Technology Vision Mark Yudof, President of University of Minnesota, is quoted as saying “Vision without resources is hallucination.” We are fortunate that previous and present administrations in the College of Education at the University of Florida have dedicated resources to the acquisition of educational technologies and the establishment of an Office of Educational Technology. However, merely providing resources related to technology does not establish a vision for the use of educational technologies in the teaching and learning environment for a College. NCATE requirements can spur an organization to start this process but it takes more to establish a technology vision. In an attempt to provide a foundation for the technology vision in the College of Education at the University of Florida, we worked to provide ways for all stakeholders in all programs within the College of Education to come together to shape the technology vision that will guide our College in the future. We used the C-R-E-A-T-E-R model by Havelock and Zlotolow (1995) to assist in the creation of our vision. Establishing a vision takes considerable time because of the support and buy-in needed by so many programs and areas. This work merely started the establishment of a common vision for technology integration in our teacher education program. During the first year of our grant, we met with our Advisory Board to gather their insights on this issue. Valuable suggestions were given on disseminating our goals throughout the University community. It was encouraging to know we are not alone in establishing a technology vision that will lead us successfully into the 21st century. This was also happening in other programs and colleges within the University of Florida community. Because the College of Education was in the process of searching for a new dean, the college administration requested that we delay working with the Office of the Dean to establish a college-wide vision for technology. Therefore, the plans for various conversations have been delayed. However, learning about the ideas and concerns for a vision for the use of educational technologies by individual faculty, departments, and schools still needed to be done. During the second year, we began conversations with individual faculty to better gather information on how they were using technology in the teaching of their courses, where they would "like to go" with technology, and how the role they believed educational technologies should play in the College. In our initial stages of data gathering, we interviewed faculty in the Unified Elementary ProTeach program. This allowed us to not only gather their cares, concerns, and thoughts, but also to document our integration of the NETS*T standards within the unified elementary program. We are pleased to say that the efforts of our faculty resulted in the Unified Elementary ProTeach program being recognized by the ISTE as a NETS 2003 Distinguished Achievement Award Winner. We were recognized at NECC 2003 for this accomplishment. See pictures of Melissa McCallister, an instructor for EME 4406 in the Unified Elementary ProTeach program, accepting this award for the University of Florida. Another part of working to establish a vision for technology in the College of Education was to understand change in educational systems. During year two of the grant, the Mentor Team, consisting of all project personnel on the grant, was established. During the fall semester, the group read and discussed Surviving Change: A Survey of Educational Change Models by James Ellsworth. This allowed project personnel to better understand change, discuss the change models relevance to our initiative, and brainstorm ideas about working with stakeholders to establish a vision for the College of Education. It was also important for us to use data to help guide our vision for the use of educational technologies in the College of Education. During year two, we began one research project that provided additional guidance as we develop our college vision. The work of this study sought to determine how our courses influenced students' attitudes, skills, and abilities in using educational technologies, and how our courses compared to others across the nation. During the third year of the Teaching & Technology Initiative, the administration at the University of Florida, the College of Education, and the School of Teaching & Learning began to stabilize. Therefore, we began to move ahead on our vision to support interdisciplinary technology integration. We worked with our director of the School of Teaching & Learning, Dean, Associate Dean for Technology and numerous others on this vision. Ongoing conversations within individual program areas also occurred. One of the major initiatives related to interdisciplinary technology integration was the conceptualization and development of the Teaching with Technology Exploration Center. Our PT3 grant was able to leverage some additional funds to renovate a series of classrooms in order to form the Teaching with Technology Exploration Center. The center opened during the fourth year of the Teaching and Technology Initiative. This center is a place where preservice teachers can practice using various educational technologies (probes, simulations, etc.) and software appropriate for the teaching of mathematics and science. Our preservice teachers are able to practice their lesson using these tools before implementing them in a classroom. This Center continues to allow faculty to share their vision of how technology should be used in their individual programs and work toward a common vision of technology integration for our teacher education program. Not only will this shared vision increase our students' proficiency and effectiveness of using educational technologies in their teaching but it works on building the sustainability of the Teaching with Technology Exploration Center and the shared vision of technology integration in our teacher education program. In addition, during the 4th year of the Teaching and Technology Initiative, Dr. Swain conducted a research study involving teacher education faculty in the School of Teaching and Learning to develop an innovation configuration map of what the innovation of integration technology into teacher education should look like for the College of Education teacher education programs. This research study will be presented at the NECC 2005 conference.
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