Teacher Education
See how to help preservice educators develop a digital growth mindset and become digitally competent
About the Session
During this session, we will consider what it means for preservice educators to be digitally competent and how we can help preservice educators become digitally competent. This session will also cover digital growth mindset: what is a digital growth mindset and how do we help preservice educators develop one?
About the Speaker
Jana Gerard is Coordinator for the College of Education, Health and Human Studies and Evolution, at Southeast Missouri State University (SEMO). She holds a Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice from Xavier University, a Master of Arts in Education with an Educational Technology Emphasis from Lindenwood University, and is pursuing a Doctorate of Education in Instructional Leadership (expected graduation date in May of 2022) from Lindenwood University. She loves to inspire creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration to find solution opportunities to problems. She is passionate about leveraging technology for learning and teaching. On behalf of her department at SEMO, she recently accepted the 2022 AACTE Best Practice Award for Innovative Use of Technology with Dr. Trudy Giasi for implementation of the Evolution Model, which cooperatively enhances preservice educators’ technological skills while serving the technology demands of area schools and districts.
HEATHER LUND: Hello, everyone and thank you for joining us for Reaction. I’m Heather Lund. I’m looking forward to today’s presentation.
Jana Gerard is joining us from Southeast Missouri State University for the session “Digital Competence and Digital Growth Mindset. What Does that Mean for Preservice Educators?”
Before we begin, we’d love for you to introduce yourself, share your thoughts, or share resources in the chat window. Just make sure you change your message settings to everyone to share with the group.
If you have questions for Jana, use the Q&A window, and if you see a question that you’d like answered, click the thumbs up button to upvote it. We’ll answer as many questions as we can during our roundtable discussion immediately following this presentation.
I’m so excited to hear what Jana is going to share with us today. Please welcome Jana Gerard.
JANA GERARD: Hello, everyone. I am excited to be here today to talk about digital competence and digital growth mindset.
This is something that myself and some professors at our University have really invested a lot of time and research into.
I am actually wrapping up my dissertation. I graduate next month and a lot of my research for my dissertation was on this idea of digital competence and digital growth mindset, specifically for preservice educators.
So on a practical note, this is who I am, and you are welcome to reach out to me. My email is here.
I love to have conversations about this topic, so please feel free to reach out to me at any time. And there will be several places within this slide deck, where I will deliberately pause for questions. So please feel free to put those questions in the chat, and I will do my best to answer questions at those pauses.
So I always like to start with a quote, and this is from George Couros, who wrote Innovator’s Mindset, which is an amazing book if you are looking for a good read.
And he said, “Technology will never replace great teachers, but technology in the hands of great teachers is transformational.” And this is really kind of our motto for how we think of technology in our teacher preparation program. We like to encourage our students to be meaningful and intentional in their technology integration. And so it starts with this idea of good teaching is good teaching and then technology can help you make that good teaching even better.
So we’re going to start by thinking about what is digital competence? So this is the definition of digital competence that we use, and I’ve given the website there that we’ve taken this definition from.
So we have to think of digital competence as a combination of things.
So it is those knowledge, skills, and attitudes about using technology. And it’s about how we’re using technology, we’re performing tasks, we’re solving problems, we’re communicating, we’re analyzing our data and managing our data, we’re collaborating. But then it’s also about creating and sharing and doing that effectively, appropriately, securely, critically, creatively, independently, and ethically. So there are some key words that I’ve highlighted in this definition that we’re definitely going to be revisiting as we consider this topic of digital competence.
We also need to remember that digital competence is a combination of digital literacy, digital fluency, and digital citizenship. So we’re going to also look at those definitions to kind of break down how we came to this idea of digital competence. So I’d like to have this visual. I’m a very visual learner.
So I like to have this graphic organizer to help me think about how those three pieces come together to create digital confidence. We’ve got the digital literacy, the digital citizenship, and the digital fluency that come together to make that digital confidence.
So again, what are those things that come together to make digital competence? So digital fluency, it’s kind of a new term that has come about in educational technology. So we used to think of digital literacy as being all of the skills we needed for digital competence, but we realized you could be digitally literate and not necessarily be digitally fluent. So we’ve kind of broken down that concept into smaller pieces. So digital fluency is being able to actually use devices and technology tools that we need for teaching and learning as well as being able to troubleshoot with technology.
And we’re not talking about if something breaks.
That’s not necessarily what we’re talking about. But we’re talking about if you’re in the middle of class and your smartboard starts stop working. Being able to do some basic troubleshooting without having to immediately call someone else for help. Those are the kind of troubleshooting we’re talking about. Or if you’re trying to create something with a digital tool understanding how to find help for yourself to be able to figure out how to do what you’re trying to do. And these are all things that we actually dig into with our Ed prep students and we’ll go into that a little bit more to a later slide to see a little bit more of what that looks like in our program. But these are the basic skills we’re talking about for digital fluency.
