Denise Schmidt-Crawford

Evaluating the Impact of Educational Technology

There are a number of concurrent initiatives related to effective use of technology in teaching and learning. For instance: • The Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Educatio...

Seymour Would Smile on Our Makerspaces Special Issue

I t seems very appropriate that the JDLTE is announcing a special issue on “Makerspaces in Teacher Education” shortly after the August 1, 2016, passing of Dr. Seymour Papert, an educational visionary and strong advocate for constructivist learning experiences for students. Dr. Papert, a legend for many of us in the field of technology in education, posited a position on the appropriate use of computers to assist human learning more than 35 years ago with the publication of his seminal book Mindstorms: Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas. His views were well ahead of his times and his visions for technology use in schools have had a profound influence on scholars, teachers, and students. For many of us, it was the work and vision of Dr. Papert that fueled our initial interest in the potential of technology to positively impact the learning of children. We share a picture of a well-worn copy ofMindstorms, as it provides evidence of the deep effect Seymour Papert and this book have had upon our teaching, our learning, our research, and our careers. At a time when the computer was new to schools and teacher education programs, Seymour provided a vision of how this device could be used to support a deep change in both teaching and learning. He stated, “In most contemporary educational situations where children come into contact with computers the computer is used to put children through their paces, to provide exercises of an appropriate level of difficulty, to provide feedback, and to dispense information. The computer programming the child. In the LOGO environment the relationship is reversed: The child, even at preschool ages, is in control. The child programs the computer” (Papert, 1980, p. 19). ReadingMindstorms was a careerchanging experience for us and probably for many others. At a time when most did not find computers or technology particularly compelling or exciting, Seymour Papert provided a vision for using technology to create active and exciting learning environments for learners, environments where students could build, create, and think about their thinking. Papert’s vision for creating educational environments where the child is in control and the child constructs his or her knowledge through experience has been somewhat slow to take hold in education, but increasingly teachers are creating environments where this type of knowledge construction can take place. Personally, Ann fondly recalls including LOGO experiences in her work with preservice teachers, in-service teachers, and graduate students with the expectation that LOGO would provide these learners with a compelling example of using technology to create an active, learner-oriented environment where students actually do mathematics and enjoy the sense of accomplishment in creating their own projects. Ann vividly remembers one teacher working with LOGO and accomplishing her goal of creating a picture of a swingset. She looked at her product with pride and said, “My students will love this.” Ann, as a teacher educator, was struck with the realization that the teacher had enjoyed the process of creating a challenge and then building a solution to the challenge, but that she could not say, “I love this.” LOGO clearly provided, however, both teachers and students with exciting experiences with the challenge and accomplishment embedded in using the computer to create or perhaps in teaching the computer to create. In 1980, Papert suggested a school curriculum that “supports children as they build their own intellectual structures with materials drawn from the culture” (Papert, 1980, p. 32). It is clear that Papert’s vision for active computer use in schools created the foundation for today’s Makerspace movement. The fact that this vision emerged more than 35 years ago is a strong testament to the amazing mind of Dr. Seymour Papert. For a variety of reasons, early uses of computers and other technology in schools tended to focus on rote learning and drill and practice. As educators, we have been slow in implementing Papert’s vision of schools as active, collaborative spaces where students and teachers are creating knowledge. Yes, Seymour would smile at the news of our special issue and at the emergence of makerspaces in education. And our special issue provides a fitting tribute to the ongoing contributions from this amazing man. Thanks, Seymour! Articles in this issue of JDLTE help to identify why schools struggle to use technology in the ways that Papert envision and shed light on pathways that support change in the ways educators use technology to support learning in teacher education program. In the article titled “What We Educators Get Wrong About 21st-Century Learning: Results of a Survey,” Punya Mishra and Rohit Mehta highlight three myths about learning in the 21st century, offer recommendations to address these myths, and suggest that the emphasis on the power of technology to access information contributes to a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of learning and the broader goals and purposes of education. Rhonda Christensen and Gerald Knezek present an updated version of the TPSA in the article titled “Validating the Technology Proficiency SelfAssessment Questionnaire for 21st Century Learning (TPSA C-21).” The survey includes new items related to emerging technologies, including mobile technologies, and holds promise for planning professional development related to meaningful technology integration. Finally, Danielle Herro, Meihua Qian, and Lorraine Jacques

