. I had so much fun watching the light go on and watching them become excited about the profession that I knew immediately that teaching is what I really wanted to do as my life’s work.”

Today, he says, he teaches the department’s Ed Tech 202 course, which provides advice and information to preservice teachers on how to infuse their classrooms with technology. “I’ve had students tell me, for instance, ‘I’m on a physical education teaching track; there’s no technology in phys ed.’ I reply by asking, ‘What about heart rate monitors? Stop watches?  Have you heard about the Bodybugg calorie tracker software (http://www.bodybugg.com/get_bugged.php)?’ It’s a pleasure to ask those questions and see students’ instant realization that they would be regarded as innovators within their own schools if they effectively employed the technology we demonstrate in our classes in their future classrooms. This is a very powerful tonic, so powerful that I became addicted to it as much as I was ever addicted to marching band competitions.”

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Preservice Training:
From Texting to Teaching

An Interview Barbara Schroeder, Ed. D., Clinical Associate Professor, Department of Educational Technology,
Boise State University and
Chris Haskell, M.S., Special Lecturer, Boise State University

In the use of classroom technology, is youth wasted on the young?

According to Boise State University’s Barbara Schroeder and Chris Haskell, when it comes to the utilization of classroom technology by today’s preservice teachers, the answer is often a qualified ”yes.”

Says Dr. Schroeder: “While digital natives – millennials -- may be more amenable to learning about new classroom technology tools during preservice training, research has shown that the younger teachers with less classroom experience are less likely to use technology for learning. They’re more accustomed to using technology for management or communication.” It’s the more experienced teachers, she asserts, “those who know the ropes of their profession, who integrate technology in the ways that Chris and I demonstrate to their younger preservice colleagues.”

Adds Mr. Haskell: “Almost all the students who come out of my preservice class see an immediate application of teaching tools toward their own productivity. But it’s difficult to get a 19-year-old to understand that the technology is not nearly as much for them as it is for their students to interact with.”

In other words, he continues, “our preservice candidates use technology for themselves in survival mode as teachers during their first couple of years in the classroom. The difficulty for them in a classroom environment is that there is more need for teacher oversight when technology is in the hands of their students. Teachers then have to anticipate the technology-related problems that may occur. Usually only experience will inform teachers about how to anticipate and solve those problems -- but that’s a lot for me to cover in a three-credit undergrad class.”

The Six-Year Gap
About two years ago, explains Mr. Haskell, he and fellow preservice instructor Dr. Constance Wyzard, who was instrumental in creating the university’s sole undergrad technology course, researched their preservice teacher candidates. “Our goal was to get a sense of their relative age in terms of their comfort level with respect to technology as they entered our program. We decided to record that time not as actual age but instead as years removed from high school. Our magic number was plus-six years. The plus-six number signified the group that had not learned or used the Microsoft Office tools as part of their high school experience, thus making those tools new or foreign to them.  While some of these students had been exposed to [those tools] in the work place, the line of technical comfort and proficiency was drawn comfortably at plus-six.”

At the six year mark and beyond, he continues, “there was a noticeable gap between teachers who had projects that required the use of PowerPoint, for example, and those who did not.  Students who are more than six years removed from high school are likely to have seen PowerPoint demonstrated only at the university but lack first-hand experience in utilizing it.”

This gap, Dr. Schroeder adds, “shows the challenge of preservice technology instruction at universities: combining instruction in teaching skills with instruction in classroom technology use.”

Mr. Haskell notes the time limitation factor faced by all college instructors across disciplines. “Many college instructors approach the teaching of large classes by aiming to keep their own noses above water. It’s very difficult to avoid adopting that approach,” he says. After all, Dr. Schroeder adds, “instructors ask themselves the same question each semester: ‘How am I going to get through this semester teaching 110 students?’ One way is for instructors to limit what they ask their students to produce because instructors lack the time to grade a heavy volume of student-produced work.”

“I understand why instructors at the university level take that approach.” Mr. Haskell continues. “Fortunately, my classroom is small enough that I can utilize game-based learning, which is a hot button for me. It’s wonderfully fulfilling to see the light come on in my students’ eyes, but the hours of preparation required to create and retool these assignments from class to class can be grueling,” he admits.

Adds Dr. Schroeder, “our students get their technology knowledge from the one undergrad course available for that purpose – ours. Even though the methods courses that the students are required to take in a teacher education program should also include elements of technology, I’m not sure how much technology is actually included.”

The technology component of teacher education courses, Mr. Haskell remarks, is dependent on the individual teacher and on the students’ desire to demonstrate the benefits of the technology they’ve learned in previous classes.

“I’ve heard from former students that their classmates and instructor were impressed by their ability to use Prezi instead of PowerPoint in their presentations, for example. That was important to me because it meant that they’d taken note of my ability when using Prezi to deliver a narrative with reinforcement rather than just read from slides -- and that I was able to publish the presentation on our group page on Blackboard (http://www.blackboard.com/).  It’s very important that in their subsequent classes our students demonstrate the technology knowledge they acquired from us. It’s an effective way to continue planting the seeds.”

Digital Natives: Are They More Comfortable with Risk?
Both Dr. Schroeder and Mr. Haskell agree, however, that their students with a digital native background may initially be more receptive to new technology tools or to ideas on new ways to use tools to enhance learning. Declares Dr. Schroeder: “Digital natives are probably a little more amenable to learning about new tools, to taking risks and experimenting.”