For digital literacy, we’re talking about being able to demonstrate the skills needed to navigate materials for learning. So basically that means applying those critical thinking skills while we’re using our technology. So digital literacy means evaluating our sources. It means understanding how to find appropriate sources.
It means understanding the difference between fake news and real news. It’s those kinds of skills where it’s not just understanding how to use the computer or how to solve problems in terms of actually using the tool. It’s using the tool to solve problems in content, using the tool to solve problems in learning, and using those tools for decision making, for analyzing data. Those kinds of things. Those are digital literacy skills And then digital citizenship is where we get into the using our tools ethically, responsibly, safely.
That’s when we’re looking at digital law, and we’re looking at digital etiquette, and we’re looking at rights and responsibilities. We’re looking at recognizing people’s intellectual property rights and respecting those intellectual property rights and modeling that for students and colleagues.
So why do we even need to think about digital competence for preservice educators? So and the 2022 CAEP Standards.
Part of standard R1.3
is providers make sure that candidates can model and apply national or state approved technology standards. So that is part of those standards. If you’re not a CAEP program and you use AAQEP. AAQEP also doesn’t specifically talk about technology, but they do talk about understanding how to assess student learning and data literacy. So data literacy again, fits into that digital fluency and digital literacy, and then using the data also fits into those digital literacy skills.
And then there’s the 2017 ISTE Standards for Educators. I can’t speak for every state. Some states have technology standards and some states don’t.
We are here in Missouri and our state does not have Missouri learning standards for technology. So we use the 2017 ISTE Standards for Educators for our faculty and our preservice educators, but then we also teach our students, our preserive educators about the 2016 ISTE Standards for Students. So we hold our students, our higher Ed students to the 2017 ISTE standards for educators, but we expect them to consider the 2016 standards for students as they’re creating those learning experiences.
So when we look at the continuum of digital competence, what does that actually mean for our students?
So for our faculty and staff, that means demonstrating digital competence. They need to model literacy, model fluency, and model citizenship in the digital world. They need to then create opportunities for our preservice educators to learn and then demonstrate that digital competence. And part of that is engaging in continual professional development about these digital competence skills, so engaging in professional development about emerging technologies about new tools about how to use the tools that are available to them to their fullest.
And then that trickles down to our students as learners.
So then they have to learn those digital competence skills and then demonstrate digital literacy, digital fluency, and digital citizenship in integrated ways throughout their learning and then apply those competency skills as they are creating learning experiences for their P-12 students.
And then we have our students as teachers. So they are then modeling those literacy, fluency, and citizenship skills in their field experiences for the P-12 students, and also our preservice educators are creating those integrated opportunities for our P-12 students to learn and demonstrate the digital competence. So it’s kind of a trickle down effect, but I will say, a big piece of how this needs to happen and how we try to make it happen here at our University is a top down thing.
The leadership of our college provides time and funds and opportunities for our faculty and staff to invest in the professional development and into those providing those opportunities and space to be able to develop their literacy, fluency, and citizenship skills.
And we’ve created a culture that promotes these skills our college actually has a strategic technology goal document that we created based on this idea of digital competence. And that is something that we continually work towards as a strategic part of our college is implementing those strategic technology goals. And then the environment, providing the resources and space for faculty, staff, and students both our preservice educators and P-12 students to be able to learn and practice these skills. So before I move on, I wanted to pause and see if there are any questions that I can answer about this idea of digital competence.
Jana, we don’t have any questions currently, but we are monitoring the chat as well.
OK, awesome. Thank you.
You’re welcome.
So before I–
Oh I’m sorry Jenna there is a question that came up from Jill Ardley. Is there anything in–
The InTASC?
Yes, there are actually standards.
We actually have a technology rubric that we have, that we use.
It’s a way that we can ensure we are assessing technology integration equitably across our programs all the way from early childhood through secondary. And in that technology rubric, we actually have InTASC Standards that tie to both the CAPE Standards because we are CAPE University and the ISTE Standards for educators. I haven’t put that link in the slide. You’re welcome to email me, and I could share that with you through email.
So before I get into this idea of how digital competence ties into the digital growth mindset, I did say I would talk about how we kind of build these things a little more practically in our program. So we have a class called EL300. It’s part of our Elementary Early Childhood and Exceptional Child Program.
And in EL300 the official name of EL300 is Instructional and Assistive Technology in a Universally Designed Learning Environment, but it’s basically our teaching and technology class. And based on feedback from our regional stakeholders, we have really structured that class to be where students are building their digital fluency.
