Pope, C., & Golub, J. (2000). Preparing tomorrow's English language arts teachers today: Principles and practices for infusing technology. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education [Online serial], 1 (1). Available: http://www.citejournal.org/vol1/iss1/currentissues/english/article1.htm
This article proposed how to prepare language arts teachers for infusing technology.The authors have illustrated the appropriate use of technology by giving examples of different classrooms which have integrated technology in the language instruction. One of the most important issues discussed in this article is how to make teacher understand about the potential of technology and how to appropriate in their teaching to benefit students’ learning. As the authors are teacher educators, they believe that if they model the use of technology in teacher training courses, the pre-service teacher are likely to adapt the experiences gain in the professional training in their actual practices. Seven principles were proposed as a guideline to prepare in-service teacher for the infusion of technology.
Teacher educators and soon-to-be language teachers should be able to:
1. introduce and infuse technology in context;
2. focus on the importance of technology as a literacy tool;
3. model English language arts learning and teaching while infusing technology;
4. evaluate critically when and how to use technology in English language arts classroom;
5. provide a wide range of opportunities to use technology;
6. examine and determine ways of analyzing, evaluating, and grading English language arts technology projects; and
7. emphasize issues of equity and diversity.
In each principle, the authors have included scenarios of technology use in a teacher training context to show how they model teaching with IT and follow the results of modelling by investigating the trainees’ use of IT in field teaching. This is a very practical way to show how teacher educators lead the trainees to the professional use of technology in teaching. For example, a teacher educator wanted her trainees to realize the challenge of inequity and diverse accessibility to technology among pupils. This is very important for teaching with technology as this variability affects the class assignments, opportunities for use in the school day, and homework expectations.
Example: Principle 7 scenario
“For students to witness first-hand the variability of various school and student access to technology, Carol's students recently went in teams on a "We-Search" visit to area middle schools. In the schools they worked with local media resource personnel to visit classrooms, computer labs, storage areas, and teachers' offices. They discovered the vast differences among schools', teachers', and students' accessibility to technology. In their report to the entire class they discussed availability of technology as well as strategies they might use when working in that school as teachers of English language arts.”
Tessie’s perspectives on the Principle for Infusing Technology
This article has suggested the demand that teacher educator and language teachers should have experience in process of adopting technology. Having professional experience in using the techology on the classroom setting is crucial for the technology adotion. Many studies imply that teachers do not continue using technology in real life teaching after have they completed the training because there is no intervention between taught IT skills and pedagogy practice. In other word, what have been done during the training courses are distant from individual teaching context. The principles proposed here can be used as a guideline for teacher educators to think about effective ways to prepare teacher trainees for the infusion of technology.
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