The Maker Movement: Democratizing STEM Education and Empowering Learners to Shape Their World

Ever since President Barack Obama declared June 18 the National Day of Making, the maker movement has been gaining traction in K–12 schools and institutions of higher education. Until recently, the maker movement was comprised of communities of makers, known as makerspaces, that mostly resided in out-of-school spaces such as church basements, homes, museums, libraries, summer camps, and online (Peppler & Bender, 2013). Fueled by the belief that makerspaces support design thinking—the kind of thinking that, is strongly associated with STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education and supported by the Next Generation Science Standards (Schunn, Silk, & Apedoe, 2012)— makerspaces are becoming more common in K–12 schools (Niederhauser & Schrum, 2016). However, if teachers are going to be successful in appropriating the maker movement, it is essential that they take advantage of their affordances to engage student with the divergent ways of the thinking necessary to support design thinking, STEM learning, and opportunity for full participation in the “new industrial revolution” (Anderson, 2012). Creating authentic makerspaces in school, like other innovations, will be challenging largely because learning in school continues to be dominated by pedagogies and curriculum that are in direct opposition to the kinds of learning that take place in makerspaces. For example, learning in makerspaces outside of school relies heavily on peer teaching, mentoring, and coaching, while learning in school remains teacher driven. Additionally, learning in makerspaces tends to be multidisciplinary, both in approach and in work produced, while learning is schools maintains disciplinary boundaries for curriculum, standards, and assessments (Clark & Sheridan, 2010; Sheridan, Clark, & Williams, 2013). Fortunately, there is emerging evidence that educators are appropriating the maker movement with fidelity. Some educators are not only taking up the maker movement with enthusiasm but are also creating communities of practice that provide each other with support in designing classrooms that draw on the naturalized ways young people learn in out-of-school makerspaces. For example, West-Puckett (2014), an Edutopia teacher blogger, encourages other teachers to expand their role in the classroom from being a provider of knowledge to taking on multiple roles that include co-creator, activist, and networker, in order to create authentic school-based maker spaces. Additionally, researchers are already identifying, researching, and publishing about successful makerspaces in K–12 schools. For example, Peppler and Bender (2013) describe how teachers at the United Nations International School CoLaboratory cross disciplinary boundaries of art, engineering, architecture, math, science, and social studies in makerspace projects where students build cardboard mazes to reflect the ways humans have both positive and negative impacts on the earth. The success of makerspaces in schools is encouraging, as some scholars suggest they have democratizing potential (Halverson & Sheridan, 2014), especially when they involve digital technologies, as they provide educators with ways to bridge the participation gap (Jenkins, Purushotma, Weigel, Clinton, and Robison, 2009) and allow students from varying socioeconomic statuses to have access to STEM learning. Research on how learning happens in makerspaces is still emerging, and more work is needed so that teachers can better understand how learning in makerspaces relates to the kind of learning we want children to experience through schooling. Work on how to document learning in makerspaces for assessment and accountability is also needed. In addition, it is critical that research on makerspaces not only focus on providing educators with the tools and strategies to improve learning in school, but also reinforce the idea that the “most important benefits of maker-centered learning is providing children with a sense of self, and community that empowers them to shape their world” (Agency by Design, 2015, p. 7). We encourage our readers to submit theoretical, methodological, and descriptive research to our special issue titledMake and Create: Makerspaces in Teacher Education. The articles in this current issue provide research findings that further knowledge in the field of technology and teacher education. In the article “Patterns in Teachers’ Instructional Design When Integrating Apps in Middle School Content Area Teaching” by Rachel Karchmer-Klein and colleagues, the pedagogy of multiliteracies is used as a theoretical framework to examine the ways middle school teachers design instruction that leverages educational applications. Findings revealed teachers most often used content apps to engage students in experiencing information at the beginning of each lesson or used a flipped classroom model. In the article “The Effects of a Systematically Designed Online Learning Environment on Preservice Teachers’ Professional Knowledge,”Marie Evens and colleagues use TPACK as a framework to examine the effects of an online learning environment on preservice teachers. Using a quasiexperimental design, the authors show that after controlling for prior knowledge, the online learning environment had a more positive impact on preservice teachers’ PCK and PK than the alternative program. In the article “The Evolution From Traditional to Online Professional Development: A Review,”