One of the instructors of that class has revised the syllabi to really focus on building those fluency skills, so that we know that those students that have taken this class are all on that same playing field with those skills as they go into other parts of the program. So EL300 is actually taken either preprogram or first semester of the Ed prep program, so we know at the beginning of that journey, they are actually building those digital fluency skills. Then as they go into literacy block, and content block, and advanced field experiences, they are able to take those digital fluency skills and really work on building those digital literacy skills and apply that as they go on and really work on building content experiences.
So that’s kind of how that is structured in our program. The instructor of EL300 asked that I not share the syllabi publicly, but if you are interested in seeing kind of how she has built that, she said you’re welcome to reach out to me through email, and I can share some documentation with you about how we structure this.
At our University, we call it the EDvolution Model. And the EDvolution Model fosters that growth of building those digital fluency skills, building the digital literacy skills and then demonstrating digital competence. They get digital citizenship both in EL300 and, then in the classes that come after EL300. Part of that is what we call the EDvolution Center and the EDvolution Center is where I come in. I am the coordinator of the EDvolution Center. And I provide both support and resources and space for both faculty and students to grow those skills. I provide professional development, and I serve as the expert on educational and technology for the college.
So just so you kind of understand where that is, and I will say, the EDvolution Model actually won the AACTE Award this year for Best Practices and Technology Innovation. So we do have research that shows this EDvolution Model works.
So knowing that, understanding that digital competence, let’s talk about digital growth mindset.
So digital growth mindset is we’ve taken that idea of growth mindset from Carol Dweck and then applied it very specifically to the digital world. So the definition of a growth mindset is that people believe that they can develop skills, that can develop love of learning, they can develop resilience, and that to be successful that growth mindset is truly necessary.
So Brandy, if you would like to reach out to me through email. I would be happy to provide more information on the EDvolution Model.
So the digital growth mindset takes this idea of growth mindset and applies it specifically in the digital world. So we take that idea of growing and understanding that you can grow those skills and say that, OK not only can you do that throughout your learning experiences, you can definitely do it in the digital space. So what we’ve discovered and this is part of my research that I did in my dissertation is that we’ve discovered that this digital growth mindset is really the biggest piece that we need students to take away from EL300, and it’s critical to be able to help them grow from those digital fluency skills into those digital literacy skills.
So this digital growth mindset is this idea that students understand that they can troubleshoot, that they can be resilient with technology. That just because something goes wrong doesn’t mean they’re going to throw up their hands and walk away from it. And it fosters that idea that they do need to continually learn with digital technologies, that you can’t learn something and then be like, OK, I’m done that’s all I’m ever going to need to know about this. I need to continue to learn and grow with technology and that’s what allows them to really truly bloom from the digital fluency to the digital literacy.
So why do we care if they have this digital growth mindset? Obviously, we care in terms of wanting them to fully grow from the digital fluency to into the digital literacy, but it also matters for how they’re integrating technology in their lessons. So that the growing from the digital literacy to the digital, I mean excuse me, from the digital fluency to the digital literacy truly allows our preservice educators to really have those opportunities to influence the communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity.
Those four C’s of Future Ready Learning into their learning experiences that they are creating for their P-12 students, as well as having them understand that they are going to need to have continual skill development throughout their teaching career. They can’t just graduate from our University and then say, OK, I know everything about technology that I’m ever going to need to know. They’ve got to continue developing those technology skills either through formal professional development or just through their own interests and informal professional development.
And then it also helps them that digital growth mindset helps our students and our faculty and staff have that resiliency and that perseverance with digital technologies. So that when something goes wrong, they are willing to put some time and effort into fixing the problem or figuring it out. And a lot of times, it’s getting them to understand that they can Google it, that they can reach out to the product help support, or they can send an email to me or someone else that they know is super fluent with the technology. but just understanding that they need to persevere.
So how do we foster this digital growth mindset?
So there’s the modeling continual learning with digital tools. So again, engaging in the professional development, having that willingness to learn emerging technologies, as well as understanding that we need to reach out to our stakeholders.
I actually do a survey every two years throughout our region. We’re in Southeast Missouri, and we are the only University in our part of the state, and we sort of serve as a regional hub. So every two years, I reach out to every school district in our region, and there’s 55 school districts. And I say, what are you doing with technology? What platforms are you on?
What kinds of things do you really need our students as they graduate from our program and come in to either student teach with you or become first-year teachers with you guys? What do you really need them to know and understand, and be able to do? And we actually take that feedback and infuse it into our curriculum especially in EL300.
