The 2016 National Educational Technology Plan called for reflection and action on how educators prepare our nation’s pre-service educators with the goal of ensuring every new teacher is prepared to meaningfully use technology to support student learning. The four guiding principles for the use of educational technology in teacher preparation are as follows:
- Focus on the active use of technology to enable learning and teaching through creation, production, and problem solving.
- Build sustainable, program-wide systems of professional learning for higher education instructors to strengthen and continually refresh their capacity to use technological tools to enable transformative learning and teaching.
- Ensure pre-service teachers’ experiences with educational technology are program-deep and program-wide rather than one-off courses separate from their methods courses.
- Align efforts with research-based standards, frameworks, and credentials recognized across the field.
Educator preparation programs that commit to working toward the four guiding principles of educational technology in teacher preparation will be eligible to participate in the Innovators’ Briefing in Washington, D.C., on December 14, 2016, where stakeholders from across the field will continue to advance this work. Take the challenge!
