Avatar Lab at KSU Provides a World of Scenarios for Teachers of the Future

By Paul Floeckher

This article and photo originally appeared in Cobb Life Magazine and are reprinted with permission.

Teachers encounter all sorts of situations when they’re instructing students in the classroom, and the Bagwell College of Education at Kennesaw State University is taking an animated approach to preparing teacher candidates for scenarios they will experience as educators.

Bagwell has a new laboratory where KSU students and faculty utilize mixed-reality technology to interact with avatars of children and adults, simulating a variety of situations and challenges teachers can encounter. The student avatars each have their own unique personalities, and the scenarios have low, medium and high settings requiring varying levels of problem-solving.

“The lab’s capabilities are endless for providing purposeful practice for teacher candidates before they ever step foot in a classroom,” said Kate Zimmer, interim chair of the Department of Inclusive Education and an associate professor of special education.

Preparing Skilled Special Education Teachers

By Joanne Van Boxtel and Heather Taylor Wizikowski

This article and photo originally were originally published in SmartBrief Education and are reprinted with permission.

We all know the numbers are sobering. A 2018 brief from the Council for Exceptional Children showed critical shortages of special education teachers in 48 states and the District of Columbia. Fifty-one percent of all school districts and 90% of high-poverty school districts report difficulty recruiting highly qualified special education teachers. The exit rate for special education teachers is nearly twice that of general education teachers and enrollment in teacher training programs has declined by 35% over the previous five years.

It seems a dismal picture, but there is light at the end of the tunnel — one that prepares teachers to enter this dynamic field and equips them with tools to help them skillfully and confidently persist in the profession.

Center for Teacher Leadership & Learning Innovation Opens at LaFetra College of Education

By Genesis Gonzalez

This article and photo originally appeared on the University of La Verne website and are reprinted with permission.

The University of La Verne’s LaFetra College of Education welcomes the new Center for Teacher Leadership & Learning Innovation, a first-of-its-kind lab, designed to support and train educators from across Los Angeles County and the Inland Empire in 21st-century learning competencies.

“As a College of Education, which prepares community and school leaders, support providers and teachers, it is imperative that our faculty be

Preparing New Teachers: How Collaboration Across Professional Associations Can Advance Technology Infusion

By Arlene Borthwick, Jon Clausen, Teresa Foulger and David Slykhuis

This article and photo originally appeared on the Advancing Research & Innovation in the STEM Education of Preservice Teachers in High-Need School Districts (ARISE) website and are reprinted with permission.

Despite heavy investment in STEM (e.g., STEM for ALL), most PK-20 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics instruction remains heavily siloed. To date, educators have not agreed on a clear definition of STEM. Is it curriculum or a teaching technique/pedagogy? Can a science lesson be called STEM, even if the other domains are not fully represented? As technology advocates, we think STEM curricula should have a strong representation from all four domains.

The STEM movement was intended to address science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in order to produce students who are prepared for the unique needs of today’s workforce. With regard to the “T” component of STEM, the only way to develop teacher candidates who fully embrace the power of technology for P12 is to infuse technology throughout their preparation.

A “technology infusion” approach

AACTE Awards Program Recognizes Innovative Use of Technology in Educator Preparation

By Jerrica Thurman

AACTE is committed to recognizing excellence in educator preparation through its prestigious annual Awards Program. Among the nine categories of awards, the Best Practice Award for the Innovative Use of Technology honors AACTE members that infuse technology throughout their curriculum in an innovative way. AACTE’s Committee on Innovation and Technology sponsors this award and selects a school, college, or department of education that uses technologies to stretch beyond standard practices in teacher education.

The video above features AACTE member institution Northeastern State University’s (NSU) College of Education, the 2018 recipient of the Best Practice Award for the Innovative Use of Technology. Dean Vanessa Anton explains how NSU’s Robotics Academy of Critical Engagement (RACE) program works and why it received the award.

Inspiring Spaces in the College of Education’s DeGarmo Hall

By Tommy Navickas

This article and photo originally appeared in Illinois State University News and are reprinted with permission.

For several years, the College of Education has prioritized the redesign of classrooms and computer labs to reflect the flexible learning needs of aspiring educators and their future students.

The first reimagined collaborative space was Studio Teach. The third-floor, approximately 2,000-square-foot area overlooks the University’s Quad. It features dozens of flexible seating options, stations where multiple students can connect to a single monitor, SMART Boards, a 3D printer, an educational gaming area, a writeable white board partition, multiple wall-mounted monitors, and an array of technology available for checkout.

Storage areas on DeGarmo’s garden level have also been converted to classroom spaces with several interactive monitors that can be controlled individually or together through a single source. In addition, several classroom spaces in DeGarmo have been remodeled with a few more to come this fall. They too incorporate flexible seating and cutting-edge educational technologies.

The Richard L. Benson Flexible Learning Space was created with the help of funding by the alumnus for which it was named.

It’s a shift in mindset reflective of the evolving state of PreK–12 learning environments across

ISTE 2019: CTOs Return to “Bootcamp,” Advocating for Tech and More

By Roger Riddell and Naaz Modan

Credit: Roger Riddell/Education Dive

The following is an excerpt from an article originally published in Education Dive and is reprinted with permission. The article summarizes the 2019 annual International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference in June. 

Prepping new student teachers for digital learning

In a Monday morning session, ISTE Standards Senior Director Carolyn Sykora, ISTE Higher Education Recognition Program Lead Reviewer Sarah McPherson and the Fairfield University Graduate School of Education and Allied Professions’ Joshua Elliott detailed how ISTE is working with teacher preparation programs to recognize their quality and provide a simpler path to the ISTE Certification for Educators.

According to data from the U.S. Department of Education cited by Sykora, 146,000 graduate degrees in education were awarded in 2016, and there were 451,000 pre-service educators in 2014. The department also made a higher ed policy addendum to its National Education Technology Plan, to which Sykora noted there’s a lot of alignment between recommendations and the ISTE Standards for Educators and Students.

That’s noteworthy, given that a number of states—including Wisconsin, Michigan, Connecticut, Vermont, Texas, Washington, Delaware, Iowa, Utah, New York, Wyoming and Arkansas—and individual districts are adopting the standards.

New Initiative To Advance Teacher and Principal Preparation Grounded in the Science of Learning

By Gretchen Wright

Research shows that teachers are the number one in-school factor affecting student outcomes and principals are the number two factor. One important metric for those outcomes is how well and how equitably our nation’s diverse students are able to navigate our increasingly global and technologically complex world, where skills like critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and being able to apply knowledge in a range of contexts are crucial to success. Today, Learning Policy Institute and Bank Street Graduate School of Education have announced the launch of the Educator Preparation Laboratory (EdPrepLab), a new initiative to help educator preparation programs ensure that new teachers and leaders are able to provide all k-12 students with the kind of deeper learning that helps them develop those skills. 

EdPrepLab brings together 15 of the nation’s leading teacher and principal preparation programs to collaborate on further developing and documenting models for preparation that equip educators to advance  deeper learning and equity, and that can inform  other programs across the nation. The initiative will also support research to improve preparation programs and work with policymakers at federal, state, and local levels to help leverage policies that encourage the use of research-based practices that ensure new teachers and school leaders are well-equipped to provide deeper learning and to build the next generation of equitable schools and instructional education practices.

“Our world has changed significantly since the U.S. education system was first developed, and students today need an education that supports and prepares them for that more diverse, technology-driven, knowledge-based society,” said Learning Policy Institute President Linda Darling-Hammond. “That means we need to prepare teachers and school leaders to provide this kind of education. Fortunately, we have research to guide the way. There is a wealth of new knowledge about the science of learning and development, how social and emotional skills support academic learning, and how to ensure that students really understand what they have learned.”

Georgia Southern and Haven Elementary Partner for Educator Program

By Georgia Southern University

This article originally appeared on the Georgia Southern University website and is reprinted with permission.

Georgia Southern University and Haven Elementary School are partnering to offer teachers a Gratifying Problem-Solving (GPS) program, which will provide educators unique monthly professional development based on the school’s current need for improved mathematics instruction.

The College of Education’s Jackie Kim, associate professor of elementary and special education, serves as director for the project, totaling $74,976, which is funded by a Community Partnership Grant from the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement.

The GPS program uses a bottom-up approach, allowing the participants at Haven Elementary to help shape its development, workshop activities and directive.

“We go to find out what their inquiries and needs are and create a workshop based on the assessment,” said Kim. “We want to start with what they are currently doing in the classroom and change their practice to make instruction stronger yet doable.”

Ways to Highlight Innovative Technology in Your Annual Meeting Proposal Submission

By Lara Luetkehans

Educational technology is a critical component in the preparation of teacher candidates across the nation and the AACTE Annual Meeting is the prime opportunity to share best practices on how colleges of education are advancing technology in their programs. The AACTE 2020 Annual Meeting themed, “Disrupting Inequities: Educating for Change,” will take place February 28 – March 1 in Atlanta, GA.