And then we also as faculty as staff model resilience and perseverance with digital tools by troubleshooting our own technology issues, by being willing to learn from students, and by working through the frustration with digital technology issues. So we do our best to model these things for our students, so they in turn can model it for their P-12 students.
So again there’s this continuum of the digital growth mindset.
So we have that we demonstrate the faculty and staff demonstrate the digital growth mindset we model the troubleshooting, the perseverance, and we model the use of emerging technologies. And again, this is someplace where the EDvolution Center really plays a role because we house a lot of the emerging technologies here in our center, and we also do a lot of helping students and faculty and staff understand how to use the emerging technologies. And then the faculty really create opportunities then in the curriculum for students to build and demonstrate that growth mindset.
And then the students as learners are fostering their own digital growth mindset, demonstrating that resilience, perseverance, and troubleshooting for themselves, which they then take into students as teachers where they are modeling that digital growth mindset in their field experiences and then discovering ways to help foster that digital growth mindset for their P-12 students.
And again, the leadership culture and environment play a big role in fostering this idea of digital growth mindset.
So again I know this is a lot of information that we’ve covered quickly. Are there any questions at this time?
There aren’t any current questions in the chat, but if you’d like to add some I’d be happy to bring them to Jana’s attention.
So Michelle, I saw your question. I wrote down your email. I’ll be able to reach out to you with some of those resources.
So OK.
So going back again to what this looks like at Southeast Missouri State University just digging for a couple of minutes digging into this a little bit.
We have again what we call the EDvolution Model and Lynn if you send me your email if you use my email and the beginning of the slides and I could put my email in again or Heather if you could put my email in it would be super great so that please, if you have any of these resources you want me to send to you. Shoot me an email and I will be happy to share that through everyone’s email.
So the EDvolution Model is where we deliberately integrate technology into specific courses, coursework, and clinical experiences, and it’s done in a very deliberate intentional manner. And then it includes our faculty, our students, and our regional partners, and we really try to include all of those stakeholders in decision making. And again, going back to the research I did for my dissertation. There’s actually a body of research that talks about how important it is for Ed prep programs to include stakeholders in decision making.
So these are the courses that I was talking about EL300 is where we really work on that digital fluency, and then EL355, EL360, EL420. Those are content classes and methods classes.
And that’s where we really build those digital literacy skills. And then we really try to foster those digital citizenship skills through all of their courses and clinical experiences.
One of the new things we have started is we have a class called ED280, which is our intro to teaching as a profession class. That’s one of those preprogram classes that students take.
And we have actually started where I push into all of the 280 classes to have specific conversations with our preservice educators at that point before they’ve even joined the teacher preparation program to talk about digital citizenship and how important it is for our preservice educators to understand basic things like being aware of their social media presence and how that can truly impact their future career.
That so we try to get to them as early as preprogram to have those conversations with them. So start them on that digital citizenship journey.
And then again, the EDvolution Center, we provide support resources, we have collaboration spaces here myself and my staff. We really try to model that digital competence and that digital growth mindset.
And I again, I serve as sort of the technology expert. I was a classroom teacher. I have a master’s in EdTech. I’m about to finish my PhD. So having someone in my position that can really help foster these kinds of skills.
So I do have, Sarah said the presentation will be available. So that’s really great. So I have put some links in to this presentation on places where you can learn more about this places where you can get some of this information, the Digital Competence website, the Resource and Policy Guide on 21st Century Skills, the partnership for 21st Century Learning Skills that’s a great framework and then the National Technology Plan Update that talks specifically about technology and teacher preparation programs.
Again, I always like to give credit and attribution to those that have shared their resources with me, so I want to make sure I think thank those that did this. At this point that was pretty much everything I had, so I’m going to stop sharing my screen and just see if there’s any other questions that I can answer for anyone.
Thank you, Jana. I certainly learned a lot, and I love how you highlighted that it’s about leadership, and culture, and environment, and fostering that and then passing it down. It’s not just you as teachers but how that whole flow. I appreciate that.
And I see that so many people want the information that you’re providing. And hey, can we get–
we’d love to maybe start an EDvolution Center in our school. So that’s fantastic.
It doesn’t look like we do have any questions, but I wanted to just circle back to a comment and maybe you could comment a little bit more. It was Barbara had commented and said, “Not a question but the idea of surveying teachers to see what they’re using is such a great idea, especially at the beginning and end of the year.” Do you find that the technology is changing or the information is changing? Were you just surveying every two years? Is it where you would change to a different frequency?
We’ve actually had that conversation, so I am very fortunate in that.
Missouri has something called RPDCs, Regional Professional Development Centers. And the Southeast Regional RPDC happens to be on our campus, and they do something wonderful. They actually have created for our region something called the CMO Technology Consortium. So twice a year we meet. And I fortunately was invited to be part of that technology consortium.