Mr. Haskell comments: “Most of digital natives’ web 2.0 training comes from three primary tools: MySpace, which most don’t use anymore; Facebook, which most use as their primary means of communication instead of email – although some have created documents before and have dealt with other tools -- and YouTube. They’re comfortable within these environments that have a higher level of functionality. They’ve at least seen a link or a share button, even if they’ve never worked with embedded code.

“We don’t yet see that same level of interest in adoption with students in the plus-six category that we see with the younger teachers who have had experience with those tools, as well as with new tools that are constantly emerging. The rich Internet application concept is one not common to those who were introduced to the Internet with AOL dial-up.”

While advances in the teaching of classroom technology to today’s preservice teaching candidates may seem skimpy, Dr. Schroeder and Mr. Haskell say, these advances are a far cry from a decade ago.  According to Mr. Haskell, teachers who are a decade removed from their initial preservice BSU classroom technology exposure – and whose classroom environments since then have not encouraged the use of technology – are all but left out of the technology loop. Back then, he says, “there was almost no discussion of web-based tools in their preservice classes, only of tools like Microsoft Office programs.”

Comments Dr. Schroeder: “We don’t follow up with teachers 10 years after they’ve graduated from our program. We don’t contact them in any formal way to ask them about their issues of concern or about their special challenges. Sure, we offer summer workshops for professional development, but there should be future study of teachers who are 10 years out and still in the classroom.”

“We don’t specifically follow up,” Mr. Haskell says, “but we do offer the courses that we teach as part of a Masters degree, although that’s an elective process. This doesn’t qualify as an all-inclusive way for them or for us to keep each other up to date.  Barbara and I do a fair amount of work in this area with the Cool Teacher podcast (http://coolteachers.org/) but the podcast is not focused specifically on teachers that have come through our program. It’s focused on any teacher who will listen.”

The Tools: a Hands-on Classroom Experience from Day One
Dr. Schroeder and Mr. Haskell teach their preservice candidates about specific classroom technology tools, beginning with SmartBoards.

Explains Dr. Schroeder: “Most of our preservice candidates will be teaching in Idaho, but some will go outside the state. We have a SmartBoard in our classroom, and we teach them how to use it because nearly all the schools in the Boise school district have SmartBoards.  

“Chris brings a lot of equipment into the classroom, including video cameras, digital cameras and digital audio recorders so that we can show students how to use these tools. Of course the students have their own laptops in the classroom. We have an Apple portable classroom designed specifically for our course. (http://edcommunity.apple.com/ali/item.php?itemID=10651)  It consists of movable furniture, chairs and Apple laptops that are portable so they can move around. We can model different types of learning environments with technology. It’s a very flexible environment, a far cry from the old-fashioned format in which students sat in factory rows. The teacher can move around and can transform the classroom into many configurations. Chris is really good at doing this. “

“I try to make sure that I put in their hands on the first day of class a Flip camera (http://www.theflip.com/en-us/),” says Mr. Haskell. “Everyone operates a Smartphone. I usually hand the students my iPhone to take still images. That’s part of game-based learning.”

On the first day of class, he adds, when a teacher normally delivers the syllabus, “I became very frustrated with the lack of understanding that some of my students were applying toward the syllabus, a core directive. So I used a Monopoly-style game, which they all understand, to create a classroom syllabus game in which the students go around the board and collect all the pieces of their final portfolio and assemble the pieces into a portfolio.”

The result for the students, he states, “is the ability to visualize their portfolios and, in the process, to use the Flip camera to make a video of themselves detailing who they are and what they think.”

The video the students create is used later, he explains. “They take the classroom photo using the Smartphone. Everybody gets a chance to handle the equipment and see it used.   Often I’ll approach a student who has finished a class project ahead of time and hand her a camera. I’ll say, ‘Shoot us a walk through.’ I’ll take that video and put it on our Facebook group page. The idea is to get them to immediately use these low-cost, high-effect tools – a $160 Flip video, for example. I can’t think of a less expensive camera – and it’s high-def!”

Adds Dr. Schroeder: “Chris’s approach means the students must use the equipment. This is a pro-active approach on his part that is in direct contrast to what many of us experience when our cable television is installed, for example. The cable installer shows us how to use the equipment but because this is a passive experience we forget what he tells us and after he leaves we can’t operate the equipment.”

Mr. Haskell also brings gaming systems to his classroom. “I love having gaming systems in the classroom,” he declares. “We use the Wii (http://wii.com/) home video game console as the web interface because it has a web browser. We ask our students, ‘What are the benefits of using this web interface in your classroom?’ The answer is that the kids in their classes will pick up on it immediately. The kids can use it from their seats and everyone in the class can see it on the big screen.”

“What’s cool about this,” Dr. Schroeder says. “is that thanks to all the tools Chris brings in to demonstrate to our preservice teachers, and to the ever-changing technology that these tools represent, his class will never be a static environment.”

If I Had a Hammer
Although neither Dr. Schroeder or Mr. Haskell are connected specifically to special education, they believe that instructional technology, in a pinch, can often fulfill the role of assistive technology by providing a way to individualize classroom instruction. Likewise, they add, AT can be repurposed for general education use.

“We address individualized instruction in my class,” Chris Haskell says. “We introduce a number of AT tools and describe how they’re going to be used, and we demonstrate ways to repurpose tools.”

His classroom mantra on this topic, he says, is an anecdote about a hammer. “It’s a story I tell – and we discuss -- during the first class.”

