ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries 5 2 2 /C& RL N ew s • M a y 2001 C O M M U N IT Y & COLLABORATION Creating technology-literate teachers for the 21st century Collaborative partnering among funding sources, local schools, and Carthage College by Prisca Moore and Eugene A. Engeldinger W hen you walk into the Saemann Cur­riculum Resources Center in Ruthrauff Library at Carthage College, you are likely to see Carthage education majors creating les­ son plans and preparing technology-enriched lessons for local schoolchildren or you might see the elementary and middle school stu­ dents themselves conducting research on the Internet or creating multimedia presentations to share with classmates. The Saemann Center was created to pro­ vide learning opportunities in a unique col­ laborative computer environment. Rather than the traditional one-student-to-one-computer- lab setup, this center is designed to facilitate several small groups, each working with a single computer. The primary goals of this program are twofold. First, the program pro­ vides current and future teachers with a model or “vision” of how students could use com­ puters for collaborative group work. Second, it provides an opportunity for teachers to ex­ perience a different type o f classroom ar­ r a n g e m e n t w h e r e s tu d e n ts c a n w o rk collaboratively in a computer-intensive envi­ ronment. M u ltitiered p artn ersh ip s The Saemann Center is the result of several partnerships developed over a number of years. At one level, it is a partnership be­ tween the Saemann Foundation and the col­ lege. Over several years the foundation has made generous gifts to the college initially enabling the creation of the center and in the following years its maintenance and improve­ ments. At another level, there is collabora­ tion betw een the library and the Education Division, which supported the creation and maintenance of the Saemann Center in library space while incorporating the children’s col­ lection and the curriculum materials. Also, it encouraged collaboration among the several Academic Information Services units (library/ computer center/media services) to develop and su p p o rt te c h n o lo g y re s o u r c e s for Carthage students preparing to be teachers in elementary, middle, and high schools. An­ other major collaborative partnership in this mix is betw een the Education Division at Carthage and several public and private schools in the Kenosha and Racine school districts. We have been fortunate in devel­ About the a u th o rsļ Prisca Moore is professor o f education and Eugene A. Engeldinger is vice-president fo r Academic Information Services at Carthage College, e-mail: moorep1@carthage.edua n d eng@carthage.edu mailto:moorep1@carthage.edu mailto:eng@carthage.edu C ê R L N e w s ■ M a y 2001 / 523 oping partnerships with three other funding agencies in addition to the Saemann Foun­ dation— the AT & T Learning Networks, the Johnson Fund, and the Wisconsin Founda­ tion of Independent Colleges. Each of these foundations has provided financial support for critical aspects of our teacher education partnerships and created opportunities for professional development for our cooperat­ ing teachers. A final collaborative partner­ ship worthy of men­ tion is that between the c o o p e ra tin g teachers and our stu­ dent interns. Truly, this is an important collaborative effort that does not always receive the apprecia­ tion it deserves. Without the coop­ eration and collabo­ ration o f all these important partner­ ships, little would have b een accom ­ plished. The com ­ bined efforts of this multitiered collaboration among distinct entities has allowed for the development of a first-class facility, the cre­ ation of technologically savvy new teachers, the retraining of mid-career experienced edu­ cators, and exciting learning experiences for K-12 students. The m ission Our overarching mission is to create a learn­ ing environment in which Carthage student teachers can be exposed to a variety of tech­ nological applications and, ultimately, for them to become competent users of instruc­ tional technology. The goal of the Education Department is not simply to develop a set of technology skills. More important, we want to prepare future teacher leaders so they will have a clear “vision” of how they can more holistically integrate technology into their classroom curricula. The emphasis is on the use of technology as a tool for acquiring in­ formation via the Internet or from multime­ dia software and for sharing the knowledge they have acquired by preparing multimedia presentations and Web pages for their peers. Two groups of local middle school students explore the Internet and discuss the results as part of their collaborative projects in the Saemann Center of Ruthrauff Library at Carthage. Our goals do not stop simply at prepara­ tion. We believe it is critical to provide a learn­ ing environment in which these future teach­ ers have the opportunity to implement tech­ nology-enriched instruction with students over a range of grade levels and abilities. Rather than our engaging simply in the typical “ob­ servations” during their pre-student- teaching field experiences, our desire is to make spe­ cial contributions to the schools as our partners in training teachers and provid­ ing dynamic instruc­ tion for K—12 students. These pre-student- teaching field experi­ ences are an integral part of the curricula for our m ethods courses in content reading, mathematics, science, and special education. Essentially, the intent o f these methods courses is to prepare Carthage stu­ dents for planning, implementing, and evaluating technology-en­ riched instructional projects in the local schools. Collaboration w ith the schools Typically, the Carthage students spend the initial weeks of the semester acquiring and expanding their own skills in using a variety of technology applications. They prepare technology-enriched lessons that they will use with K-12 students. In the second half of the semester, they actually implement these les­ sons with students from our partnership schools. This implementation may take place in the partnership school labs or classrooms, but occasionally we bring the students to the Saemann Center itself. We have found this to be exciting for teach­ ers and students alike. The students enjoy the opportunity to work collaboratively in small groups developing multimedia presen­ tations to share with their classmates. A bo­ nus is the opportunity to use unfamiliar soft­ ware and other technology, such as digital cameras, document cameras, projectors, and audio and video clips, that may not be avail­ able in their own schools. Their teachers have 5 2 4 /C&RL N ew s ■ M a y 2001 the opportunity to “envision” lessons and instructional projects developed around mul­ timedia technology. Such experiences sup­ port our goal to provide models or visions of the role technology can play in their curricula. In turn, this leads to the expansion of our partnerships with cooperating teachers in the local schools as the Carthage students and faculty bring something “new” to enrich and expand their curricula. To ensure that we are on track with our planning for these field experiences, we engage in explicit conver­ sations with the cooperating teachers about the technologies they would like to see used with their students. Taking m aterials to the ļ schools So, how does this j actually work? First, j the Carthage stu­ dents develop in­ structional materials to “take out” to the partner schools. For example, in the sei- ' e n c e m eth o d s ¡ co u rs e , stu d e n ts have c re a te d hyperstudio presen­ tations depicting the life cycle of a frog for third grade students. The third graders use this hyperstudio presentation as one source of information for the classroom pre­ sentations they develop. But it also serves as a model for the hyperstudio presentations small groups of students create themselves at the culm ination o f the scien ce unit. Carthage students take digital cameras to their field experience classrooms to document the students’ work and then incorporate their pic­ tures into hyperstudio presentations to show the various activities that the elementary and middle school students complete during the instmctional project. Carthage students have created Web sites to be used with elemen­ tary, middle, and high school students and to guide the students’ research on the Internet. Carthage students conduct extensive research on the Internet to find high-quality Web sites at the appropriate level and then create a customized Web page to guide their students Students from a local middle school discuss their project findings as part of their collaborative computer work in the Saemann Resources Center. to the best of them. Carthage students also work collaboratively with high school stu­ dents to develop their school Web site by providing instruction and ongoing support in using the Web page editors. In this way, high school students learn how to create and maintain Web sites. Bringing students to Carthage A second critical activity in our collaboration with the local schools is to bring students onto the Carthage campus to use our com­ puter labs. As stated previously, we have richer technology resources at Carthage than those found in many of our local schools. An . example from the AT Į & T Learning Network p ro je c t in v olv es Carthage students in j the science methods course creating les- I sons in which fourth­ ' grade students are brought to campus to “take a trip to Mars” using a sim ulation a v a ila b le on the Internet from NASA. The fourth-grade stu­ dents work through this simulation and then break into small groups to study differ­ ent aspects of what would be needed to cre­ ate a colony on Mars. They locate pictures on the Internet to incorporate into their word-pro­ cessing documents. Finally, the small groups combine their