So twice a year, tech directors, instructional technology coaches, and tech coaches, whoever is interested in technology, we come together twice a year to have conversations about what is happening with EdTech and our region. So that’s why I personally feel just in my environment every two years is sufficient, because I get kind of updates in between.
So I’m in kind of a privileged position where I don’t, but the other thing that the feedback that I have been given from teachers is they’re busy. They are very extremely busy.
Everyone in the educational field is being expected to do more with less as always, and so they appreciate not being inundated constantly with surveys and being asked for feedback. Because we have quite a large Ed prep program, especially for the sized University we are. We have over 200 completers a year, which is a relatively large program for our area.
And so we already have a lot of our school districts and teachers being cooperating teachers, having student teachers, mentoring field students, so they’re already really involved in our program and giving a lot of feedback on other things. So again, try not to inundate them with my requests as well. So that’s kind of why we settled on the two year cycle.
I will say and I know I’m kind of getting into the roundtable times. We’ll try to wrap this up. But I will say one of the big changes that happened as a result of Stakeholder feedback is we are currently through 2022, an Apple Distinguished School, and we used to have a one-to-one program for iPads for our students. But based on Stakeholder feedback, we no longer require our students to have an iPad. We have gone to allowing our students to pick their own devices and another. And so that was a big change in our program from stakeholder feedback.
And then another big change was when I first got to the University three years ago, they really weren’t doing much with Google Workspace for Education. And that was a big piece of the feedback from our regional partners was please, please, please get your students competent with Google before they get to us. So that was a huge change we made in our program. As well, based on that feedback, is we have really infused more work specifically with Google Workspace for Education, and we now require all of our students to take the level 1 Google Certified Educator Exam and earn that credential before graduation. And that was completely based on Stakeholder Feedback.
So I do I do see a question from Lisa thinking about funding and training for faculty and students to get the training. What the key phrase is to talk about when we’re looking for funding to support these things?
Absolutely, talk about data like data based decision.
Having that data to prove that we need to be doing this makes a huge difference.
So not only do we have our stakeholder data, we also collect data from faculty, and from students, from program completers that support this model in what we’re doing. And so really talking about the database decisions. And then also talking about 21st Century Skills and tying that in with stem because stem is such a huge–
There’s a lot of money out there for STEM funding. So if you can take those 21st Century Skills and tie that into STEM funding that’s a huge source of grant funding. So hopefully that answered Lisa’s question
And then for Jill, I’m not sure which specific training you’re referring to. Could you be more specific? And I will try to answer that question.
Again, I’m sorry, Tom. I didn’t mean to get in into the roundtable time. Oh
TOM FISHER: No, absolutely not.
That is the Google Level One Certified Educator. It is a test that is offered from Google, and it’s about using Google Workspace for Education tools. There’s actually a Google for Education Teacher Center that has training modules for that.
We infuse a lot of the practical work into our coursework, but we also encourage our students to use the training modules at the Google for Education Training Center. And then through there, there’s a place you can register for the exam.
What we’ve done because even though it’s only a $10 exam, we don’t want that to be a financial burden for any of our students. So we’ve actually rolled that into course fees for two of our courses.
And that way because it’s a course fee, it can be part of financial aid.
And so then what I do is I do a bulk voucher purchase. They get the vouchers from us and then that way, again, it’s rolled into financial aid, and it’s not out of pocket expense for students that maybe that would cause a burden for.
So that’s kind of how we handle the process here.
We also have them do Apple Teacher Certification, but that’s free. So I think I’m caught up on questions.
Yes, you are thank you we don’t have any new questions and currently but please continue to add them to the chat.
We’ll begin our roundtable discussion.
And we I’d like to introduce Tom Fisher as well to the panel.
He is with UNC Charlotte. And any questions you have for either Jana or Tom, we can bring you in if you’d like. And you can join the discussion, or you can ask through chat. So please keep those questions coming.
Heather, can I start with a question for Jana?
I know this is–
I think it’s a good topic. First of all, thank you for your presentation. It just reminded me I got a whole bunch of Digital Learning Competency assignments I have to grade for my current student teachers, because that is something that we also do here in North Carolina. So we have a couple of different options for them to complete that during student teaching.
And of course, it aligns with our North Carolina Standards, because we know that they’re going to be evaluated that during their summative when they become actual teachers, licensed teachers in North Carolina.
But one thing as I’m listening to this. And one of the things I talk to my students about as I have them preservice and then I do have the student teachers as well as I was thinking about talking to them trying to find some positives out of the pandemic, right? And one of the unintended benefits that I talk to my students about right now and talking about the technology that we use and of the classes I teach is schools finally taking advantage of being one to one. And a lot of people were sort of forced into that, right? We have a lot of clinical educators, cooperating teachers, mentor teachers, whatever you call them out there. We have a lot of those folks that weren’t necessarily up to speed.
