Education Week - May 22, 2013 - Special Report - S6

EDUCATION WEEK: DIGITAL CURRICULA > www.edweek.org/go/digital-report

MAY 22, 2013

K-12 Educators See Technology as Fueling New Approaches
Mr. Merkert offers
one-on-one instruction to
Rafael Marquez during an
8th grade earth science
class. The teacher uses
a “flipped” approach, in
which students watch
video lectures outside of
class to free up more class
time for discussion,
analysis, and personal
attention.

by trying to focus too much on the
technology itself and not enough
on the content. But after growing
frustrated, she decided to simply
plan her lessons the way she always had, and used the technology
as an additional layer, or tool, to
advance it.
Compared with previous years,
student engagement has improved,
and her class is now able to tackle
more material in significantly less
time, she says.
For instance, when learning
about the phases of the moon,
rather than handing in a grid of
nightly sketches, students used
their tablets to take pictures of the
moon and built a narrated slideshow of their findings.
Consequently, Ms. Throckmorton
also sees herself playing a different
role in the day-to-day functioning of
her classroom.
“Because of the cooperative learning and because of the higher-order
thinking, I now give a 20-minute
mini-lesson, and they have the resources right in front of them to run
with it,” she said. “In past years, I
would have been standing at the
front of the room lecturing the entire time, which I hate.”
And rather than becoming intimidated by a student who might
be more nimble than she is in using
technology, Ms. Throckmorton
views students as a team and often
relies on their expertise to help fill
in the gaps.
“One afternoon, some of us suddenly lost the Google toolbar, and a
few students showed everyone how

Teacher Ed.
Eyes Changes
To Modernize
CONTINUED FROM PAGE S5

Excellence in Teaching.
James G. Cibulka, the president
of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education
(ncate), which currently accredits
670 colleges of education, sees a
range of offerings when it comes to
education schools keeping up with
advancements in technology.
Mr. Cibulka cautioned that ncate
only accredits fewer than half of
the national providers. The issue
is further complicated by the fact
that accreditation is a voluntary
process, with some states requiring it for licensure while others can
opt out. Based on ncate’s subset,
he described offerings as “all over
the place,” and called it “a matter of
great concern.”
In future years, the organization is planning to put in place a
new set of five accreditation standards, in which technology is woven
throughout each requirement. The
aim is to provide more symmetry

Emile Wamsteker for Education Week

CONTINUED FROM PAGE S5

to get it back up,” she said.
Mr. Anderson sees the role of the
teacher as undergoing a fundamental overhaul. He sees it as part of
his job to help dispel the inevitable
fear that comes along with such
changes.
“It’s less of kids sitting in rows
and listening to the teacher, from
Charlie Brown, than a teacher on
the sidelines who is listening to
what kids are doing and saying and
providing that guidance,” he said.
In contrast with the 2012-13
school year, with six classrooms
piloting the tablet-based 1-to-1
computing initiative, the entire

Winston-Salem/Forsyth County
district is planning to put in place
a “bring your own device,” or byod,
initiative in September. Students
will be allowed to bring their own
digital devices—whether a tablet, a
laptop, or a smartphone—to school.
But the difference, Mr. Anderson
says, is not simply the presence of
such devices in the classroom.
“The biggest shift has to happen
in teaching. It’s a pedagogy shift
that teachers will have to undergo,
from teacher-centered to studentcentered, and it’s pretty incredible
what we’re seeing so far,” said Mr.
Anderson, who has worked in the

district for the past decade.
“Because when the student has
access to the same amount of information as a teacher, teaching has to
change,” he said. “Teachers simply
can’t do what they’ve traditionally
done. It’s impossible.”
Part of that change is jettisoning
the notion that younger teachers
are necessarily better equipped to
teach in a digital classroom.
So far, in Winston-Salem, of the
six teachers in the district’s 1-to-1
computing pilot, the two teachers
with 20 years or more of experience
are outperforming their younger,
less experienced colleagues,

and quality in preparing teachers
to use digital curricula.
And with schools coming up for
accreditation once every seven
years, Mr. Cibulka didn’t mince
words: “There will be no way for
schools to meet the new standards unless technology is infused
throughout their program.”