Gerontological education: Course and experiential differences across academic colleges

ABSTRACT A knowledgeable workforce is key to meeting the demands of an aging population that is expected to nearly triple by 2030 and their attitudes influence propensity to seek aging-related careers. Postsecondary education offers an opportunity to increase aging-related knowledge and facilitates intergenerational experiential-learning opportunities; however, research is lacking regarding attitudes toward aging and experiences among an academically diverse sample. To address this gap, the aims of this study were to (1) examine differences in students’ attitudes toward older adults by academic college, (2) assess differences in aging-related coursework and course experiences by academic college, and (3) explore key factors associated with students’ attitudes toward older adults. Online survey methodology was used with a sample of 816 undergraduate students from a single university who represented all academic colleges offering undergraduate degrees. Significant differences among students’ attitudes toward older adults by academic college were noted: those enrolled in the College of Human Sciences reported better stereotype, separation, and affective attitudes. Furthermore, factors associated with students’ aging-related attitudes were sex, affiliation with academic college, perception of “old,” contact frequency, and desire to learn aging-related content. The authors suggest interdisciplinary and disciplinary-specific educational recommendations to improve students’ attitudes toward older adults.

New Literacies, Technology, and Teacher Beliefs: Still More Work to Do

In our last column we asked the question “Are we finished yet?” and came to the conclusion that we are clearly not. Although preservice teachers come to our programs with larger skill sets in terms of operating digital technologies, they continue to have little experience and vision for how to use digital technologies in ways that develop the digital literacies their students need to fully participate in the public, private, and economic spheres that characterize contemporary society. Although there are many factors that contribute to the remarkable resistance to incorporate meaningful and situated uses of digital communication in schools, researchers working in the field of New Literacy Studies suggest one of these factors pertains to the need for educators to broaden their attitudes and beliefs about what counts as legitimate texts for learning in school (Burnett & Merchant, 2014). There is strong evidence that K–12 teachers remain unconvinced that the technologies people use to communicate for work and social purposes outside of school have value for learning in school. For example, only 31% of Advanced Placement and National Writing Project teachers considered presenting oneself effectively online and only 23% considered working with audio and video graphic content as essential for their students’ success in college and the world outside of school (Purcell, Heaps, Buchanan, & Friedrich, 2013). These same teachers perceived young people’s use of social media, cell phone, and texting as contributing to decreased ability to develop, organize, and express complex thoughts. These perceptions endure despite research that shows that children with greater knowledge of textism tend to have better performance on measure of verbal reasoning (Kemp & Bushnell, 2011). Additionally, a recent review of the literature focused on using mobile technologies in teacher education programs found that that there is wide variability in teacher attitudes toward the use of mobile devices for learning in school (Baran, 2014), including negative perceptions toward the usefulness of cell phones for learning in the classroom, among preservice teachers who are considered to be digital natives (Thomas & O’Bannon, 2013). Fortunately, teacher educators who integrate mobile technologies into their own teaching practices are changing these perceptions. Not surprisingly, teacher educators who integrate mobile technologies into their teacher education programs are beginning to see preservice teachers develop the new literacies: the technical skills but also the attitudes and beliefs needed to engage students in uses of technology that is commonplace in the world outside of school (Husbye & Elsener, 2013). Research in our field has long been predicated on the idea that when teachers have positive attitudes and beliefs about the benefits of technology for learning, they will use technology more often and more effectively with their students (Ertmer, 1999; Vannatta & Fordham, 2004). Given these understandings about what is needed for effective technology integration, it is time that teacher educators more directly address preservice and in-service teachers’misconceptions about the wide range of literacy experiences and resources young people acquire as they communicate online and with mobile technologies in their lives outside of school. Findings from the articles presented in this issue work together to expand our understanding of effective technology integration. In the article titled “Experiential Learning for Preservice Teachers: Digital Book Clubs With Third Graders,” Katie Stover and colleagues explore how preservice teachers’ knowledge and pedagogy is enhanced through participation in online book clubs with third graders. The article “Comparison of Parent and Teacher Perceptions of Essential Website Features and Elementary Teacher Website Use: Implications for Teacher Communication Practice,” by Tiffany A. Roman and Anne T. OttenbreitLeftwich, provides four separate categories to assist elementary teachers in selecting appropriate communication channels for classroom websites. Albert D. Ritzhaupt and colleagues extend the TPACK measurement framework by providing a confirmatory factor analysis of the theoretical model proposed by Schmidt et al. (2009) in the article titled “Validation of the Survey of Pre-service Teachers’ Knowledge of Teaching and Technology: A Multi-Institutional Sample.” And finally, in the article “Using Voice-Recorded Reflections to Increase Cognitive Presence in Hybrid Courses,” Laura McLaughlin Taddei and Stephanie Smith Budhai make suggestions for pedagogical practice and the use of reflection to develop the growing professional. We believe that these articles have potential to help teacher educators enhance present and future teachers’ confidence and ability to create engaging technologyinfused learning environments.

