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By Catherine Paglin Inside, too, the schoolhouse was bright and shining. The walls of new lumber were clean and smelled fresh. Sunshine streamed in from the eastern windows. Across the whole end of the room was a clean, new blackboard. Before it stood the teacher's desk, a boughten desk, smoothly varnished. It gleamed honey-colored in the sunlight, and on its flat top lay a large Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.
Today, new teachers face a staggering array of media and technologies which are changing faster than ever before: desktop computers, networks, and laptops; software of every type—word processing, spreadsheet, database, multimedia, graphics, educational games, and telecommunications; CD-ROM; digital cameras; scanners; camcorders; laser disc players; video and audio cassette recorders; and the Internet in all its permutations including e-mail, the World Wide Web, search engines, FTP sites (Internet sites from which software can be downloaded and uploaded), and newsgroups. The advancing technologies—and their applications in public school classrooms—can be imposing to students learning to be teachers in the 21st century. "At first it was very intimidating," says Larissa Benner, an elementary education student in Portland State University's Graduate Teacher Education Program. Benner works at a computer in PSU's Metropolitan Instructional Support Laboratory along with 29 other students from her elementary education cohort. Surrounded by coffee cups, water bottles, and notebooks, the students enter information such as student names, parents' names, addresses, and birthdays into a database. The information can be used to sort students by month of birth, print labels for mailings to parents, assemble an address book, and other tasks. Benner is taking Instruction and Technology, a course required by the state of Oregon for a teacher's license. At PSU, the course includes units on various instructional strategies, selecting and evaluating instructional media, using classroom management software, using multimedia in instruction, and putting together an electronic portfolio. In this lesson, PSU instructor David Bullock focuses on management applications such as electronic grade books, showing students how they can either create their own—using spreadsheet software—or download examples from the Internet. Grade book software, he explains, can help teachers compute final grades, track missed assignments, generate class statistics, create comment pages, and assemble progress reports. "We say that a large part of our job is to provide opportunities for students to see how technology can work for them as professionals," says Assistant Professor Emily de la Cruz, who team teaches the class with Bullock. She teaches students about designing lessons and assessments and using various instructional strategies such as cooperative learning, inquiry-based learning, and direct instruction. Bullock focuses on the instructional tools—when to include technology in instruction and how to select it. Teaching preservice teachers to use classroom management software, as Bullock does, may not at first glance appear to further any lofty educational goals. However, the instructors believe that when students see how technology can be personally useful, this opens the door to an understanding of its more creative uses in instruction. Indeed, as they enter grades into a spreadsheet, one pair of students is chatting about how the software could be used for a classroom project on nutrition.
"Once I had an e-mail account and started doing assignments on e-mail—learning how to communicate with my other cohort members—I found it less intimidating," she says. "Then I learned how to get lesson plans off the Internet, and I felt more confident. Now, hopefully, I can learn how to make grade books and record data. I think by doing it a step at a time I'm less intimidated. I'm sure there's so much more for me to learn." The skills and knowledge for using technology are near necessities in today's competitive educational job market. "It's extremely important and it's an integral part of our interviews," says Linda Borquist, executive administrator for human resources with the Beaverton School District. "Teachers must be able to teach and model technology." Beyond word processing, e-mail skills, and the ability to use basic programs as an instructional tool, the Beaverton district is looking for new teachers who are not afraid of technology, who exhibit a sense of enthusiasm, and who understand the value of technology. The district wants teachers who are creative and open to using the ever-changing technology in new ways. "It's almost become as important as any other subject area we might be probing for, but it's an integration across all subject areas," says Borquist.
