Doceõ Teachingfor the Future Center

New Doceõ Center seeks to help teachers explore, evaluate technology

By Tara Roberts

Tablets, laptops, digital video cameras, smartboards and more are pouring into schools across the country, and the list of new technologies available to teachers and students keeps growing.

To prepare current and future teachers for a world of wired classrooms, the College of Education has opened the Doceõ Center for Innovation + Learning. The center was established in summer 2013, and its hightech learning laboratory classroom opened in April.

Now, the center is ready to extend its mission and better engage and support educators, pre-service teachers and students across the state.

“From Day 1, our primary goal has been to start building relationships with Idaho’s K-12 educators,” says Royce Kimmons, Doceõ Center director. “That allows us to understand what they need, how to communicate with them and how to leverage our resources to support them.”

Changing expectations make technologyenriched education vital to Idaho, Kimmons says. New Common Core requirements emphasize technologybased learning. Most Idaho school districts are rural, which can isolate them from technological opportunities, and Idaho ranks 50th in per-capita education funding from state and local sources.

The Doceõ Center offers research-based information and training that is customized to the needs of individual school districts — whether it’s guidance on using the devices they already have, advice on what they may want to purchase next or grant-writing support to open new opportunities.

“We’re here to help,” Kimmons says. “We want teachers’ ideas. If they fit, we say, ‘Let’s do something. Let’s be creative.’ We need more creativity and ideas to solve problems in innovative ways.”

A Plan for the Future

The Doceõ Center was created through a $3 million, J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Foundation grant.

“Thanks to our partnership with the Albertson Foundation, the Doceõ Center already has begun to help teachers and students around the state to improve education through the better use of technology,” says Chuck Staben, president of the University of Idaho. “Too many students are failing out of college by the eighth grade, but partnerships like this promise brighter student futures by better educating them from kindergarten to graduate school.”

The center’s goals include not only to increase the capacity of Idaho’s teachers to integrate technology into their classrooms, but also provide research to help educators choose the tools that will most effectively enhance student learning.

“We are thrilled to be able to say that our preservice teachers are now being prepared with stateof-the-art technology in a classroom designed for technology integration. We realize, however, that it is not the tools alone that make great teaching and strong learning,” says Cori Mantle-Bromley, dean of the College of Education. “Most critical is teachers who know when technology is appropriate, which technology best addresses the need, and, most importantly, who know when no technology is actually the best solution. We have the facilities and the faculty expertise to address all these issues. ”

While the Albertson Foundation and an external evaluation firm oversee the center’s progress, the Doceõ Center guided by an independent advisory board is made up of UI faculty, K-12 educators and administrators and representatives from nonprofits and state industries.

Albertson Foundation Executive Director Jamie MacMillan said the Doceõ Center opening marks a new era for colleges of education in Idaho and across the nation.

“By researching and implementing national best practices in blended learning, Doceõ faculty and staff will transform how future educators teach and Idaho’s students learn. We know that the education leaders at UI are progressive, motivated and innovative,” MacMillan said. “We hope that Doceõ faculty and students will embrace a culture of experimentation and learning, and anticipate that this will be a hub of information and a hotspot for the latest research and best practices in blended learning not just for Idaho, but for the nation.”

Inside the High-Tech Lab

The Doceõ Center Lab allows pre-service teachers, K-12 students and educators across Idaho to explore the possibilities that new technologies offer.

It functions as a fully wired classroom in which students can connect laptops, tablets or other devices to the central system to share information and ideas. The instructor guides the room from an iPad that allows him or her to interact with or highlight anything happening on any other screen in the room.

“Everything in this room has educational possibilities,” says Cassidy Hall, the center’s technology integration specialist and lab manager. “This is the way of education right now — teachers and students looking at things collaboratively in a virtual environment.”

Groups of students, teachers and faculty have already begun testing technologies and teaching methods in the lab. Brant Miller, an assistant professor in the

College of Education, is now teaching his Technology Tools for Teaching and Learning class in the lab.

“We can look at the nuances of the technology within the lab,” Miller says. “It’s really exciting to have a space that’s the absolute latest and greatest and shows the interaction between the latest and greatest.”

Miller says the lab’s interactive capabilities bring a new level of collaboration to his class. If a student finds a great resource online, writes a line of useful code or builds a short video explaining a concept, Miller can share it with everyone.

“From my iPad I can project that on everyone’s screen, and we can have a conversation about it. Having that audio-visual capability is unlike anything out there,” he says. “Within a matter of seconds, I can give students voice and have them guide the discussion from what they’ve found.”

Dedication to Research

Miller is also among a group of faculty members who are collaborating with the Doceõ Center on technology-infused research projects. His research investigates how technology can support science learning, using tools such as a tablet with embedded scientific devices, a cloud-based video editor and Google Glass.

Other research includes a pilot project that tests iPads and Chromebooks for students at tribal elementary schools in Washington and Idaho; a project that offers afterschool computer game programming in Boise; and a study of how technology can help measure students’ physical activity to help prevent childhood obesity. (See sidebar on next page for more.)

The Doceõ Center faculty provide resources and expertise to these outside projects, but also conduct research of their own. For example, the center’s Chromebook initiative has placed carts of the relatively inexpensive laptops in more than 10 Idaho schools, allowing researchers to understand how students use them, how they affect learning and how sustainable they are for schools across the state.

“It really shows the Albertson Foundation’s foresight and recognition of the problems we’re facing in the state to not only want to improve Idaho schools, but also to make Idaho a national leader in guiding large-scale educational innovation with technology,” Kimmons says. “The final goal is that we will become a national model for education.”

Established in 2013 with a J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Foundation grant, the University of Idaho Doceõ Center for Innovation + Learning leads teaching innovation and technology integration initiatives at the University of Idaho and in Idaho’s K-12 schools. The center does this by supporting, teaching, modeling and researching technology integration practices in various settings. Some examples of outreach efforts include:

Chromebook Initiative For Educators

Bonners Ferry, Moscow, Rathdrum, Spirit Lake, Troy We provide teachers and students at participating schools with Chromebooks and professional development. We then study the impacts on learning and feasibility for scalability and sustainability.

Professional Development In Technology Integration

Bonners Ferry, Moscow, Post Falls, Rathdrum, Spirit Lake, Troy Our technology integration specialist travels to schools throughout the area and provides technology and integration support and expertise to participating schools at no cost.

TECHNOLOGY-INFUSED RESEARCH PROJECTS

Through our collaborations with a host of UI researchers and faculty, we provide technology resources and research expertise on a number of projects. These include: Engaging youths in computer programming with Scratch in Boise; Northern Idaho Google Festival in Coeur d’Alene area and Kellogg; Leading teaching through technology in the implementation of Idaho Core Standards in Emmett, Melba and Middleton; The role of mobile technologies in supporting place-based STEM education in McCall; Innovative middle level instruction with Promethean boards and flipped classrooms in Moscow; Physical activity motion sensor technology validation in physical education in Moscow; Systematic integration of technology for STEM support in special education in Moscow; Affordances and challenges of technology use in classrooms on American Indian reservations in Plummer; Integrating technology into the classroom via Chromebooks using preservice teachers as community collaborators in Post Falls.

Google Apps Festival

Post Falls