The AACTE Committee on Innovation and Technology encourages proposals for the 2020 Annual Meeting in the areas of technology, innovation and teacher education. We hope you are inspired to think about how your work in the active use of technology to enable learning and teaching connects with the conferences’ four strands. We have provided recommended ways on how to feature innovation and technology in your conference proposals:

Watch Livestream of the 2018 NAEP Technology and Engineering Literacy Release

By Jerrica Thurman

AACTE invites you to view a livestreamed panel discussion about the second release of the NAEP Technology and Engineering Literacy (TEL) results by the National Assessment Governing Board and the National Center for Education Statistics. The livestream is on Tuesday, April 30 from 2:00-4:00pm EDT. Register now!

In response to the increasing role of technology in students’ lives, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) administers the Technology and Engineering Literacy (TEL) assessment—the first one of its kind in the United States. TEL adds valuable information to what NAEP reports for science and mathematics. This assessment measures students’ capacity to understand technology and how to design objects, processes, and systems to meet human needs. During the livestreamed event, presenters will discuss how the 2018 results compare to the 2014 debut of TEL and show how this assessment breaks the testing mold.

Call for Entries: 2020 AACTE Awards

By Linda Minor

Applications for the 2020 AACTE awards are now open on AACTE’s online submission site. Entries for the Outstanding Book Award are due May 16 and entries for the Outstanding Dissertation Award are due August 20. All other award submissions are due October 9.

This is the 24^th year AACTE’s awards program has been recognizing member institutions’ exemplary programs as well as individuals who have made noteworthy contributions to education preparation. For an overview of the 2019 award winners, see this press release.

Scholarships Available to Teachers for Code.org computer science professional learning program

By Kirsten O'Brien

Code.org is offering scholarships for thousands of eligible middle and high school teachers to attend professional learning workshops. The workshops prepare teachers from all backgrounds to teach computer science in their classroom—no prior computer science experience is necessary. The workshops begin with a 5-day, in-person summer workshop and continue with 4 single-day follow-up workshops throughout the year. Dates and locations are assigned by region.

The lack of a computer science teacher is the biggest barrier to offering the subject in most schools, even though computer science is among the fastest growing industries in the United States. Currently, just 35% of U.S. high schools teach it and only 10% of STEM graduates study it. What’s more, computing and computer science are plagued by tremendous underrepresentation of African American, Latinx, and female students, despite the fact that these groups represent 65% of the entire U.S. population.

UCA’s iPad Mobile Initiative earns AACTE Technology Award

By Katrina Norfleet

AACTE is delighted to announce the University of Central Arkansas (UCA) College of Education is the recipient of the 2019 AACTE Best Practice Award for Innovative Use of Technology for its iPad Mobile Initiative program. Donna Wake, associate dean of UCA’s College of Education, will be presented with the award at the AACTE 71st Annual Meeting, February 22-24, in Louisville, KY.

The UCA College of Education is in its third year of implementing the intensive 1:1 mobile technology initiative for all undergraduates in its initial preparation programs. Beginning in fall 2016, students who were enrolled in the university’s undergraduate elementary, special education, middle level, and all secondary education programs were immersed in the mobile technology initiative. The iPads devices were formally listed as a College of Education curriculum requirement, and students were able to purchase the devices at the education rate.

“Vision isn’t something you declare. It’s something you build. The mobile learning initiative has given our school the opportunity to transform traditional approaches into a commitment to active learning, increased student voice, and accessibility,” said Victoria Groves-Scott, dean, UCA College of Education. “This has been especially important as we strive to prepare the teachers of tomorrow to educate students who live in an increasingly interconnected and information-saturated world. Through contextual analysis and application, we aim for our students to be creators and designers of learning opportunities rather than simply as carriers of information.”

Virtual Classrooms Deliver Real Advantage for UM Education Majors

By Sara McAlister

This article and photo originally appeared on the University of Mississippi Ole Miss News website and is reprinted with permission.

Meet Ava and Dev. They are in middle school. Ava is quick-thinking and decisive and likes to be challenged with new ideas and concepts. Dev is a rule-follower who is self-driven with high standards.

Ava and Dev are not your average students. In fact, they are not even real students at all. They are avatars in a virtual classroom at the University of Mississippi School of Education, where education majors are gaining valuable, hands-on teaching experience even before their student teaching.

Mursion, originally called TeachLive, is a cutting-edge technology that delivers customized virtual reality training to provide professional challenges that exist in the job every day.

Developed at the University of Central Florida, Mursion is being used at more than 85 campuses in the United States. Since 2012, Mursion has grown at UM. Last school year, 800 students in the School of Education practiced with the system and are required to use it at least twice as part of their coursework before graduating.