Technology benefits educators
By Darci Kirby
Staff
Writer
Two programs titled the "Purdue Program for
Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers to Use Technology" and the "Indiana
Assessment of Student Educational Proficiencies," are teaching
students in the School of Education how to administer technology to
Kindergarten through12th-grade students.
According to Jim Lehman, a professor of educational
technology, the "Purdue Program for Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers
to Use Technology" or P3T3 project, is part of a national initiative
that prepares the pre-service teachers for using technology in teaching
and learning. The project has two major goals - to improve student preparation
and to improve the ability of faculty to model effective uses of technology.
Technology proficient faculty will teach the pre-service
teachers and the teachers will participate in rich and diverse field
experiences enabled by technology.
This project was funded by a grant from the U.S.
Department of Education for $1.1 million. Purdue University and partners
pledged the same amount, which created $2.2 million for the project.
"The program fit in pretty nicely," said
Lehman. "Purdue’s School of Education just completed an extensive
revision of elementary programs … the school had already decided
that technology was a real important part of the programs. It is allowing
us to do what we wanted to do anyway, just faster and with better overall
support."
According to Jill Lesh, project coordinator, the
P3T3 program is partnered with four Kindergarten through 12th-grade
sites this semester. The students in the teacher education program use
video conferencing to tutor the students, work collaboratively with
them on projects, observe expert teaching and interact with classroom
teachers.
The four sites Purdue is working with are a Crawfordsville
fifth-grade class, an East Chicago third-grade class, a Lafayette high
school class and a Lawrence Township fifth-grade class.
This is the first year of the three-year project.
"This project will ensure that the Purdue School of Education pre-service
teachers will be technology proficient and can be leaders in their K-12
school settings," Lesh said.
Lehman said, "Our students will develop e-portfolios
that show what they know about teaching. Hopefully the portfolio test
will pilot next year and be fully implemented the year after that."
Another project the School of Education is working
on is the Indiana Assessment of Student Education Proficiencies. According
to Deborah Bennett, assistant professor of education studies, the project's
system was designed initially for students with more significant disabilities
as a way to provide accountability evidence for statewide reporting.
"We’ve developed an electronic portfolio
system that allows us to evaluate children in multidimensional ways
using technology - video, audio, scan documents, etc. to collect evidence
of student performance in an electronic portfolio that is linked to
state educational standards," Bennett said.
The system is statewide, and students are working
with measured progress in New Hampshire to customize software for nine
other states.
The project is a $1 million program funded by the
Indiana Department of Education and Purdue's Center for Education and
Research in Information Assurance and Security to secure educational
records. "We needed to develop a system that we could use for all
the students across the state that are not currently well assessed,"
Bennett said.
The program has now been expanded to include children
in early-childhood programs as well.
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