And what we saw out of our program and some of the data from some of the anecdotal data from our surveys that we put out to our district partners is how helpful the written comments, about how helpful our candidates were about driving classroom technology during the pandemic because a lot of these teachers weren’t necessarily prepared. And I see you’re agreeing with me because hey listen. I already did my doctor, but it’s a perfect dissertation topic for somebody out there. A lot of pandemic stuff, so I think that would you agree.
I think that’s another way that you can try and look into funding, right? Like there’s pandemic funding. There’s money out there for that. And that’s another way to sort of go to Administration with the need for some of these new technologies is to say, look, our candidates we’re preparing the next level of what education is going to look for post-pandemic, right? We need to lock in and take advantage of this. So I think to Lisa’s question earlier, I think that’s another angle that you can take at this time.
And I will say something going back to what you were saying about.
Creating that partnership between our preservice educators and the cooperating teachers that’s really something we’ve seen a lot of is our students, especially during the pandemic. Were able to go out even in the virtual environment kind of be a resource a technology resource or these practicing educators who really hadn’t had an opportunity as much. And we’re kind of thrown into it. Our students were able to help guide them a little bit and kind of help them through that process.
And so one of the lessons we learned is we’ve actually moved a lot more of our resources online. We’ve moved as much of our resources online as we can.
But something else that I think is and again, not trying to toot our horn here, but something else I think that has been extremely helpful is we do serve as a regional hub. So not only can our students use our technologies in their classrooms, we now allow community educators to check out our resources and use them in their classrooms. And I think that has really helped foster that back and forth and helping have that really great collaborative partnership. But I do think it has been really interesting to see what our students have learned. The teachers will learn from our students, but what our students have learned from teachers in terms of kind of building the plane while you’re flying it and making it work for students.
So yeah and I think if you go back to what the–
I know your competencies. They’re a little bit different. We only have four. We incorporate some under different headings.
We obviously have citizenship, but the one and we have the we’ve merged like the content and instruction together and data analysis and feedback or together. But I think the one to really latch on to is like that leadership one. And anecdotally, I have a student teacher who was with me working at a school when the pandemic happened. She ended up working at that school.
And because she came to our program and that we do focus part of their preservice on them not just being in PLCs, and being a fly on the wall, or just being a sponge and taking it all in, but we do expect them to offer something up, right? And even if it’s not used, we do expect them to present to their PLCs to share things that they’re doing with us at the University. And she’s going to be, I have the honor of awarding this former student teacher, she’s getting the New Teacher of the Year Award next week at our University.
And one of the reasons why they said is because she stepped into the breach in that first year of the pandemic, and she was a leader on digital resources, help people with Zoom, helping people with the different free sites that they could use and things like that.
And now, she’s the Beginning Teacher of the Year Award and like I said, that was one of the things that came back. And so we love to see that. It’s not that they just know how to use some of these different sites, and apps, and systems, and platforms, it’s that they can take the lead and offer like many PD on that like in PLCs.
And that’s what I always say to them. They’re always like, Dr. Fisher, how am I going to reach, exceeds expectations on this domain on our evaluation tool? And I said, easy, you’re going to take something that you learned in digital competencies from our University, and you’re going to present it to the PLC whether they use it or not. I want you to get comfortable taking the lead on something because that’s what PLCs need, right? PLCs don’t want one person to just dictate to everybody. It’s supposed to be collaborative.
We do talk about that. We talk about needing to be a leader, and that they understand what we have at our University. I mean the state or regional partners are very aware of our program. We try to be very transparent.
And so they do expect our students to be leaders with technology from the first day they are in the schools. And so I completely agree with what you’re saying that it is an expectation and that our students need to be comfortable with that. They need to be comfortable with taking the lead and being the leader and speaking out. And we talk about also sometimes being the leader isn’t necessarily doing the PD but it is modeling it.
It’s modeling it consistently. It’s modeling it every day. It’s modeling it appropriately. And sometimes administrators that’s what they’re really looking for is someone who can come in and is competent with these digital tools and can model it not just for their own students but for colleagues on a consistent basis.
Yeah, I just think that that’s imperative that we do that.
I think another thing that I would love to talk to you about is the focus on technologies, the variety that we’re choosing from. So we’re at the Reaction, right? So how can I not mention GoReact? I’m a longtime user of it, and of course, I use it with my preservice student teachers.