Here’s his story. “My wife and I were moving into a new house and had to make dinner for our children only to find that the box we’d unpacked, which we thought contained kitchen utensils, in fact contained garage tools. So we ended up making spaghetti with a hammer. It’s what we used to stir the pot.  In the classroom we often find ourselves in the same situation: we don’t have the tools we really need so are forced to use a tool in a way that was unintended.”

He offers an example. “You’re a teacher and you’re told, ‘Carlos is your student today.’ But you soon learn that Carlos does not speak English and there’s no one else in the class who can help. What do you do? Solution: Go to Google Translate (http://translate.google.com/#). Start using that tool to communicate with Carlos one-to-one.

“There are AT tools in the same category as Google Translate as it’s used in the incident I’ve cited.  They weren’t intended for the purpose a teacher might use them for but they work really well.” Examples, he says, include voice-to-text and other speech translators.

“I demonstrate categories of available tools. Then I talk with my class about what we do if…My students understand my approach.”

In the book they co-authored for their class, Digital Age Teaching Skills: A Standards Based Approach, Dr. Schroeder and Mr. Haskell use a chapter to discuss designing learning environments. “We address AT and we require that our students create a web class and collect resources on AT, but we don’t go into great depth on specific devices,” Dr. Schroeder says.

Barriers to Effective Use of Classroom Technology: the Time Bandit
The most challenging barrier to classroom technology use by teachers, according to Dr. Schroeder, is a school that is technology-poor. “We can teach preservice teachers about useful classroom technology tools but if they find themselves in a classroom or a school with little technology, they’re stuck.”

For Chris Haskell, the lack of time is the single most significant barrier. “If teachers are asked if they see the benefits of classroom technology they will reply that the benefits are apparent to them. But they will then say that the time required to retrieve a specific piece of technology, check it out and bring it back to their class, develop an activity based on its use for the students, make sure that the equipment is collected and returned – and to troubleshoot all of the problems in between – is too much. Even energetic teachers will go through this process a couple of times and then admit, ‘If this equipment was in my classroom I’d use it; if I have to check it out each time I want to use it? No. I don’t have the time.’”

According to Mr. Haskell, “Probably every media specialist at every high school and middle school, if asked if they have expensive equipment that just sits in the closet will respond like this: ‘That mobile SmartBoard over there is never checked out.’ Why not? ‘Because it’s a hassle to get it set up – and the teacher has it for only one day.’ If teachers had a little more time they’d use technology more often.”

Most teachers, he insists, would admit, “Yes, I understand the importance of podcasting, but I don’t have time to re-teach my lesson into a microphone. I’ve got an IEP meeting right after school. I’ve got a doctor’s appointment for my child and a committee meeting first thing in the morning. I just don’t have the time.”

Adds Barbara Schroeder: “While time is certainly a major concern for teachers, there are other important barriers as well, including the amount of technology infrastructure that’s necessary, having to open the tools for children to use and dealing with the Internet filtering.”

Fortunately, she remarks, “more and more schools are able to open cloud-based publishing tools but the shift is slow.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing)

To Mr. Haskell, technologies that encounter the least resistance from classroom teachers are those that are well-developed, like Discovery Education’s free classroom tools (http://school.discoveryeducation.com/) and Whyville (http://www.whyville.net/smmk/nice), a virtual world game site for pre-teens and teens. “These are activities that teachers like because their students can connect to them and there is immediately something to do.  The technologies that encounter the most resistance are those that require much more teacher preparation.”

Within the Wiki
In addition to making maximum use of her cellphone’s features, writing blogs, preparing podcasts, tweeting and texting in the interest of her preservice students, Dr. Schroeder has developed a fondness for wikis, which are collaborative websites.

In 2008 Dr. Schroeder wrote an article entitled Within the Wiki: Best Practices for Educators (http://www.editlib.org/p/28183) The article’s premise, she notes, “is that there are powerful and easily available tools that anyone can use in order to create, collaborate, and publish. Because higher education wants students to have more opportunities for high-order thinking, problem-solving, collaboration and/or brainstorming, I ask teachers, ‘Why not use these tools?’ Many of our students are unaware of wikis, although wikis are becoming more mainstream. Frankly, I think it’s the word ‘wiki’ that turns people off because it sounds a bit frivolous. Perhaps a wiki should have called it ‘easy web.’”

One of the most effective ways to engage students’ high-order thinking skills, she says, is via wiki collaboration.

“Wikis, after all, are simply a website that groups can work on together. Students don’t need to have any knowledge of HTML. They collaborate through visual editors.  Wikis can be used for many purposes, such as brainstorming, working on a project together, and creating content. Students can submit assignments. Wikis can model some very intriguing processes, such as a democratic method of working together with the open-source movement.”

Wikis can be effective for preservice teachers as well, she points out. In demonstrating wikis for preservice teachers, she states, “the very untidiness of the wiki process itself can be modeled, which emphasizes the brainstorming nature of wikis and encourages students to take over.”

Such a demonstration, she adds, focuses most on the concept of networked collaborative learning, “a concept that has already been taken to the next level because we have so much information on our iPhones that can be accessed immediately.” The very accessibility of this information, she remarks, pushes factual memorization as a way of learning out the door. The result is that we can now show students how to find, locate, and critically analyze the information they acquire.”

Other Useful Social Media: To Blogs….and Beyond
Among other social media that can prove useful to preservice teachers and their students, Dr. Schroeder recommends blogs. “With blogs students can view a static page. Blogs are easy to use. They’re collaborative.”