NTLS 2014: Policy and Practice

The National Technology Leadership Summit (NTLS) held its 15th annual meeting in Washington, DC on September 27 and 28, 2014. As usual, teacher education associations’ presidents and editors of the major journals involving technology and teacher education met to discuss current issues and directions for technology use in education. And, as usual, the group was active, engaged, and productive as it dealt with issues of both policy and practice. The editors attending included:

Leveling Up: Modeling Digital Badging for Preservice Teachers

As teacher educators, we are always looking for new and innovative ways to motivate current and future educators while they learn about technology. One idea this is currently working well for us is digital badging. The concept of digital badging is actually quite simple, as it is the “digital recognition for accomplishing a skill or acquiring knowledge after completing an activity” (Ferdig & Pytash, 2014). This past year we have been experimenting with using a digital badging system in our Center for Technology in Learning and Teaching (CTLT) at Iowa State University. Our instructional support specialist, Dennis Culver, designed a badging system called CTLT Level Up specifically for our student employees. These student assistants, who all are preservice teachers in our program, use the system to learn about the various educational technologies available in the CTLT and other technology-related professional development topics. To date, it has been a very effective and efficient way for us to evaluate our students’ technology knowledge structured around competencies with predetermined learning outcomes. Our students earn points and badges (see Figure 1) by completing tasks that have been designed to align with learning specific technology skills or professional knowledge related to their job in the CTLT (and as a future teacher). The three main categories to CTLT Level Up include Badges, Challenges, and Levels. Students can earn Badges by completing specific criteria. For example, coding is being called a “new literacy” so to promote this idea code.org suggests that everyone should try an Hour of Code. Our CTLT students earn this badge by completing one of the tutorials at code.org. We also want our students to develop their professional knowledge so students can earn a badge by volunteering for our state technology conference, ITEC, an International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) affiliate. Earning several badges related to a specific topic completes a challenge. For the “Fabricator Challenge” students must complete a series of five tasks that range from making simple paper bindings to using a three-dimensional (3D) printer to print three-dimensional objects made of plastic. Levels define students’ ranking with regards to the points they have accumulated by earning badges and completing challenges. To reach “Level 1: CTLT Novice” a student must accumulate 500 points. Currently, “Level 7: CTLT Paragon”with 5000 points is the highest level our students can achieve.We complete each semester with an awards ceremony that recognizes students who have reached the highest level and point total. We are seeing more and more examples of digital badging being used for both professional development and classroom instruction (Fontichiaro & Elkordy, 2013–2014). Our experience with using the digital badging system has been quite positive. We have found our students to be highly motivated to learn while using the system as they engage in a friendly competition among peers. We will update and revise the system in order to keep challenging our preservice teachers and ourselves to continue learning about technology and the innovative ways that it can be used in learning and teaching. The articles in this issue of the Journal of Digital Learning in Teacher Education (JDLTE) provide support and guidance to teacher educators looking for innovative ways to motivate current and future teachers to learn about technology. The first article, by Diane M. Burke and Teresa S. Foulger, titled “Mobile Learning in Teacher Education: Insight From Four Programs That Embraced Change,” identifies factors that led to the development and adoption of curriculum that addresses the use of mobile technologies in preK–12 classrooms. The article “Preservice Teachers Experience Reading Response Pedagogy in a Multi-User Virtual Environment,” by Caitlin McMunn Dooley and colleagues, investigates how preservice teachers developed pedagogical knowledge of Reader Response Theory in the multi-user virtual environment Second Life. Jodi Pilgrim and Joan Berry share preservice teacher responses to an iPad initiative targeted to prepare teachers for 21st century classrooms in the article titled “Technology Integration With Teacher Candidates in a Summer-Camp Setting.” And finally, in the article titled “Determining the Impact of an Integrated Triadic Model on TPACK Development in Preservice Teachers,” Geoff P. Price and colleagues propose a new model for teacher education programs to evaluate and redesign learning experiences that prepare teachers to effectively and appropriately integrate technology in classroom settings.