However, they’re not necessarily going to be able to use that in their classroom. So I do balance that with something like Edpuzzle for instance, right? Where I use a similar type of thing where I have them analyze and I embed these activities. And I try to have a mix of what the University pays for us to use versus what I know my candidates are going to be able to use.
Have access to.
Yeah, so we talked a lot about some of those classes you had. And we have similar ones and we embed some of those things in there. But I try to do that every semester. I try to have a mix of what is the University providing in terms of a contract for me to use that I know is useful, and then what am I going to use that is either a limited access or a free technology. So what can you speak to as far as that goes?
We talk about building the digital toolbox.
So obviously, there are tools that are paid tools from our University that the University expects us to use because they are paying for it. But again. Especially in that EL300, when we’re really working on that digital fluency piece, that’s where we’re really trying to build what we call the digital toolbox. So that they have many different.
One of the skills they learn about in EL300 is they talk about communicating with parents. So what are some of the tools you can use to communicate with parents both paid tools and free tools? So we talk about things like Google Sites because most of our P-12 partners are using Google Workspace for Education. So let’s make sure you understand how you can use sites as a communication tool.
But let’s look at Canva. And now that Canva has Canva for Education. So I don’t know if everyone knows about this. It’s an amazing thing. If you have a Google account that is not a personal account. If you have a Google account that is an organizational account that’s part of Google Workspace for Education, you can actually get Canva Pro for free under Canva for Education. So making sure our students understand those kinds of resources, and we talk about understanding what a digital toolbox is, so that they understand you don’t use a hammer when a screwdriver is more appropriate, we have to think of that digitally as well.
Nice. So looking at the courses you know and I know this. It’s the numbers and not necessarily full on descriptions of what you have. So with hours obviously, everybody takes a very similar set of courses until they get to.
And of course, I’m middle secondary. So at middle secondary, we started to branch out into our content specifically, right? So this is a big one. I think this is the next level of what we need to do at our University is making sure that when they get into, say those methods courses, that now we’re branching out into not just the general, right?
The general technologies that go into the toolbox, but what are the–
I’ll use math because I’m working with a lot of math student teachers right now. So of course, Desmos is a tool that they’re going to use on a regular basis.
So that is I think is the next level of where this has to go and then getting into some of those content specific. How is your program sort of dealing with that when they get to those content?
Well, it is interesting, because it is handled very differently. We have two different Ed prep departments. We have our EESC which is the Early Childhood Elementary Exceptional Child, and then we have our LMSE, which is Leadership Middle and Secondary. And so it is actually handled very differently between the two departments.
It is a little bit, I mean just being frank, is a little bit more of a struggle with our secondary because the students don’t really quote unquote “belong to us.” They belong to, if they’re math or science, they belong to the STEM college. If they’re ELA or History, they belong to humanities. So we they’re minoring in Education. So it just it makes it different in terms of access.
So really that’s where I try to reach out to those faculty that are teaching the content and really I make it very research based discussion. And we talk about all the research on how that teachers teach the way they were taught. And so that’s why it’s so important for our content to be using the technology tools and in showing our students in context with content how those technology tools are used. But then helping them understand that balance between paid tool and what tools they might actually have access to.
It’s I actually have a lot more access to our EESC students. So that’s handled a little bit differently. I push into more of those classes. I don’t really push into content classes. So it’s more of a struggle with our secondary.
And I try to work with because I work with the five core that we call in the Middle secondary would be CTE, Math, Science, Social Studies, and English. So I feel like I have good rapport with those folks, and I just try to get on the same page with them. But you can only suggest, you can’t sort of force that. Sarah had a good question that came in from the Q&A, and it’s definitely something that we’re dealing with.
It’s about nontraditional, right? So you’re not traditional and that would be our grad cert folks, and so we’re dealing with that right now. I’m dealing with actually somebody that with edTPA, and we’re having technology struggles just using the technology to trim the videos and get this thing ready to turn in. Just using that edTPA portfolio site has been a struggle for this candidate.
What I would say is because our program for our grad certs is fully online, that that’s a struggle for us and where it comes. It comes down to somebody like me an individual faculty site coordinator that then can have a one-on-one with that person. So I think it’s very important we teach our candidates to do an interest inventory on their students. And so we have to do that at the beginning of the semester, and I try to when I know I have nontraditionals. I have four nontraditionals out of my 25 student teachers right now. And I have four non traditionals that I know I look so young, but there’s four that are older than me, so that means they’re older than half a century.
And so I sat down with them and I said, look, tell me what you struggle with. Are you going to struggle with technology because we’re going to be using GoReact?
For we use 100% GoReact for our observations either live or recorded. And I need to know if they’re going to struggle with technology. So we do a little interest inventory. So I sort of know and it’s so to the question from the audience. I sort of know who. I have that on my radar going in, but we don’t really necessarily address it before they get to me.
