Technology keeps advancing, students keep changing, and the world we live in is vastly different than the one in which most of us seasoned educators completed our student teaching experiences. Yet in many ways, teacher preparation hasn’t reflected these changes. However, there are myriad excellent examples of students, teachers, and teacher educators engaging in truly 21^st century teaching and learning. The challenge we face as a community of educators is being able to bring these innovative practices to all students, teachers, and teacher educators. It isn’t enough to simply tweet about technology-enhanced education to other educational technology converts.   How do we engage in a broad, open, inclusive, and effective push for cutting edge yet sustainable teaching and learning at both the k-12 and the postsecondary level?

21^st century teaching and learning isn’t solely defined by technology, but certainly one cannot consider the art and science of teaching and learning in 2017 and beyond without considering the role that technology plays. In my own work as a teacher educator and an online professor, I have been advocating for intentional and frequent integration of technology into teacher education programs and k-12 classrooms. I’ve flipped my classroom, tried all sorts of technologies (and both succeeded and failed), and I’ve shared that work with my peers. As a result of this work, in the summer of 2016 I had the great privilege of being invited to attend an Innovators’ Summit focused on advancing the use of educational technology in teacher preparation, along with the Dean of the Rossier School of Education, Dr. Karen Symms Gallagher. I wrote up my reflections on this summit on my blog, and integrated this work into my work as a teaching professor.

I was thrilled when I then received an invitation to attend a second Innovators’ Summit at the White House in December of 2016. During this summit, I spent two days working with around 50 other teacher educators, professors, deans, k-12 educators, and policy makers from around the nation on the shared vision that was articulated in a U.S. Department of Education Office of Educational Technology policy brief as follows:

Our students deserve to have teachers, including novice teachers, who are fully prepared to meet their needs. In today’s technology rich world, that means educators need to be prepared to meaningfully incorporate technology into their practice immediately upon entering the classroom. Our nation’s motivated and committed pre-service teachers deserve to be trained by faculty using technology in transformative ways that thoughtfully support and measure learning gains.

Faculty at schools of education across the country should operate with a common language and set of expectations for effective and active use of technology in Prekindergarten-grade 12 (P-12) and at postsecondary education levels. Further, schools of education should work with P-12 schools and school districts to provide meaningful opportunities for pre-service teachers, in-service teachers, school and district leadership, and faculty to co-learn and collaborate to better understand and use technology as a tool to transform teaching and learning experiences for learners of all ages. Given the rapid pace at which technology evolves, faculty need regular opportunities to both refresh their capacity and share innovative tools and strategies with other professors in the field to ensure their technology use is contributing to learning and achievement.

The U.S. Department of Education believes it is important that all programs responsible for pre-service teacher training prepare all graduates to effectively select, evaluate, and use appropriate technologies and resources to create experiences that advance student engagement and learning. We call upon leaders of teacher preparation programs to engage in concerted, programmatic shifts in their approach to pre-service teacher preparation.

This policy brief was based partially on our work at the Innovators’ Summit in June 2016, along with numerous other cutting edge educators from around the nation, and was made real by the incredible work of the Office of Educational Technology.

On page 13, the policy brief highlights the work of the faculty of the Rossier School of Education’s Master of Arts in Teaching program.  The course being discussed in the second paragraph is the EDUC 518: The Application of Theories of Learning to Classroom Practice course that I have led for the past several years; we have made significant changes to the course in that time.

To improve their own online instruction, full-time and adjunct faculty at the University of Southern California (USC) collaborated on a data-informed process of course redesign to better meet the needs of their students. USC realized that student feedback via surveys and exit interviews were paramount in enhancing the program with the latest technology and pedagogy. Using student responses, faculty members continue to develop an internal community of practice to give each other feedback on how to improve virtual classroom practices and learn about new techniques and technological tools. For example, faculty members developed a video-based onboarding process where new faculty can engage with multimedia, resources, and lesson plans. Looking ahead, faculty are working toward creating an inventive video-based professional development model for flipped learning as part of a new version of the Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program.

Prior to these changes, online course deliverables consisted of five papers and asynchronous discussion boards. Today, students are working collaboratively on online-based documents, recording sample video lessons for constructive peer critique, providing and receiving virtual feedback from colleagues and professors, building dynamic concept maps via web presentation platforms, and learning through flipped instruction models. As more K-12 schools shift to variants of flipped instruction, USC faculty models this work for pre-service teachers and colleagues who increasingly recognize how these pre-recorded videos and prompts can maximize in-class instructional time at the K-12 level and in higher education.

As we engaged in the continuation of this work at the December Summit, what struck me the most was how much every single moment of each of these Summits was focused on making change happen. In academia, we often talk about the theoretical, or about the research, and debate the philosophy of Approach A versus Approach B. There certainly is value in those conversations. However, there is also the danger that the conversation never becomes action, that we only talk to those who agree with us, or that we wait for everything to become well defined and backed by big data before we make a move. The problem with that is that while academia and administration tend to move at a belabored pace, technological advances are happening now. While we are busy completing lit reviews and gaining IRB approval, students are out there in a 21^st century world, with all of the opportunities and pitfalls that exist.

At this Innovator’s Summit, we were pushed hard to develop plans of action. We all brought considerable knowledge and expertise to the table. Our philosophical, theoretical, and research discussions always were crystallized into things to do. This itself is a transformative practice. Director of the Office of Educational Technology Joseph South told us, back in June, that President Obama likes to say to the experts he calls upon that “there is no other room.” Meaning, the experts who will make the change happen are right here, right now, in this room; that’s why we were asked to be there. There is no other room out there where other, better people are going to solve the problem for us. The onus is on us to make sure that positive change happens, and that the brilliant work being done all over the country by forward thinking educators is shared and expanded upon to the benefit of all students.

So, we spent lots of time writing on sticky notes and chart paper (yes, yes, old school, I know), and snapping photos of innovative thoughts (there’s the technology for you). We got into groups and brainstormed, and then formed those brainstorms into concrete action plans. We focused our work around the following four principles established by the Office of Educational Technology:

• Focus on the active use of technology to enable learning and teaching through creation, production, and problem-solving.
• Build sustainable, program wide 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.
• Ensure pre-service teachers’ experiences with educational technology are program-deep and program-wide, rather than one-off courses separate from their methods courses.
• Align efforts with research-based standards, frameworks, and credentials recognized across the field.

I was able to walk away from this two day experience with a set of concrete recommendations for my Dean, who was unfortunately unable to attend the December Summit, as well as a plan for reviewing the work our Master of Arts in Teaching Program faculty have been doing in revising our program.

 

On a larger scale, those of us who attended the Innovators’ Summit at the White House were also asked to commit ourselves to one of four workgroups organized around the four principles shared above. I am co-chairing the Active Use of Technology Workgroup, and I am excited to see what we are able to do with a motivated, focused group of experts on educational technology.

And of course, here’s the obligatory West Wing selfie: