Concept Paper by Cathy Gunn, Director, Center for Technology, North Central Regional Educational Laboratory (NCREL®)

Introduction: We know that information and communications technology adds value to learning by providing real-world contexts for learning; connections to outside experts; visualizations and analysis tools; scaffolds for problem solving; and opportunities for feedback, reflection, and revision. The planners for this Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) project are to be commended on a proposed project that follows current research and best practices for integrating technology into teaching and learning. A gathering of NCREL staff members—all experts in the areas of educational technology and professional development (PD) who have read the Experts Meeting documents—agreed that what we know about integration of technology into the curriculum starts with the premises that your plan is built upon: a logical framework that is focused on standards, engaged learning, on teachers developing curriculum locally, and on professional development in which teacher trainers build capacity as they become experts and take that expertise into their local school systems. This concept paper provides a review of existing policy guidelines as well as a short discussion of possible project guidelines centered on Professional Development for inservice teachers, and it describes several innovative approaches to integrating ICT into curriculum. To extend the information that we can share on innovative approaches that have been used by NCREL®, the paper concludes with a table that maps the project’s outcomes with a few representative examples of existing resources for inservice professional development. Note that this concept paper does not address preservice education, per se, although many of the concepts can be integrated into a teacher education program. A recommendation from this NCREL team is that the project build upon tools that already exist and revise those tools as needed to the national, regional, and local contexts of project stakeholders. An advantage of using already existing tools is that the project can enjoy a nimbleness that focuses project staff and teacher efforts on application rather than development.

Review of Existing Policy Guidelines: NCREL’s Plugging In: Choosing and Using Educational Technology (Jones, Valdez, Nowakowski, & Rasmussen, 1995) identified several sets of policy issues that affect a school’s ability to use technology for engaged learning experiences and should be factored in to a professional development plan: equity, standards, finance, coordination, commitment, and the role of parents and community members.

Equity. “Universal participation, as a policy goal, means that all students in all schools have access to and are active on the information highway in ways that support engaged learning” (p. 29). There is danger when poor schools are excluded from these learning activities. If we believe that all students can learn, we must overcome barriers to all students using technology. Plugging In’s authors indicate that for schools with high populations at risk, policymakers must:

• Provide opportunities for administrators, teachers, and students to become informed about and experience the best technologies and technology-enhanced programs.
• Establish curricula and assessments that reflect engaged learning to the highest degree for students at risk.
• Give teachers permission and time to explore and experiment with new learning and instructional methods.
• Provide ongoing professional development to develop new learner outcomes, and assessment that use the best technologies and programs (p. 30).

Standards. A second policy issue involves making sure that there are high standards for all children and that students have opportunities to complete challenging tasks using technology. Policies need to integrate curriculum, instruction, assessment, and technology to ensure support of engaged learning. Additionally, standards for what constitutes high-performance technologies that promote learning need to be agreed upon.

Finance. If education is to change, in whatever form that applies to this project, the funding structures of schooling must be a part of that change.

Coordination. Coordination involves many different policy players and many different configurations of technology and telecommunications in the private and public sector. Shared financing and improving technology access and use in school-to-work programs is essential for promoting workplace technologies for students.

Commitment. It is vital to provide ongoing professional development so that all educators will participate in decisions about learning and technology. This commitment involves time, financing, staffing, and powerful models based on research on learning, professional development, and technology emerging from cognitive science and related fields.

Role of the Parent/Community. A final issue for policymakers is the role of parents and the community in school-based technology programs. Many parents or community members do not understand the educational shift toward technology use. They do not understand its significance in their children’s schooling and on their children’s later capability in the workplace. It is essential to place these policy issues into the context of a teacher education curriculum and professional development programs. Teaching inservice and preservice teachers just to use technologies is not enough. Teachers can, and must, play a critical role as instructional leaders who are aware of the policy implications associated with instructional decisions.

We believe the following factors must be considered for technology to minimally play a positive role in education. Specifically, the success or failure of technology is more dependent on human and contextual factors than on hardware or software. Human factors include 1.) The extent to which teachers are given time and access to pertinent training to use technology to support learning; 2.) Seeing technology as a valuable resource; 3.) Determining where it can have the highest payoff and then matching the design of the application with the intended purpose and learning goal; 4.) Having significant critical access to hardware and applications that are appropriate to the learning expectations of the activity; and 5.) Teachers’ perception that technology has improved the climate for learning. Technology implementation requires a well-designed systemic plan and extensive professional development.