Ideally, says Naso, he would like to see his district hire people who have made technology a part of their lives. "I have this strong belief that, ultimately, people teach who they are. I can take a course, but if I do not use the Internet at home on a personal basis, the probability that I will bring it to the classroom is limited." Instructors Bullock and de la Cruz agree that one course in itself is not enough for students to truly absorb how to use technology confidently and appropriately. Students in the graduate teaching program routinely use e-mail to submit assignments and daily journals and to communicate with faculty and other cohort members. They also participate in listservs (discussion groups—by subscription—on the Internet), and they access course information for the Instruction and Technology class from a Web page. One secondary education cohort with a specific focus on technology has even set up its own Web page with links to students' personal Web pages and other sites they found useful. De la Cruz and Bullock encourage their colleagues in the school of education to continue emphasizing the skills and ways of thinking introduced in the Technology and Instruction course. For instance, a student taking a course in math methods can evaluate math software using the criteria learned in the foundation class. "Students need to see professors here using technology and they need placements at sites with reputations for using it," de la Cruz adds.
"We've got computers in the classroom and my teacher doesn't use them at all," says one person who is student teaching at a middle school. "The kids play with it. It's kind of a privilege thing." "There's a lot of teachers, even now—they don't use it as a tool," adds another student. "They just use it as a game or a reward." Some student teachers bring badly needed technological knowledge and practices to their schools. Students in the PSU program have helped assemble hardware, been invited to join school technology committees, tutored their mentor teachers on uses of software, demonstrated effective ways of using software in instruction, and been hired to conduct training. "It's a good example of reci pro city," says de la Cruz. "The student- teacher has come with some knowledge and expertise, as opposed to the cooperating teacher holding all the knowledge to pass on." Chad Holloway, a secondary education student in the graduate teaching program and candidate for a master of education degree, brings both new ideas and new equipment from PSU to Glencoe High School in Hillsboro, where he works with teachers of U.S. and world history. "Chad has some wonderful plans for getting kids in contact with students in other countries," says Marilyn Ramone, one of Holloway's cooperating teachers. "He's adding excitement and opening up the world to the kids. That's one of the things that's nice about having student teachers. You're able to brush up on all the new stuff."
Just as the preservice teachers at PSU learn to do in the Technology and Instruction class, the 10th-graders must critically evaluate the linked Web sites using examples and criteria Holloway has discussed with them. "Hopefully, they will realize there are good resources to be found, and also realize there is a lot of garbage out there," he says. Holloway hopes to get approval at Glencoe to put the students' Web pages on the Internet. "This is a way they can be part of a larger learning community," he says.
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Date of Last Update: 9/28/01 
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In 1883, when 16-year-old Laura Ingalls taught a three-month school in the Dakota Territory, her instructional tools were the dictionary, ruler, chalk, and blackboard. Her three students brought readers and spellers from home and worked on slates with slate pencils. For Ingalls, these bare essentials were simple and familiar, not something she had to study to earn her teacher's certificate.
Students come into PSU's school of education with varying levels of comfort with technology. Some have rarely touched a computer, while others have spent years using technology in previous careers. Before taking the class, Benner felt she didn't like and 't understand computers. PSU's program helped her to overcome those fears.
Superintendent Ron Naso says the North Clackamas School District also is weighing computer literacy in its hiring formula. "We would hope that our new teachers would be fairly well-versed in the big three of spreadsheet, database, and word processing—plus understanding the Internet," he says. "Having that kind of background, those kinds of skills, would be a significant plus in being hired."
However, what students find at their student-teaching placements varies as much as their personal experiences with technology. Some find well-equipped schools and teachers who know how to use the technologies; others find poorly equipped schools, or equipment that goes unused or is misused for lack of training or interest.
Using a laptop computer and a projection panel borrowed from PSU, Holloway has enhanced his lectures and discussions with PowerPoint presentations. Tenth-graders in Ramone's world history class will soon begin work on an assignment he designed with input from his PSU cohort members. After writing a traditional report, the students, working in groups of four, will construct a Web page based on the report. Each group will have a technical coordinator, text editor, visual editor, and link coordinator. Students will be graded on their level of group participation; the aesthetics and user-friendliness of their page design; and how relevant their required 500 words of text, five graphics, and three external links are to the subject matter.