changes, education is a field that’s
often reluctant to do so.
Too much emphasis in the world
of teacher preparation is placed on
the technology tools themselves,
Ms. Meier believes, rather than on
how they can help improve teaching and learning.
She sees, instead, a need for
schools of education to harness
the devices as a catalyst for moving into the 21st century—not as
silver bullets or quick fixes, but as
tools to strengthen curriculum and
enhance pedagogy by giving teachers and students access to better
information and helping personalize learning in ways that bolster
students’ strengths and shore up
their weaknesses. For example,
Teachers College started a program
that prepares students to work in
schools as technology specialists
who can help educators facilitate
these changes.
Ms. Meier also cited research
that says beginning teachers
need more exposure to technology.
“Studies show that when students
are placed in classrooms, they’re
often not placed with teachers who
are demonstrating a fluent use of
technology, or are often placed in
schools that don’t even have the
technology because of funding con-

straints,” she said.
Relay Graduate School of Education, a New York City-based hybrid
master’s-degree program for teachers in New York and New Jersey, is
similarly trying to figure out how
best to meet the needs of its teachers who are working in more than
180 schools, each with vastly different resource configurations.
The school, which was chartered
in 2011, now enrolls more than 600
full-time teachers, half of whom are
current Teach For America corps
members. Using a hybrid model,
students take 60 percent of their
coursework in-person and 40 percent online.
While the school has yet to offer
specific classes or modules to train
teachers in using digital curricula,
Thackston Lundy, Relay’s chief of
staff, says they are eager to head in
that direction.
In future years, he sees education schools playing a vital role
in reshaping the classroom and
influencing the changing role of
teachers.
“We’re standing on the precipice
of the role of the teacher changing
dramatically in the next several
years,” Mr. Lundy said. “New technology and better data will change
how we structure the school day,

Slow to React
Digital devices, cautions Ms.
Grossman, are merely one piece of
an ongoing puzzle. “Technology is
not the thing,” she said. “It’s what
it enables.”
Ms. Grossman emphasizes the
need to still train teachers across
a wide array of contexts—from
1-to-1 computing classrooms, in
which each student has his or her
own digital learning device, to a district that has yet to take the digital
plunge.
“If we invest too much, too soon,
and only teach digital, we’re also
doing many teachers a disservice,”
she said.
Ellen B. Meier, a professor of
computing and education at Teachers College, Columbia University,
and co-director of the Center for
Technology and School Change,
says that when it comes to making

according to Mr. Anderson.
“They might have come to this
kicking and screaming, but the
teachers who have been the most
successful didn’t necessarily know
anything about technology. They
were the masters of their content,”
he said. “For some of the younger
teachers, who are still grappling
with classroom management and
learning the content, it’s been a
very difficult transition.”

Getting Connected
Karen Cator, the new president
and chief executive officer of Digital
Promise, an organization first authorized by Congress to accelerate
innovation in education that is now
an independent, bipartisan nonprofit based in Washington, similarly thinks districts should abandon the mythology that younger
teachers are necessarily more capable of integrating technology in
their classrooms.
Going forward, Ms. Cator sees

what students learn, and how we
organize K-12 classrooms. The role
of a great teacher will be more important than ever.
“But our most urgent priority
right now is making sure our graduates are prepared with the basic
pedagogical underpinnings and
deep content knowledge needed to
make an immediate impact in their
classrooms today,” he said.

Relevance at Risk
The problem is that even at
well-established education school
programs, reluctance to make
changes is common.
Chris Dede, a professor of learning technologies at the Harvard
Graduate School of Education, described his school as being “more
forward-thinking” than the vast
majority of education schools.
“Even so, there hasn’t been the
sea change towards technologybased methods throughout all
teacher preparation courses that
I and my technology-using colleagues would like to see,” he said.
Mr. Dede considers one major
culprit to be a lack of pressure on
faculty members to change the
content of their courses.
“Most teacher education faculty

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Education Week - May 22, 2013 - Special Report

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