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ICT Literacy in Teacher Education

Compiled by Dr. Lesley Farmer, California State University Long Beach
 

GENERAL/STANDARDS:
MERLOT LINKS:
  • Education/TeacherEd
  • Arts/Art Education
  • Arts/Music/Music Education
  • Humanities/History/Theory and Method/History Education
  • Science and Technology/Agriculture and Environmental Sciences/Agriculture Education
  • Science and Technology/Chemistry/Chemical Education 
  • Science and Technology/Physics/General/Physics Education
  • Workplace Development/Industrial Education
  • Academic Support Services/ICT Literacy
  • Also look under specific subjects: Language Arts, History, Drama, etc.

Teacher Education Community Portal: https://www.merlot.org/merlot/TeacherEducation.htm 

 

LIBGUIDES:

 

ARTICLES:

 

LEARNING ACTIVITIES IDEA STARTERS:
  • Assign an entire class to conduct an investigation of a particular topic (e.g., achievement gap) from its treatment in the popular media, and then trace its origin in conversations among scholars and researchers. 
  • Have students select a seminal work on a topic (e.g., constructivism) and then identify sources that preceded and continued the conversation, analyzing the impact of the seminal work on the field. 
  • Create a timeline to track the evolving threads of a continuing scholarly conversation on a teacher education topic (e.g., mainstreaming). 
  • Select a topic on which students have some knowledge or experience. Identify a venue (blog, discussion forum, other social media site) in which a scholarly conversation is taking place (e.g., Common Core State Standards). Ask students to identify key players and their perspectives. Compare a related scholarly article by one of the players to the online conversation Consider how to involve themselves in the conversation.
  •  A researcher/guest speaker attends the class and describes a research project from conception to conclusion (e.g., site action research). Students attempt to diagram the steps reflected in the description, and then work with the speaker to develop a robust conception of the process (recognizing that the process varies from project to project and researcher to researcher). Students then journal about how their research process relates to that of the researcher, and what changes they might make in order to attempt more authentic, knowledge-generating research experiences. 
  • Provide students with two different information types (with two different goals) on the same topic by the same unnamed authoritative creator/author (for example, scholarly article and blog post). Use sources as discussion starters with students about context in relationship to authority. Reveal authorship later in discussion. 
  • Ask students to find several scholarly sources on the same topic (e.g., bilingualism) that take very different stands. How was it that the authors came to different conclusions? Does it have to do with authority? 
  • Ask students to create a citation "web" using a citation analysis database, and conduct a content analysis of the linked authors by affiliation (workplace, academic preparation, geography, subject expertise). Do authors cite each other? Are there some authors who are outliers in the web? How do such connections impact information generation?   
  • Assign students to identify several different applicable information sources in different formats that might be used to help teach a specific content. Ask them to explain the unique values of each in terms of learning. 
  • Ask students to transform an instructional aid they have created in one format to another format (e.g., PowerPoint to an infographic), and to write a reflection on what they needed to consider as they went through the process. 
  • Ask students to brainstorm possible sources that might have relevant information about lesson planning. What tools will they need to locate those resources? 
  • Ask students to identify two relevant databases for the project they are working on, and analyze why they consider them to be an effective resource for their research. Ask them to research the same topic in the two databases, and compare the process and resuits. 
  • Ask students to choose a topic, develop key terms to search with, and use two different search engines to locate information on their topic. Have them compare the results in terms of quantity, types of sources (e.g., government, educational, scholarly, commercial), order/sequence of results, and relevance. Pair students who used the same search engine with different topics to compare results. 
  • Ask students to write an I-Search paper on a teacher education issue (e.g., art in STEM), whereby they journal their searching processes, including key terms, tools used, and resources/results at each step. They should note how they evaluated their resources, and what information was extracted. Their journal should also reflect their feelings: success, concern, frustration, pride, etc. Pair up students, and ask them to read and comment on each other's journal, and then draw up conclusions and recommendations for their peers. 
  • Ask students to use the National Center for Education Statistics (https://nces.ed.gov/) to form and answer a research question about education (e.g., Is there a correlation between NAEP scores and teacher-student ratio). 
  • Ask students to explore digital storytelling as a way to instruct, and as a way for children to demonstrate knowledge. 
  • Ask students to create a screencast about an online assessment tool.
  •  Ask students to locate TV or film clips that illustrate effective and ineffective teaching techniques, and then give a media review/critique explaining their observations and implications. 
  • Ask students to create a Public Service Announcement about some action that parents can do to help their children succeed academically (e.g., read daily, practice safe habits online, manage time). 
  • Ask students to create a video about parent involvement. 
  • Ask students to create a graphic novel about teacher-student interaction. 
  • Ask students to identify a population with special needs (e.g., middle schoolers with hearing impairments) , and create a database of appropriate software.