FOR RELEASE: Thursday, April 17, 2008
Technology Workshop Helps Teachers Prepare Students
Above, Cecilia Thompson, center, professor of family and consumer sciences education, helps teachers who attended a technology workshop presented by the College of Education and Health Professions at the University of Arkansas.
Below, Vinson Carter, a teacher at Springdale High School, led the workshop to give Arkansas teachers information about technology they could use in their classrooms and share with other teachers in their schools.
Despite the explosion of the Internet and technology based on it in the past decade or so, many students in Arkansas come from what one teacher termed a "low-tech background." The College of Education and Health Professions recently provided a workshop to train teachers to implement new technology into their classrooms so that these students will enter college or a career well-prepared.
The techniques also can help the teachers captivate students' interest regardless of the subject being taught in the classroom, the organizers said.
Wikis were a popular topic for the teachers from all over Arkansas, who went back to their classrooms to use this technique of taking collaborative web space and making it a place to post information about classroom activities, notes and test information for students to access. Students can post questions for the teacher or other classmates and everyone can read the answers.
"This helps with students who are absent, who may be 'slow' note-takers and to serve as study guides for the class," said Alisa Williams, who teaches family and consumer sciences at West Fork High School.
Three faculty members in the college's career and technical education program came up with the idea for the workshop when they learned that the college was offering seed money if they planned and implemented a professional development opportunity. The funding allowed them to pay the districts for the substitute teachers needed to replace the teachers who came to the campus on Feb. 29 for the all-day workshop.
The funds also paid for the materials teachers received, lunch and parking on campus. Twenty-four teachers in workforce education fields including business, technology, family and consumer sciences and medical professions came from Washington, Benton, Madison and Carroll counties as well as from further away in Booneville, Conway, Heber Springs and Little Rock.
Online Resources
Blogging
Easy Tutorials
Free Software
Free Wiki Sites
Photo Sharing
Podcasting
RSS Feed Aggregators
Social Bookmarking
Social Networking
Video Sharing
Source: Vinson Carter, Springdale High School
"We had more than 70 applications," said Betsy Orr, associate professor of career and technical education. "The application process was limited to currently employed teachers, and we chose those who planned to implement at least one of the new technologies they learned into their classes this year."
Orr, Cecilia Thompson, professor of family and consumer sciences education, and Charles Rossetti, a visiting instructor of technology education, organized the workshop they called "Teaching Outside the Box: Blogs, Wikis and Podcasting." To conduct the workshop, they brought in Vinson Carter, who teaches drafting and design, architectural CADD, civil engineering and architecture at Springdale High School. Carter is a graduate of the college's Master of Arts in Teaching program.
The teachers earned 6.5 professional development hours by attending the workshop, and they were also required to share the information with other teachers at their schools.
Sherry Sallings, a family and consumer sciences teacher at Kingston High School, said she wanted to learn some new ways to teach in the classroom that her students would find interesting and different.
"Also, my students have a low-tech background, and, in order for them to make it when they go to college, they need to learn more about technology and the Internet," Sallings continued.
Most of her curriculum is based on projects, she explained, and using wikis allows the students to show what they are learning. For the other teachers at her school, Sallings will host a workshop in which she will introduce the topics she learned about and distribute how-to worksheets she is creating.
Williams, another teacher who implemented wikis in her classes, said she worked one-on-one with several other vocational teachers at West Fork, helping them set up wikis and blogs for their classes with the information she took from the university workshop.
The most well-known wiki is Wikipedia, which has been somewhat problematic for faculty, Orr explained. She and others emphasize to their students never to use Wikipedia as a reference source when doing research. Its very nature of being a place to which anyone can contribute means it is not a refereed resource and can't be used a source in academic work.
However, Orr and other faculty members have made great use of wikis as a communication tool. Using them is much more efficient than getting e-mails from several students with the same question and having to respond separately to each. When appropriate, a response can easily be shared with all the students.
"Everyone can see the answer instead of the instructor having to answer each student individually," Thompson said.
Orr and Thompson also started blogs, Internet shorthand for Web log, for their students who are doing internships in local school districts. The students keep a journal of reflections on the blog, allowing other students to benefit from their experiences.
The faculty members post lesson plans, and the students post their portfolios.
"Blogs and wikis are great learning and teaching tools," Orr said. "If a student can see another's work, the quality of work increases overall. When they submit their work in front of their peers, they do so much better. They try to outdo each other."
Carter told the teachers at the workshop he does basically the same thing with his high school students.
"If you are looking for a very inexpensive, easy way to showcase student work, the wiki is great," he said.
Several wiki sites on the Internet are free to use, Carter said, although they have different features and teachers may need to experiment a bit to find the site that's most suitable for them.
Carter also went over podcasting, RSS feeds, social bookmarking, social networking and online photo sharing with the teachers.
In addition to asking teachers to provide instruction to others in their schools, the university faculty members asked to be informed of how the teachers are using their newly acquired technology information.