For Chris Haskell, the best social media tools depend on the user’s interest.   “As a common-ground meeting place for teachers, there are lots of ‘small’ social media -- but Facebook retains tremendous traction.”  

According to Mr. Haskell, “Everything on the Internet is a social, user-enhanced space. I’m a cyclist. I love the Tour de France. If you’re among the two million Americans who enjoy that vibe, and you log onto Versus (www.versus.com), the network that airs the race in the U.S., you will see that Versus has the Tour Tracker (https://tracker.versus.com/login), which offers a detailed roster of the race’s participants plus an interactive live video stream that features real-time maps showing the progress and location of every individual competitor, based on the transponder worn by each cyclist. On one hand you have a fantasy cycling game. On the other there’s a live chat underway and the ability to break into other semi-synchronous discussion boards.”

Thanks to this social media technology, he asserts, the famed bicycle race transcends its origins as a European pastime and now connects cycling enthusiasts worldwide.

“Even TV is becoming social. Anything that we can communicate around is social media. How many times do we say to ourselves, ‘I don’t know why this software’s not working or what this error is,’ only to do a quick search for the software and find that two years before a discussion board was started that focused on how to fix the problem. Board viewers can read the comments and see all the other companion issues that posters have raised around the core issue. It’s incredible how much we’re communicating in areas where we wouldn’t suspect that there would be dialogue.”

Dr. Schroeder, however, offers a note of caution. “It’s important to point out that teachers know that good instruction is driven through what we want our students to learn.  If teachers’ learning objectives align with their content the result is an excellent learning environment.” Technology is the tool, she declares, “but it’s the teacher’s creativity in utilizing these tools that makes the difference.”  Although teachers may lack expertise with these tools, she says, “they should understand the tools’ capabilities and potential.”

The tools, she continues, achieve their optimum utility when aligned with instruction objectives. “Yes, Chris and I love many social media tools but would only recommend using them if they serve a learning purpose or to have occasional fun in class.”

Mr. Haskell, she points out, is an avid YouTube user. “We recommend that students get away from using Office-based tools and switch to cloud-based tools, such as Google Docs, “because they are much more powerful, they are easier to use and they enhance collaborative activities. They’re accessible from any computer. Many of our students might not have a computer at home or if they do they may lack the requisite Office software.”

“We focus on tools that are freely available, that are creative. They are all social media tools. AuthorSTREAM (http://www.authorstream.com/), for example, is a social slide presentation tool that serves as a platform for sharing PowerPoint presentations on the Internet and enables users to download presentations as video. YouTube is a social video sharing tool. Blogs are social.”

Consumer Tech in the Classroom
Both Mr. Haskell and Dr. Schroeder agree on the beneficial classroom utility of consumer technology.  Explains Mr. Haskell: “Barbara likes Zoom products for audio recording (http://www.zoom.co.jp/english/products/h4/). I love my iPod nano video (http://www.apple.com/ipodnano/features/video-camera.html) as a tool that I can hand off to a student and say, ‘Shoot me a video.’ I like the Xbox (http://www.xbox.com/en-US/) as a video storage device, as a connector to large volume of video and as a gaming tool.”

He also appreciates the Wii (www.nintendo.com) as a classroom device. The Wii is a Nintendo game console introduced in 2006 that runs Wii and GameCube software and features a wireless motion sensing controller that looks like a TV remote rather than a game controller. “I have my students create their own Wii and we use those characters for different purposes. Consumer technology like this is extremely useful for my preservice class.”

The iPhone, he emphasizes, also qualifies as important classroom technology. “I have several of the walk-throughs of our activities on an iPod video in my classroom. I’ve shot the material or I’ve had a student shoot it and load it on the media player. If one of my students is struggling and falling behind I’ll find where he’s having difficulty, load up the video, hand him headphones and say, ‘Start here.’ The result is that this student has a personal educational space that removes him temporarily from the classroom, from his stress. He gets a walk-through. He can pause it when necessary. As overstated as the statement sounds, the iPod is one of the most powerful tools I use in my classroom.”     

The Future of Online Instruction
A strong supporter of online education since she earned her Masters degree online as a single mother, Dr. Schroeder is co-teaching an online mobile learning course this summer with Mr. Haskell, also an online instruction adherent.

Mr. Haskell draws a line between formal and informal online education. Informal online education, he insists, “is when a company, government agency or even a school develops a knowledge base that is a little more intuitive and interactive.  We start to see the combination of these tools that we’re already using.

“Five years ago, for example, we never would have envisioned that voicemail would be translated and sent to us as a text message, but Google Voice (http://www.google.com/googlevoice/about.html) does that. Now a knowledge base can be created for an organization or region. We can simply pick up our phone, push a button and ask, ‘Where is the student union building?’ This form of informal online instruction automatically leverages the many tools in our mobile device to guide us to our destination. The user determines the question, suggests an answer, selects a button and his phone immediately goes into TomTom (http://www.tomtom.com/?gclid=CISIl_za-KICFdID5Qod0ClLmA) mode which step by step gets the user where he wants to go.”

He predicts “a great leap” in this form of informal online instruction. “A year and a half ago when ChaCha (http://www.chacha.com/) and the first text-based knowledge tools started coming online, their arrival was a surprise for us in higher education. We’re going to see development of virtual worlds. I teach a course in virtual words and have my heart set on the defense against the dark arts position at the university. Hopefully, I will teach a lot more of those virtual world courses in which participants meet by proxy with avatars in a virtual space, a course not just about Second Life but in Second Life (http://secondlife.com/), a 3D virtual world where users can socialize, connect and create using free voice and text chat.”

Systems are under development, he says, “that make it easier to do more quest-based learning (http://www.teachers.ash.org.au/jmresources/webprojects.htm),” structured learning activities in which students investigate problems or issues, using the web as a resource.

“Dr. Lisa Dawley and I have been developing a meta-game tracking tool, which is an interface that works like a video game. I’ll be piloting the tool next spring in one of my Ed Tech 202 courses. Rather than a unit-based course organization, the class environment will be a completely open one in which students can say, for example, ‘I’m into PowerPoint, so I’ll do level one and accumulate 100 experience points.’ They pursue the angle that they want. Eventually they might be told, ‘You can’t advance to level four until you complete level two in Word.’

“What do those video game constructs and achievement tracking look like? A student can skip an entire level if she wants. What do those student-choice-driven environments look like?  We know that video games have and keep our attention, yet also teach us.  Why? It’s not just the satisfaction of the Id, because there are three separate gamer profiles that are not interested in the rapid kill, the Id satisfaction. The gamers are individuals who like to socialize within the space. I think we’ll see a lot more of this technology creep into online education.”

This evolution, he emphasizes, won’t sweep the old world away overnight. “Some schools remain interested in the lecture-quiz-paper-final exam profile. We’ll continue to see the, ‘Read this, then do that’ approach with no real help offered to students. There will be a discussion board. Trouble is, students have figured out the discussion board game; too many already know the contrived responses they need to meet the requirements of the board rather than submit real contributions.

“We will see more authentic interaction occurring with other classmates in an online environment and more authentic student interaction with the material in these online environments.”

For her part, Dr. Schroeder predicts a bright future for online education.  At Boise State, she observes, students want to take online courses. These courses are practical, they fit with students’ schedules and career changes.

She predicts “big changes” in open courseware. “For years MIT has offered open courseware,” she notes. “In fact, Bill Gates just said he’s taken some courses through MIT. In his evaluation, Gates said, “Open courseware is good but needs improvement.”  I’d agree, and in fact some of the open courseware courses are a series of PowerPoints that students download and view or are recorded lectures. That’s not how we do online learning at Boise State, in Ed Tech. Our courses are interactive environments where students can meet online if they want. They share and collaborate and often get to know each other better in the online environment than in a face-to-face environment.”

She predicts more collaboration among institutions “as soon as they get beyond their fear that they may lose a proprietary course, for example. As the technology becomes ever less expensive – because it’s increasingly inexpensive to produce computers – we’ll find that an open online learning environment will ultimately be less expensive for increasingly cost-conscious consumers.”

The Internet in the Outback: Cellphones Connect Hamlets to the Web
Connecting schools in isolated rural communities to the Internet has been a concern for years. Now, however, cellphone technology may enable remote towns to facilitate online instruction in their schools sooner than anyone had hoped, according to Chris Haskell and Barbara Schroeder.

“Here in Idaho,” says Dr. Schroeder, we’re getting more and more cellphone towers. The Internet can be accessed by cellphones in many ways. In fact, Verizon has a modem that can be plugged into a computer.”
“With 3G and 4G networks now becoming so prevalent, Mr. Haskell declares, “the most powerful computer that a child may ever own makes phone calls.”

Children need computers for word processing, Dr. Schroeder acknowledges, “but we will see more and more cellphone-based technology to access the web. Fiber optic cable is no longer needed. In Idaho we have the Idaho Education Network legislation requiring that high-speed Internet access and video connect all Idaho elementary and middle schools. (http://www.newwest.net/city/article/bill_underway_to_develop_idaho_broadband_network/C108/L108/)  The result will be Internet access for even the most remote areas.” Ironically, she points out, such innovative legislation may already be outdated, thanks to cellphone technology.

Rural Distance Learning: the Barriers and the Potential
Distance learning in rural areas may also become a reality, thanks to enhanced web connectivity, Mr. Haskell predicts.

“I like that we are seeing much more teacher collaboration in this area,” he says. Such collaboration, he explains, often is initiated this way: “A teacher says to a colleague, ‘A friend of mine is teaching Japanese III at his school; we won’t be teaching it here, but we have three students who’d love to take Japanese. If we can make a connection, can we offer credit for that here if they take the course online? In turn, our Spanish IV class will connect with them.’ Schools can use the Internet as streaming technology or as another method of communication to connect those kids. This sort of collaboration allows us to do what teachers do better than anyone else in any other profession: recognize a student’s gnawing need for more and then figure out how to get that student what he/she needs.”

In Idaho, he adds, “such opportunities and combinations of resources have already have already resulted in the establishment of online high schools and K-12 schools like IDLA (Idaho Digital Learning Academy) (http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Resources_id_12767.aspx) and the I Succeed Schools (http://isucceed.insightschools.net/), which are free online virtual high schools.  There are thousands of these schools nationwide. Most states have 15-20 of them.”

Thanks to online connectivity, he says, “the combination of what we’d consider traditional high school education and online education will play a very significant role in isolated communities.”

Cool Teachers: Organizing Duuuuuuuuuh
According to Mr. Haskell, the Cool Teachers website and podcast he produces with Dr. Schroeder has proven to be popular and effective. “We get many positive comments about the site. I’ve actually posed for photos at conferences so that teachers could say they’d met me. Our desire is to get the viewership up as high as we can.