So that is actually where it’s really handy to have a meet and me personally, but someone who does what I do because that is part of my job. It is part of my job to specifically reach out to those students and work with them, to help them build those fluency skills because that’s really what that issue is a digital fluency issue.
And for us, because we are in a very rural part of the state, I mean we go down. In Missouri geography, we have something called the Boot Hill, which actually goes down into Arkansas. We actually have students down there that don’t have running water or electricity. So when they come to college, they really haven’t necessarily had much interaction with technology at all. And so we are fortunate here to have someone in my position that can specifically really dig in with those students and address those fluency issues.
But I really think that’s why it’s so important to have a place where students know they can go, because sometimes they’re actually kind of embarrassed to go to faculty and say, you told me to do this with this but I don’t even know how to access that. And it’s embarrassing to students to have to say that. So if they know they have a resource. So it doesn’t even have to be an EDvolution Center, but if there is some kind of academic technology services or someplace where students can go for help. I think that is such a huge thing for students, but we are actually talking about campus wide starting an initiative where we test our students for math skills, for reading skills.
We’re a no SAT or ACT required University. We have a different–
we can do that, but we have another admissions track.
But we do based on transcripts and things, we do test for reading for writing for those kinds of things. So we are looking into also testing those digital fluency skills.
We know before student comes on campus.
We know if they need remedial math. We know if they need remedial writing or remedial reading. We need to know if they have. So not just in our Ed prep program but campus wide, including our online students we need to know if they need remedial help with digital fluency, so we can address that.
Maybe even in a one or two hour course. Really dig in on those skills, so to help them be successful. And I think it’s something we’re looking at.
And I think it comes down to like you’ve got to pick and choose your battles. We have an outstanding center for teaching and learning on campus. But at the same time for our grads, we offer distance education. So they’ll take the distance education which is a reduced, it’s reduced tuition.
And so of course, a lot of them are not on campus. And so you can’t read as much to your point like they don’t want to. If they’re in a class that’s got 30 some students in their online, you’re unlikely to be able to read them properly to figure out if they can’t do this, and they’re as well as likely to come to you with it. So I think that you got to figure out how, you got to look at your program.
So to the panel or to the question from the crowd out there, I think you have to look at your program and look at it in terms of, is it like ours? Is it like Jana’s?
What does it look like? And then figure out what your best approach to those that are in need. And I think that’s the only way to do it.
One of the resources we’ve created, we use Canvas is our LMS, so I have two different Canvas shells that students can self enroll in. And one of them is basically kind of places where they can go to find those digital fluency resources. That’s what the whole shell is. It is like if I don’t know how to do this, where can I find help in doing it? Be it a person or a website.
So that is one way that, just to be a little more specific to help answer that question, that’s one way I’ve worked on addressing that because we also have regional campuses. So we have students that are officially part of our University, but never step foot on Main campus. So to help, we need to have equitable learning experiences.
So by having the Canvas shell, they can self enroll in it.
They don’t have to even say to someone, “I don’t know how to do this.”
If they know they’re struggling, they can go to that Canvas shell. And then I have also created modules for faculty to put in their Canvas courses.
If we see something that has been a struggle for multiple students will create resources for it and then provide that to faculty, so faculty can plug that into their courses. It’s kind of a “Hey, if you’re struggling with this, use this resource.” So those are some practical, not that’s theoretical but very practical ideas for how to address that.
Yeah and I think it’s going and winning support from specific faculty, so I know you do this. I know you have people that you earmark and say this is the person that I’m going to sell on this and then when I host an open swim or something like that this person is going to come and sort of be my plan and be like, Yes, this is great this is good technology this is the kind of stuff you need to use and therefore we can start selling it to more people. And then we can embed it a little bit deeper. I think that’s how we have to get them to come rather than like dictate to anybody but it’s about winning people over and I think that that’s I think that’s tremendous that you have both that for the students and faculty
Yeah. Again, I feel very privileged to be a part of this process.
Well, thank you both. We learned so much and I know that there is so much more that I’m sure we could learn and continue to talk about. There is one question that we weren’t able to get to. It came kind of at the end.
Eric, you have Jana’s email. You can reach out to her as well to continue the conversation, but we also will be sending out an email with on demand content, excuse me, in just a few days.
We will have another session beginning at 45 minutes after the hour or within the hour, so just in a few minutes here.
There is going to post the link in the chat for anyone who’d like to join that next session.
Thank you so much, Jana and thank you, Tom. We appreciate your time and all of the information we’ve learned today.
Thank you for inviting me. I appreciate the opportunity to talk about this.
Well, thank you so much.
All right. Bye bye.
Bye bye.