Suggested Project Guidelines: Finding out what works, learning how the latest research and technology can help, and continuing to hone one’s skill sets all benefit a teacher and the educational system. Professional Development can be designed in such a way as to deliver experiences that meet the unique needs of diverse learners and build capacity to improve educational practice. Two questions are central to all project activities: 1) In what ways does this lesson promote engaged and meaningful learning? 2) How does technology enhance and extend this lesson in ways that would not be possible without it? Print, video, and other electronic resources can help project participants address these questions. Resources should reflect research about teaching, learning, and technology, but with guidance from the wisdom of practitioners (those engaged in the project and those appearing in the print, video, and online examples). A framework that can answer an additional question, “Do your students have opportunities to use a range of technologies to support their learning?” is NCREL’s Range of Use graph found at www.ncrel.org/engauge/framewk/efp/range/efpranin.htm/. This graph can be used to consider the types of technology uses that support thinking and learning, from the simple to the complex (Complexity Axis); the instructional approaches that work most effectively with various applications of technology—and to what effect (Instructional Axis); and which applications of technology can be a springboard to a real-world context for student learning (Authenticity Axis).

Innovative Approaches to Technology-Pedagogical Integration or Models of Effective Teacher Training in ICT Use:

1.) NCREL has found success working with educators regionally and nationally through a framework called Learning With Technology (LWT). The concepts found within this framework can guide this project. NCREL’s LWT is a professional development experience that has been structured around five adult-oriented instructional phases that are cyclical and serve as scaffolds for each other: Build a Knowledge Base; Observe Models and Cases; Reflect on Practice; Change Practice; and Gain and Share Expertise.

2.) Creating online learning environments for teachers to extend face-to-face professional development and to connect them to their peers seems to have great potential in planning a professional development program. Experienced teachers do not necessarily turn to institutions to get help in using technology or integrating it into curriculum. “Research shows that the first place teachers look for technology help is their peers….To learn how to incorporate technology into their classrooms, teachers are participating in online discussion groups, forums, e-mail lists, bulletin boards, message boards, and chat rooms “(Jones, 2001, p. 36).

3.) What role do local, regional, and national contexts play in the effectiveness of a professional development program for technology integration? From experience as a professional development provider on the Navajo and Hopi Reservations in Arizona, I know that attention to context and cultural factors can affect positively the success of a PD program. Considering the diversity of countries participating in this project, as well as the possible use of already existing resources developed for a different audience, how might a PD project address the contextual environment? Cultural factors related to pedagogy that need attention include communal versus individuality orientation, student discipline, assessments, forms of communication, group work versus individual work, notions of duty and responsibility, amount of structuring of educational experiences, and so on. Local contexts range from rural to urban, many languages to English, non-ICT environments to ICT-rich environments, agricultural to commercial/industrial, low literacy to high literacy, educational goals from minimal education to university graduates, less funding to more funding, few PD opportunities to many PD opportunities, and finally, more localized schooling to more centralized or nationalized schooling. A professional development framework that can standardize a good amount of professional development activities, perhaps with 70 percent overlap across all countries, with the remaining professional development customizable for local and regional contexts, may provide a successful model for technology integration.

The following table illustrates this approach as an example:

Possibilities for Professional Development that will result from this model include:

Contributing Author and Organization: As an invited expert, I bring to this discussion and project 32 years of experience as an educator, 8 of those years as a professor of educational technology in a college of education. I was the director of the Illinois Virtual Campus, a consortium of 65 colleges/universities that offered online courses as an alternative to traditional face-to-face university classes. I taught early childhood, special needs, and elementary children in rural and urban districts, on Indian Reservations, and Department of Defense schools. I have been a provider of professional development to help schools integrate technology into the curriculum, to use the online learning environment for teaching and learning, and to plan for systematic school improvement. I have developed/taught online courses and have consulted with Scandinavian educators implementing online programs and with UNESCO in Bahrain. I currently am the Director for the Center for Technology at NCREL. We provide school leaders with more and better access to procedural knowledge necessary to implement systemic applications of technology to learning; provide educators with high-quality professional development resources related to the application of technology to learning; help leaders, policymakers, and administrators align governance and administration around technology integration; and provide educators and policymakers with information to help them understand the larger issues related to technology access and equity