“We think the value is in organizing any of the ideas that Barbara and I consider to be ‘duuuuuh,’ concepts. For example, a viewer has an iPod nano video. We’ll give the device to her kids and have them create a pictorial about how they completed a difficult math problem.  Duuuuuuuh. Let’s put the pictorial on the class blog.  These tools already exist. You don’t need to attend a class to figure out how to use them. The value of the site is in allowing others to suggest ideas to us and in us coming up with ideas that deal with normal tools.

“This is not write-grant-wait-six-months-present-the idea-to-the-school-board-buy-the-equipment-and-devise-a-training-plan. It’s much simpler, more immediate.  It’s a quick, effective integration of technology available now for almost no money.”   

When he was a fulltime high school teacher and band director, he recalls, “I did not have time to write grants. Instead, I used $1,000 in my budget that we’d fundraised for, and bought three video cameras. I told three of my students,   ‘You’re the film crew for the marching band season.’ From such humble beginnings this concept grew to a full-on web series directed, narrated and edited by the students. The series became a very effective recruiting and energy-building tool. Thanks in part to this concept and our consequent web presence a small marching band in Reno, Nevada became known worldwide.”

The Value of YouTube Auto-Captioning
Although many find Twitter to be yet one more marginally useful, at best, smartphone/web distraction, Barbara Schroeder is a believer in the value to her profession of tweeting and being tweeted. Her discovery of YouTube auto-captioning (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/automatic-captions-in-youtube.html) is representative of that value, she contends.

“I learn about new classroom technology tools from my various Twitter feeds such as TweetDeck (http://www.tweetdeck.com/), which is a Twitter aggregator. I don’t like tweets always popping up, so occasionally I’ll turn it off to get some work done. I scan whatever looks interesting to me. I subscribe to blogs that I like. I subscribe to RSS feeds and check my email when I can. Thanks to all these aids I find useful new classroom tools almost by accident.”

For instance, she recalls, “a few weeks ago I was looking at YouTube and noticed the auto-captioning feature. I did some research and now have a way to upload a video. Normally, the user would have a transcript of her narration. All that’s needed is to upload the text file as transcript to the video and YouTube automatically uses the Google voice logarithm technology, which hears the words as they are spoken and then captions the video. The captions can be translated to other languages.  Say, for example, that someone from Denmark is watching a video you’ve created. The viewer is unable to understand the spoken English but can have the captions in Danish.”

Recently, she says, she and Mr. Haskell were conducting a workshop and were demonstrating this feature. “Often when I demonstrate a tool that’s constantly evolving I see changes that have been made since the last time I demonstrated it. As I demonstrated the YouTube auto-captioning I saw that even if the user has not uploaded the text file that contains the captions, on certain videos YouTube will automatically caption for the viewer off of the audio. The machine-read file can then be downloaded, edited and uploaded as an accurately captioned video.  For accessibility reasons this feature is a real plus.”

Do Instructors Need Mobile Devices?
Yes, declares Dr. Schroeder. These devices in an educational setting, she is convinced, are valuable to teacher and student.  At the outset, however, she was temporarily and indirectly stymied in her efforts to acquire a BSU-supplied device by…the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.

“I wanted to get a mobile phone for department use so I could communicate with my students. Because the university continues to regard these multi-faceted devices as simply a cell phone, I was confronted by an IRS ruling stating that mobile phones do not meet the tax criteria for school equipment because they can be used for personal reasons.”

Her argument in favor of mobile phones for instructors is this: “Many higher education instructors do not spend all day tucked away in their offices and to have their eligible communication devices limited to an office landline phone is inconsistent with today’s reality.”

For example, she says, 25% of the U.S. population no longer owns a landline phone.  “I’m not insisting that all instructors be stripped of their landline phones.  But if I had a choice, if my chair asked me, ‘Do you want the department to pay for a cellphone or do you want a landline?’ I’d reply that it was a no-brainer: Get me a cellphone. That’s the best and most efficient way for me to communicate with my students; I can send them text messages; I can use Twitter to communicate with our classes. A mobile phone is a far more effective and personal way for an instructor to communicate with her students.”  

Research, she explains, “has shown that if instructors make themselves available quickly to their online students the students will enjoy a better experience, they will learn more and instructors will receive better end-of-course evaluations. Mobile phones may even save universities money if they did away with their landline phones and instead provided instructors with cellphones.”

The downside, however, “is that I don’t always want to be contacted on my cellphone. Sometimes I’ll turn it off or not answer it if I don’t know who’s calling.”

As a tech maven who appears to be constantly connected to an information retrieval or dispensing source, how does she respond to the observation by some that technology has become a way of life instead of a way to learn and to teach?

“I’d respond that yes, technology IS a way of life. Extra time is required to learn how to use and apply some technology tools to meet learning objectives, but it takes time to create any type of effective learning activity. Using technology enhances the instruction in so many ways. It can motivate learners, enable multiple forms of creativity, encourage sharing and collaboration, and probably most importantly, model how we learn and work today.”

She concludes: “Students, including preservice teachers, need to work with technology and experience its powerful effects and outcomes.  My 13-year old daughter, right now, is looking at her amazon.com reviews and self-assessing her work, by reading responses to her posts. Writing in a public forum, where she knows others can view and respond to her work is very motivating. Plus, she is building on her literacy and evaluation skills, by reading other reviews and figuring out what makes them good or bad.