Addressing the “Why” for Integrating Technology in Teacher Preparation

There have been several recent events where teacher educators have met in order to share, discuss, learn, and advocate for the “why” factor associated with integrating technology in teacher preparation. Gradually, teacher educators are seeking more opportunities to build capacity for helping their colleagues understand “why” now is the time for addressing many of the challenges associated with integrating technology throughout a teacher preparation program. In the policy brief, Advancing Educational Technology in Teacher Preparation, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology (OET) shares four guiding principles for preparing teachers, especially preservice teachers, to use technology (Stokes-Beverley & Simoy, 2016). Guiding principle #2 specifically acknowledges the need to “Build sustainable, programwide systems of professional learning for higher education instructors to strengthen and continually refresh their capacity to use technological tools to enable transformative learning and teaching” (Stokes-Beverley & Simoy, 2016, p.11). As a result, teacher educators are initiating conversations discussing the complexities and issues associated with issues associated with integrating technology in teacher preparation in order to start building the capacity to enable transformative teaching and learning. Early March, the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) Committee on Innovation and Technology organized a pre-conference symposium prior to the start of the annual AACTE conference in Baltimore. Over 70 people spent an entire afternoon addressing various topics related to the challenges associated with integrating technology in teacher preparation. Small group breakout sessions were organized around the topics of PK-12 students’ active use of technology, program-deep and system-wide experiences for teacher candidates, teacher educator technology competencies (Foulger, Graziano, Schmidt-Crawford, & Slykhuis, 2017), and sustainable systems of professional development for higher education faculty. The symposium concluded with a panel of representatives from organizations (i.e., AACTE, ISTE, DOE/OET, AECT, SITE, NTLS) that are actively involved with technology and teacher preparation. The panel members responded to questions that were posed on how we can work collaboratively to create sustainable interest and progress towards effectively preparing teachers to use technology. Later in March, Richard Culatta, Chief Executive Officer of ISTE, was a keynote speaker at the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education (SITE) conference held in Washington D.C. Culatta spoke to nearly 800 teacher educators from all over the world about the urgent need to prepare teachers who will teach in transformative ways and leverage technology as a problem-solving tool. He shared five keys for preparing teachers (and others) to thrive in a connected world and classroom: 1) Create responsible global citizens, 2) Think in code, 3) Use technology to close equity gaps, 4) Know how to be open, and 5) Personalize learning. Are we taking the time to address these five critical areas of thought with our preservice teachers? Collectively, examples like these conversations can make a significant difference towards addressing the “why” factor – to reach the ultimate goal of preparing preservice teachers as confident users of technology who can effectively integrate technology to transform student learning. As teacher educators, we must continue to engage in these conversations and conduct the necessary research that helps our field identify the effective approaches and practices for using technology for teaching and learning in teacher 2018 ISTE j iste.org/jdlte

