Greetings Educators,

As my work in Algeria winds down and we begin the final reports, I’ve begun to reflect on my experiences and the role that technology plays in education. Keeping in mind that Algeria is in the early stages of technology adaption whereas in the United States we began infusing technology many years ago, we set standards for students and teachers, and created a large base of research and experiences. In other countries, particularly developing countries, they’re in the very early stages and can learn lessons from our success and our failures. And we’ve made many mistakes over the past 10 plus years.

Although many issues related to technology use in education are important, what strikes me as one of the most important is how teachers infuse technology into their practice of teaching. In other countries I work with, including Algeria and Lebanon, teachers using technology means a fundamental change in the way they approach education. Although many teachers in these countries are adopting new instructional strategies based, as in Algeria, on education reform initiatives, the use of technology may not be affecting a significant change.

A body of research has shown that teachers who adopt a more constructivist model for using technology as a teaching and learning tool may find better outcomes.  In our Certificate Program we’ve focused heavily on “change with a difference” in order to help teachers make changes to their instructional strategies when integrating technology.  Unfortunately many teachers just adapt the technology to their current instructional strategies thus, it’s “change without a difference.”

Change is a key word here. The million dollar question is what impacts change with a difference? A great deal of research has addressed this issue and, from my perspective as a graduate program director, the key element is professional development.

Professional development programs such as the MSU Educational Technology Certificate and Endorsement Program (I’m always looking for ways to make a plug) must focus not only on technical skills but also on instructional strategies necessary for infusing technology into teaching. Without doing so teachers learn to use technology but only as an aid in their current practice.

As we at MSU explore this topic in greater detail we also look back at our program and how it has evolved over the past 12 years. When we first started we did indeed focus on the technical skills. But as times change and we learn more about the effective uses of technology our program has changed.

This fall, we’re rolling out an updated and new version of our Certificate Program. While we use the lessons we’ve learned over the past 12 years and use the most recent version of our program as a foundation, we’ve also included a greater emphasis on instructional strategies and understanding how many of the new technologies available can enhance learning rather than just support teaching.  As technology keeps changing and evolving so must our program.

If you would like to learn more about our programs and how, in particular, our program can help teachers successfully integrate technology into the classroom, give us a call. We’re always interested in talking with teachers and educators about teacher professional development. You see – that’s what we do!

Best Regards,

Joseph Codde
Professor and Director
Educational Technology Certificate Program

Contact us at: 517-432-9259
http://edutech.msu.edu

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 10th, 2007 at 8:39 pm and is filed under Directors' Column. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.