“If we incorporate authentic activities that address our learners’ passions, we are scaffolding opportunities for them to discover themselves and grow. Technology tools are here right now to make that happen.”

RESOURCES

ARTICLES

Curriculum-Based Technology Integration Activities
Baltimore County (MD) Public Schools (2006)
Developed during a workshop sponsored by the Baltimore County Public Schools’ Office of Instructional Technology, this database provides teachers with best practices in classroom technology integration. These technology-integrated activities support tested areas of the BCPS curriculum and are matched to Maryland’s Voluntary State Curriculum as well as the state’s technology literacy standards for students. For each activity the learning preferences and the field are noted and the level of cognitive demand is identified.  Content areas supported by the database include the following: math; science; social studies; English (secondary level); reading (secondary level); and reading/language arts (elementary level). Student templates or student product prototypes for these activities have been created in the following software:

• Microsoft Office 2003, including Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Publisher and Internet Explorer
• Windows Movie Maker, Photo Story 3 for Windows
• Inspiration
• Kidspiration 2
• Kid Pix Deluxe 3

http://www.bcps.org/apps/CBTIA/default.aspx


Curriculum Ideas: How Do I Integrate the Internet into My Classroom Curriculum?
By Linda C. Joseph
Adventures of Cyberbee (2009)
Ms. Joseph offers teachers ways – including gaming – of using the Internet in a classroom in the following areas:

• Cross Curricular
• Math
• Science
• Social studies
• Language Arts

For teachers, the author recommends the following: distance learning as a way to deliver curriculum via two-way audio, video and the web; an online course in grant writing; ways to acquire classroom software on a budget; methods for teachers to save time by utilizing web-based digital tools; tutorials in Word, PowerPoint and PDA use; and creating a web page with Dreamweaver.
http://www.cyberbee.com/intclass.html


WEBSITES

ETrip
Midway Independent School District, Waco, TX (2010)
Created by the district’s instructional technology department, this site provides district K-12 teachers, students and parents with updated news on classroom technology and information on how technology is – and can be -- incorporated into lesson plans. In addition to offering pertinent links, the site provides information on video conferencing, Internet field trips, web quests and cyber scavenger hunts.
http://www.midwayisd.org/99610121210329760/site/default.asp?99610121210329760Nav=|&NodeID=1090


Best Practices of Technology Integration in Michigan
Sponsored by the Michigan Association of Intermediate School Administrators and the Regional Educational Media Center of Michigan, the site offers technology-rich lesson plans, prepared by practicing teachers, that have been tested in a classroom environment.  All lessons are aligned with the Michigan Framework Document.  
http://www.remc11.k12.mi.us/bstpract/


Animoto for Education
Animoto enables students, even those without editing skills, to create presentations. Students select the desired images and music and Animoto’s cinematic artificial intelligence capability orchestrates the presentations. This feature enables students and teachers to focus on presentation content and narrative. Animoto’s remix capability ensures presentation uniqueness. Videos can be shared via e-mail, blog or website, exported to YouTube, or downloaded to a computer. Teacher registrants can create videos lasting more than 30 seconds at no cost. The site enables teachers to manage student user names and passwords.   
http://animoto.com/education/features


Drop.io
Drop.io is an online collaboration and file-sharing service providing users with a real-time way to chat and share images, audio, video, documents and other content via user created and controlled sharing points called “drops.”  Teachers can record podcasts, post slide shows, lecture outlines, rubrics and links for students, collect student assignments as well as leave voicemails for students.  Free online conferencing is available. http://drop.io/

Weebly
Weebly helps teachers create class websites and blogs at no cost.  Weebly’s core feature is a drag-and-drop website editor. Teachers can add videos, pictures, maps and text by dragging them to their site. Weebly’s free user support capability makes it unnecessary for teachers to possess substantial HTML or technical skills.
http://www.weebly.com/features.html


Zoho Show
Zoho Show offers teachers and students free web-based tools, including tools to create documents, spreadsheets, surveys, and quizzes.  Free editing options and templates are available.  Presentations can be embedded in a blog or shared via email. The site facilitates collaboration to create group presentations. Wiki and conference services are also available.
http://show.zoho.com/login.do


Edublogs
Edublogs, which hosts more than one million blogs for individual teachers, students and institutions, provides teachers and students with a free blogging platform. Teachers using the service can set up and moderate blogs for their students to write, customize designs and include photos, videos and podcasts. Teachers new to blogging can take advantage of a robust and free customer service network. http://edublogs.org/


GUIDES

Technology Quick Guides and Video Tutorials
Montgomery County (MD) Public Schools (2009)
The guides are a collection of resources for teachers who employ AT software in their classrooms. The guides aid teachers in integrating the software into a classroom environment. Each guide provides general overviews and answers to frequently asked questions. Common tasks facilitated by the AT software are outlined. Several of the resources feature web-based videos. Software applications include Kurzweil, Clicker 5, Math Pad, Inspiration, Equation Editor, Photo Story and AlphaSmart.
http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/hiat/tech_quick_guides/index.shtm


BLOGS

Accessible Educational Technology
Bloggers, who are mainly teachers, offer strategies for employing classroom technology. Social networking is a frequent topic. Technology-related links are plentiful and include websites favored by teachers. http://accessedtech.blogspot.com/

