SIGTE News from NECC 2005
With our membership now topping 3,400, I recognize that the majority
of our SIGTE colleagues are unable to attend NECC on a regular basis. If
we missed you this year in Philadelphia, please know that you truly were
missed!
It is a good time to be an ISTE SIG member. ISTE has made a renewed
commitment to SIGs, even coining this as the "Year of the
SIG." These efforts include reorganizing the Eugene ISTE office to
better serve the needs of SIGs and hiring a new Membership Director and
Program Director who will be directly involved in addressing our needs.
As SIGTE continues to expand, this new leadership will certainly enable
us to have the consistent and timely communication with ISTE that will
help us to be successful.
The Pedagogy of Multimedia Authoring
We had record attendance for our 5th annual SIGTE Forum, featuring
guest speaker Dr. Ulises Aguero of the Costa Rican Institute of
Technology. Dr. Aguero cast multimedia authoring software in a new
light, used for specific pedagogical goals. He used a self-developed
software package, CREATE Together, to demonstrate learning and problem
solving tasks that can be accomplished through authoring. He stressed
the importance of having authoring tools match the learning situation in
order to create the best learning environments possible. Following these
thought-provoking ideas, Arlene Borthwick, our incoming President-Elect,
led small group discussions on the feasibility of incorporating this use
of authoring software into teacher preparation programs.
Workgroup Meetings
At long last, our workgroups commenced at the pre-conference Forum,
sparking what I hope will be rich, productive discussions that will span
the time between our annual NECC visits and at the same time bring to
the table those who cannot attend our face-to-face conferences. I
charged each group with identifying relevant issues and questions,
existing resources and collaborations, reasonable outcomes to be
expected from our work, and logical next steps.
A sizeable group met to begin the discussion on Professional
Development Practices. Among the many issues that
this group identified were lack of follow-up to professional
development, inadequate evaluation, little long term/strategic planning,
and the disconnect between university and K–12 educators. Those in
attendance planned to identify successful K–12/university
partnership models, and listed specific ideas to initiate a future NECC
proposal and journal publication focused on professional
development.
Those interested in Research Practices and Advocacy combined efforts
for a thorough consideration of current research in instructional
technology, especially research which demonstrates
how technology can improve the quality of life, and that which shows
relative advantage of using technological instructional methods. The
discussion naturally led into strategies for promoting quality
doctoral research and identifying existing resources to support research
in our field.
Finally, a focused group of colleagues drafted plans for how best to
approach setting up a Best Practice Database for technology and teacher
education. They agreed onthree main
objectives: 1) Determine if a database would
be useful to the academic community; 2) Review available resources; and
3) Participate in the forum by sharing databases and ideas.
I encourage you to add your input to any or all of these discussions
by visiting our SIGTE Communities page (see how later in this message)
to check in on the Forum discussions. It is my hope that these
between-NECC conversations could lead to increased collaborations,
collaborative NECC conference proposals, and even joint research and
publication opportunities, but they will only be as valuable as the time
we are able to carve out of our filled schedules to contribute.
Recognitions
We were thrilled to recognize some important people at our business
meeting this year. Our annual Research Paper Award winners Vivian Wright
& Elizabeth Wilson from the University of Alabama joined us to
receive plaques recognizing their research paper "From Preservice to
Inservice Teaching: A Study of Technology Integration." We were also
able to support Ms. Yvette Aqui in her travel to NECC this year to
present her research paper entitled, "Characteristics of the Online
Learner: Experiences, Participation Level, and Achievement." We look
forward to supporting other graduate students who serve as lead
presenters for NECC in San Diego, so please do encourage your graduate
students and colleagues to become involved in SIGTE. These are our
future colleagues! Finally, we honored Marianne Handler for her lifetime
achievement and contributions to both SIGTE and ISTE as a whole. We put
Marianne on the spot by challenging her to name every past SIGTE
president, and further to name all of the positions she personally has
held within ISTE. The walk down memory lane left a few teary-eyed, but I
think left those venturing into a SIGTE Business meeting for the first
time with a true glimpse of the collegiality of our organization.
Congratulations to all of our spotlighted members this year.
SIGTE Members at NECC
In addition to countless workshops, concurrent sessions, research
paper sessions, roundtables, and other appearances that featured our
SIGTE members, the following members presented SIGTE-sponsored
sessions:
Workshop
A Modern Computers in Education Course for Preservice Teachers
Dave Moursund and others
Concurrent Sessions
The Dynamic Nature of ePortfolio Requirements & Processes
Marianne Handler, Arlene Borthwick, Ann Cunningham, Diane Judd,
Joyce Morris, Davina Pruitt-Mentle, Linda Triplett and Laura Turner
Evaluating Technology Professional Development: Principles and
Practices for Scientific Research
Dale Niederhauser, Niki Davis, Gerald Knezek, M.D. (Peggy) Roblyer
and Ann Thompson
Bridging K–12 and Higher Education: When Technology is the
Catalyst
Karen Grove, Kathleen Bowes, Paul Facteau, David Raker and Margaret
Thombs
Funding Opportunities and Strategies for Teacher Educators
Ann Thompson, Glen Bull, Robert Kadel, Tim Magner, Susan Patrick
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