individual “chapters” to create a class book to share their knowledge of Mars. Another example from our math methods course involves Carthage students working with small groups of middle school students to develop and conduct surveys in their school. The Carthage students guide the middle school students in collecting and col­ lating their data. Then the middle school stu­ dents come to Carthage to use Microsoft Ex­ cel to enter their data and create graphs to show their findings. Finally, the graphs were incorporated into presentations created with Microsoft’s PowerPoint program and shared with the students’ peers. We have found these trips to the Carthage campus to be invaluable learning experiences C&RL N e w s ■ M a y 2001 / 525 for the K -1 2 students and their teachers. Also, it is im portant to n ote that this is frequently the first co llege cam pus that the K -1 2 stu­ dents have visited, and their enthusiasm for “going to co lle g e” is a visible result o f this experien ce. Although student teachers from Carthage are not required to arrange field trips to the Saem ann Center for their classes, w e are find­ ing that m ore and m ore o f them do so. Re­ markably, w e have found that even gradu­ ates o f our teach er preparation program are reserving the lab facilities and bringing in their students. Profe ssional de velopm e nt fo r teachers A third elem ent o f our collaboration has b een to provide professional development to teach­ ers in the local schools. W e have held nu­ m erous w orkshops and institutes for teach ­ ers in o u r S a e m a n n C en ter. E v en m o re important, the Carthage education students have b e e n m ajor participants in these w ork­ shops by sharing sam ple products they have created with a variety o f softw are applica­ tions, b y sharing the instructional W eb sites they have created, and by providing on e- o n -o n e support to the teach ers participating in the w orkshops. In fact, the w orkshops have b e e n so su ccessful that w e plan to in­ teg rate th em regu larly in to o u r m eth od s courses. It is just o n e m ore exten sion o f the idea o f providing the cooperatin g teachers with visions o f different uses o f tech n ology to create pow erful, m otivating instructional ex p erien ces. We have b e e n pleased with our progress tow ard developing com m unity partnerships and prom oting tech n ology-en rich ed instruc­ tion in the local scho o ls w h ere Carthage stu­ dents con d u ct their field ex p erien ces. There can b e little doubt that a program as am bi­ tious as this o n e could not have b e e n im ple­ m ented and m aintained w ithout co lla b o ra ­ tive partnerships am ong a num ber o f groups and individuals. T h e su ccess o f th ese p ro­ grams illustrates very clearly that co llab o ra­ tive partnerships truly are an essential means o f achieving our goals. ■ ( “p o r t a l” contin u ed fr o m p a g e 5 1 4 ) (http://w w w . rc . umd. edu/pubinfo/prospectus. html). T h e Publications section “houses Cam­ bridge University Press @ Rom antic Circles, a joint experimental site devoted to finding pro­ ductive ways to fuse the worlds o f hypertext and print publication. This site allows users to read the full text o f select chapters from texts currently available from Cambridge Uni­ versity Press, as w ell as cond uct keyword searching o f the entire texts. It is our hop e that these resources will seiv e as valuable tools for scholars w ho are already working w ith the featured texts and for those w ho are considering purchasing th em .” Th e p o rta l editorial board and JH U Press intend to draw o n these and other best prac­ tices to build a larger e-environm ent that will help us push the discussion about academ ic libraries m ore rapidly, to test ideas and pro­ totypes even as w e experim ent. Inform ation technology has great potential for improving discipline communications. Change pressures in libraries m andate that librarians optimize discipline com m unications. Librarians world­ wide can participate in this change by sub­ mitting to portal, subscribing to portal, read­ ing portal, and going through this p o rta l into the future. N otes 1. D enise K. Magner, “Seeking a Radical Change in the Role o f Publishing,” Chronicle o f Higher Education (June 16, 2000). Avail­ able online at http://chronicle.com/free/v46/ İ 4 l/ 4 la 0 l6 0 1 .h t m . Ray English and Larry Hardesty, “Create Change: Shaping the Fu­ ture o f Scholarly Jou rn al Publishing,” C&RL Newsβl (June 2000): 51 5 -1 8 . Available online at h ttp ://ww.ala.org/acrl/s c h o la rly c o m m . html. 2. English and Hardesty, “Create C hange,” 517. Acta Metallurgica G overnor’s meeting. Kauai, Hawaii, Ju n e 2, 2000. ■ Correction Tam i Echavarria is coordinator o f instruc­ tional services at W hitworth College. She w as listed incorrectly o n p. 3 1 6 o f the March 2001 issue o f C&RL News. Th e edi­ tors regret the error. http://chronicle.com/free/v46/ http://ww.ala.org/acrl/scholarlycomm