Storymaking: Combining Making and Storytelling in a School Makerspace

Storymaking makes use of school makerspaces to combine making and storytelling. Constructing a diorama is a common storytelling activity in schools. Controlling movement of actors and objects in the diorama with a computer is a natural extension that builds on a rich tradition of prior activities. Inventors in the nineteenth century developed solenoid-controlled puppets. In the twentieth century, Seymour Papert suggested that the computer language Logo could be used to control animated puppets to tell a story. In this twenty-first century implementation, students initially used a modern-day successor of Logo, Scratch, to control Lego motors and gears. Students subsequently constructed their own motors and actuators inspired by historic models in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution. Students initially controlled puppets in the diorama manually as they acted out the story. The script developed in this manner is then translated into a computer script that controls the objects. Instructional objectives encompassed history, computer science, and interdisciplinary literacies. The strategy that evolved took advantage of natural correspondences between development of a play and development of a computer script. The script of a play provides directions that allow the actors to execute the intentions of the playwright. The program executed by the computer serves the same function. The Storymaking project makes the correspondence between the two processes explicit. This approach employs school makerspaces to create an environment that encourages exploration of both literacy and engineering.

ISTE Tidbits: Technology Tools Every New Teacher Needs

Another ISTE conference has come and gone, but learning and professional development opportunities for teacher educators will continue throughout the year. Kudos to the Teacher Education Network (TEN) leadership team for scheduling a strong set of research papers, concurrent sessions, and interactive playground activities as part of our professional learning network (PLN) at ISTE. It was exciting to see a renewed interest in ISTE by fellow teacher educators and higher education professionals. In fact, there were more than 100 individuals who attended the conference meetup for higher education professionals! A lively discussion centered around such topics like course design, pedagogy and content, standards/ competencies, accreditation requirements, and challenges. Let’s keep this momentum going as we continue to explore and discover innovative ways to prepare teachers to use technology for teaching and learning. The TEN leadership team organized an interesting session around the top 10 tools that every “new” teacher needs. The tools were identified using a crowdsourcing method and responses were gathered from over 100 individuals. The top five technology tools included (a) Google Suite for Education, (b) Twitter, (c) Padlet, (d) Explain Everything, and (e) Adobe Spark Suite. Other tools making the top 10 list with additional resources can be accessed at tinyurl.com/isteTEN top10doc. As you examine the list, how many of these tools are being used productively and innovatively in your teacher preparation program? If you are unfamiliar with any of the tools on the list, that might be a good place to start when thinking about your professional learning goals related to technology for this academic year. Although this list is not exhaustive, it certainly contains a robust set of technology tools that teacher educators can use to help guide technology integration ideas when making course decisions. Finally, congratulations to Torrey Trust, Daniel Krutka, and Jeffrey Carpenter for receiving the 2017 JDLTE Research Paper Award. One article is selected each year from a JDLTE volume that represents outstanding scholarship in technology and teacher education. Their article, “Elements of Engagement: A Model of Teacher Interactions via Professional Learning Networks,” published in JDLTE 32(4), is accessible to everyone at http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/21532974.2016.12064 92. It is possible that one of the articles in this issue of JDLTE could receive this award next year at the ISTE conference. The articles published in this issue of JDLTE provide valuable insights for effective professional development related to digital literacies and technology integration in teacher education. In the article titled “Teachers’ Beliefs About Integrating Digital Literacy Into Classroom Practice: An Investigation Based on the Theory of Planned Behavior,” Ayesha Sadaf and Barbara Johnson investigate how teachers’ integration of digital literacy relates to their beliefs about the value of digital literacy for developing students’ 21st-century skills. Findings highlight the need for teacher education programs to focus professional development on how to use technology to prepare students for future careers. In the article titled “For Teachers, by Teachers: An Exploration of TeacherGenerated Online Professional Development,” Luke Rodesiler describes how teachers use social media to create new models of professional development and suggests that this kind of self-directed professional development should be recognized as a legitimate form of professional development by governing bodies at the local and state levels. In the article “Validating a Mobile Learning Readiness Survey: Assessing Teachers’ Dispositions Toward Adoption,” Rhonda Christensen and Gerald Knezek identify four dimensions of readiness to teach with mobile devices and establish its usefulness in research and professional development contexts. Finally, in “Chat it Up: Backchanneling to Promote Reflective Practice Among In-Service Teachers,” Laura Kassner and Kate Cassada share how they used backchanneling to explore the nature of peer feedback within an instructional context. Results from the study were mainly positive, and most valued using such a tool in educational settings. Together, these articles advance the field of technology in teacher education in providing preservice and in-service teachers with the knowledge and skills to teach effectively with digital technologies.