EAST LANSING, Mich. - Michigan State University's College of Education has been awarded a $1.4 million federal grant that will bring together faculty, current and future K-12 teachers and educational technology experts to develop technology to support effective and innovative teaching.
The project will establish a "design community" where teams of educators and students will develop technological solutions to problems faced in teaching and learning situations.
"It's very exciting," said Yong Zhao, assistant professor of educational psychology who co-wrote the grant proposal with Punya Mishra, assistant professor of educational psychology. "The project will allow us to go beyond simple procedural skills in using hardware and software, helping us develop flexible, content-driven and creative uses of technology in the classroom.
"We're going to do this by not only working with K-12 teachers, but also with teacher educators, graduate students and our teacher preparation students who will be the ones going into the classrooms of tomorrow."
Mishra added: "We see the future teacher as being more than a user of technology. We see teachers as being designers - people who construct meaningful technological solutions to authentic pedagogical problems. The College of Education has committed itself to an integrated approach to using technology in learning by going beyond conventional approaches that simply offer a series of isolated workshops or courses."
The overall goals of the project are:
- To prepare a new generation of K-12 teachers who are able to creatively and effectively use technology to enhance student learning.
- To develop highly skilled teacher educators who are able to use
technology to better prepare tomorrow's teachers. Through the project, 30-teacher education faculty will develop a deep understanding of technology and will be able to apply that knowledge in their teaching. - To prepare the future generation of teacher educators who are able to use and model the use of technology to enhance student learning. Each year, the College of Education graduates approximately 60 new Ph.D. students who become teacher educators in other institutions. The project will ensure that they are prepared to teach and learn with technology.
- To develop a collection of technology-rich resources (software tools, Web-based curriculum materials, hypermedia, best-practice cases, etc.) that model intelligent and powerful uses of technology for teacher educators and future professionals.
The three-year grant is funded under the U.S. Department of Education's Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers to Use Technology (PT3) program. As part of the grant, the college will create six or seven design teams each year made up of teacher education and educational technology faculty, graduate students, K-12 teachers and MSU students in the teacher preparation program.
For example, one of the initial design teams will focus on developing intelligent uses of technology in core academic areas: mathematics, science, social studies and language arts. Faculty and students will work closely with teachers from East Lansing, Holt, Flint and Lansing. For Zhao and Mishra, the project will allow for a deeper appreciation of the role technology can play in teaching and learning.
"The knowledge generated by the design communities will be made available on the Web to teachers and teacher educators both within the college and the world at large," Mishra said.
For more information, please contact Yong Zhao at (517) 353-4325, Punya Mishra at 353-7211 or Victor Inzunza at 355-1826.