KNOWLEDGE NETWORK MEMBERS

The University of Texas at Austin; Learning Technology Center-AT Lab
The lab offers interactive activities to familiarize undergraduate and graduate students with hardware and software applications that facilitate access for individuals with disabilities. Professors and students utilize the lab to integrate assistive and instructional technology content into teacher preparation and doctoral training programs at the UT College of Education. The AT Lab provides realistic environments in which to demonstrate AT devices in five categories:

• Early childhood
• Classroom
• Workplace
• Home
• Communication

For more information, contact:
Learning Technology Center, AT Lab
The University of Texas at Austin
1 University Station
Austin, TX 78712-0385
Phone: (512) 471-4004
Fax: (512) 471-4655
Contact: Hui-Ching Ko, AT Lab Manager
Email: hko@teachnet.edb.utexas.edu
http://www.edb.utexas.edu/ATLab/index.php


PBS Teachers: TeacherLine
TeacherLine enables K-12 teachers to master web publishing. Participants examine school-based websites and other web-publishing projects to identify effective and ineffective presentations. Key web publishing issues are addressed to help teachers understand the basic requirements before embarking on web-publishing activities in their classrooms.  A web page template and basic HTML prompts are provided to help participants complete an effective web page. Cost $199.
For additional information, contact:
PBS TeacherLine
2100 Crystal Drive
Arlington, VA 22202-3785
Phone: (866) 864-0826
http://www.pbs.org/teachers


Florida Center for Instructional Technology (FCIT)
FCIT collaborates with educators in order to integrate technology into the curriculum. Located in the College of Education at the University of South Florida, FCIT assists more than 1,200 preservice teachers who graduate annually from USF as well as thousands of inservice teachers in Florida.  In cooperation with Florida’s Office of Technology Learning & Innovation, FCIT senior training specialists aid schools and districts in implementing technology integration. These specialists also participate in the development of the Educational Technology Clearinghouse (http://etc.usf.edu/). Through its Master Digital Educator program, FCIT delivers technology integration training statewide.
For additional information, contact:
FCIT
4202 E. Fowler Ave EDU 147
Tampa, FL 33620
Phone: (813) 974-1640
Fax: (813) 974-3731
Contact: Dr. James Takacs
Email: florida@coedu.usf.edu
http://fcit.usf.edu/


Discovery Education Professional Development
The Discovery professional development program helps educators integrate instructional strategies, content and technology in classroom environments that are technology-rich and those that are not. The program offers a course designed to aid educators whose classrooms lack interactive tools. Benchmark assessments can be administered online or on paper.  While training in the program, a job-embedded approach enables teachers to utilize model lesson demonstrations and coaching structures that allow them to remain in the classroom whenever possible.  Acknowledging teacher time constraints, the program offers instruction to teachers in a variety of formats, including traditional teacher development days, Saturday academies, train-the-trainer models that support coaching structures, webinars, in-classroom model lesson demonstrations and direct-to-student on-site professional development.  The program’s costs include the following:

• $2,500 for one-day on-site professional development via a six-hour session with a Discovery instructor
• $450 for three one-hour follow-up webinar sessions

For no additional cost educators who have taken the Discovery professional development program are invited to particpate in the Discovery Educator Network, a 125,000-member professional learning community.
For more information, contact:
Discovery Education
One Discovery Place
Silver Spring, MD 20910
Phone: (800) 323-9084 (toll-free)
Fax: (847) 328-6706
http://school.discoveryeducation.com/


Regional Educational Media Center of Michigan (REMCAM)
REMCAM provides classroom media and technology resources to teachers and students statewide.  Resources include professional development, equipment, software, best practices and models. REMC instructional technology specialists (RITS) have aggregated their work into a wiki, thereby utilizing technology and individual expertise. The RITS website and the RITS Toolkit (http://www.remctoolkit.org/ ) are technology resources for teachers, technology directors and administrators.  
http://www.remc.org/


Annenberg Media
Annenberg Media distributes educational video programs and coordinated print and web-based materials to aid in the professional development of K-12 teachers. Some programs are intended for students and for home use. Video programs are streamed for on-demand viewing through www.learner.org, the organization’s website. All titles are available for purchase on DVD. Related print resources can be viewed and downloaded from the website. Video programs air on local PBS stations, school and community cable and broadcast channels.  Funding is restricted to producers with a track record of developing large multi-media and multi-part projects in core subjects focused on an audience of educators. The organization is affiliated with the Annenberg Foundation (http://www.annenbergfoundation.org/) which encourages knowledge sharing.  
For additional information, contact:
Annenberg Media
1301 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW #302
Washington, DC 20004
Phone: (202) 783-0500; (800) 532-7637
Fax: (202) 783-0333; (317) 579-0402
Email: AnnenbergMedia@fpdirect.com
http://www.learner.org/about/


Ohio Resource Center for Mathematics, Science and Reading (ORC)
The center, a project of the State University Education Deans, operates under the auspices of The Ohio State University. It provides technology-integrated lessons, online applications, videos, articles and structured activities developed by teacher educators to assist teachers in integrating electronic technologies into classroom instruction.  ORC promotes standards-based best practices in math, science and reading for Ohio schools and serves as a source of accessible, peer-reviewed resources. Available resources include subject-specific materials, assessment and professional development content and other resources that support the work of pre-K-12 classroom teachers and higher education faculty members. ORC resources are correlated with Ohio’s academic content and with applicable national content standards.
For further information, contact:
ORC/The Ohio Resource Center
1929 Kenny Road, Suite 400
Columbus, OH 43210
Phone: (614) 247-6342
Fax: (614) 292-2066
http://www.ohiorc.org/about/