NLU PT3 Chronicle

(Be sure to collect ‘em all!!)

We first heard that we received the grant in June of 2000. Of the nearly 160 federal grants awarded, this National-Louis University PT3 grant was number 12 in the amount of dollars allocated, nearly $1.4 million. It is a three-year grant, with three major partners – the Milwaukee Public Schools in Wisconsin, the Prince George’s County Public Schools in Maryland, and the Prince William County Public Schools in Virginia. Our goal is to provide these school systems with graduating MAT students in elementary or secondary education who are proficient in technology.

We began our first cohort of elementary education MAT students in the fall of 2000. They have had the luxury of many resources behind them, being the only cohort running at the time, but have also had the challenge of being the first group to begin the program. We are indebted to all of these students for their patience and hard work in keeping this cohort going. They have developed a reputation for providing wonderful feasts of food and warm welcomes to newcomers in the program.

In January the elementary cohort did a beautiful job of welcoming the new secondary education cohort. During a long Saturday session in early January both cohorts got together to learn about their on-line Foundational Studies courses and to share in the wonderful food supplied by the elementary education cohort. All appreciated their words of encouragement and support.

In April another elementary education cohort will join our Milwaukee PT3 community. They will be meeting on Thursday evenings at Manitoba Elementary School at the same time as the other elementary education cohort. The secondary education cohort meets on Tuesday evening at Bell Middle School in Milwaukee. It is our hope that each cohort will choose to communicate with each other via the "on-line community" link on our web page.

It won’t be long before we begin to bring our program to the Washington, DC area. In the past few months, Interim Dean David Freitas and I have traveled to Virginia and Maryland to seek approvals in bringing our programs to these states. So far all looks clear to have our PT3 cohorts begin in Prince George’s and Prince William Counties sometime in the fall. In addition we hope to add one or two more cohorts to the Milwaukee program. This means that our PT3 community could grow to 5-8 cohorts meeting concurrently in the fall of this year.

During the past few months 15 National-Louis University faculty have been participating in technology training sessions created for and supported by the PT3 grant. These faculty are the first of 100 NLU faculty that will participate in such a training, which involves four 4-hour sessions. Upon completion of the training they are establishing an area of technology they would like to pursue. It is hoped they will use the resources of PT3 students in accomplishing their technology goal. On our web page, we will be listing each faculty member who participates, including his or her area of research and technology interests.

Daniel Ryan

Project Director, PT3 Grant Program

Assistant Dean, National College of Education

One of the products of the Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers (PT3) grant is the creation of an electronic portfolio for each of the cohort members. Cindy Anderson, faculty member on the Wisconsin campus, developed the electronic portfolio template. Using Filemaker HomePage, electronic portfolio template was developed, so that it can be accessed from both the World Wide Web and from a student disk. Two students from the Wisconsin cohort have been piloting the portfolio template, developing working models that will be part of a presentation and paper for the international conference of the Society for Information Technology in Teacher Education (SITE) conference in early March. The session and paper are entitled "Using School District Standards to Develop Thematic Lessons for Electronic Portfolios". One of these two portfolios uses the K-12 academic standards of the Milwaukee Public School District, the district that is partnering National-Louis University in the PT3 grant. The other portfolio represents the academic standards of Kenosha Unified School District, a neighboring district that employs two Wisconsin cohort members as substitute teachers.

The electronic portfolio template is designed to exhibit artifacts that represent mastery of the teacher standards recognized by the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE). It also provides a place to link the artifacts with the National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) for teachers and with the academic standards that are recognized by public school districts and developed by the state of Wisconsin. The links with the NETS standards allows the cohort member a chance to demonstrate his or her mastery of required minimal technology standards for beginning teachers. The alignment to academic standards offers the cohort member the chance to show that he or she can develop artifacts that are specifically designed to prepare their students for the state assessments that are developed from the K-12 academic standards.

The opening screen of the electronic portfolio is designed to appear as a notebook, featuring the title and a digital picture of the student in the portfolio. It links to the page allowing the user to access the artifacts tied to their respective standards. Figure 1 depicts the cover page of Elizabeth Smith’s portfolio:

Figure 1 © Cindy L. Anderson, Ph.D.

The standards linking page provides access to the portfolio contents through an image map. The viewer of the portfolio can click on a link that ties the artifacts to the NETS standards, a link that ties the artifacts to the Wisconsin state standards, a link to a page that simply lists the artifacts and link that is a page that lists the artifacts according to the practicum that they were developed. The main link, that goes to the elements reflecting the NCATE standards is found on this page also. Figure 2 depicts this page.

Figure 2 © Cindy L. Anderson, Ph.D.

The link on this entry page to the NCATE standards takes the viewer to a page that not only provides links to that portion of the web site that links artifacts to NCATE standards, but provides links for the students’ resume, teaching philosophy, and "Why Teach" papers. An example of this page is found in Figure 3.

Figure 3 © Cindy L. Anderson, Ph.D.

Each of the NCATE standards is represented by a page that outlines the standard and then provides links to the artifacts that represent mastery of the standard and its component reflection paper. This linking page can be accessed through the menubar illustrated on the side of the page shown in Figure 3. An example of this NCATE standards page is depicted in Figure 4.

Figure 4 © Cindy L. Anderson, Ph.D.

Finally, the link on the page in Figure 4, from the artifact(s) name(s) (Thematic Lesson) goes to a page that provides a frame for the artifact itself and its component reflection paper. This page also provides a frame for the professor’s comments on the artifact separate from the artifact in its own frame. This allows viewers a convenient way of viewing professor comments regarding the artifacts. It also provides a frame for outlining the state standards that are reflected by the artifact on this page, as well as, a frame for the NCATE standard the artifact represents. An example of this page is found in Figure 5.

Figure 5 © Cindy L. Anderson, Ph.D.

Each of the Wisconsin PT3 students will be completing an electronic portfolio using this template, as well as a paper portfolio. The electronic version can be saved to disk, burned to CD, and uploaded to the Internet.

Cindy L. Anderson, Ph.D.

Over 15 staff members of the NCE and CAS have successfully completed 16 hours of technology training consisting of 4 four hour sessions on the Wheeling Campus (Thursdays 9:00-1:00 in the PC Lab). Actually to just call it technology training may not capture the depth of the curriculum. One of the overall goals is to show the practical side of how and when to use technology for not only your personal use as a professional, but also for use with students.

We began with a general explanation and group activity discussing computer terms. After covering some of the basics, we gradually moved to the internet and looked at sites that apply directly to elementary and secondary Education. At this time we discussed technological issues that affect faculty in particular.

By the completion of training, NLU faculty had worked with online tools similar to WebCT; created a mock web page; been introduced to Palm Pilots; seen a variety of projects for K-12 teachers; and brainstormed ways to share their knowledge with the PT3 Faculty and students via the online community.

NLU faculty participating in this training exhibited a particular interest in technology and the PT3 grant If you interested in attending our PT3 training sessions, please contact Clarke Schneider at ext. 3102.

In December, our PT3 website went live. It not only provides information about our Milwaukee MAT Program but also serves as a tool for our online courses. On this website one can obtain information about our program. Students in our program, also take advantage of the very effective WebCT software located on the website.

One of the most successful aspects of our web site is the use of WebCT. Since beginning our first online course in January our records show that some students the website as often as 400 times. Students report that they have "chatted online" for two hours, and others have posted multiple discussion topics. Overall, every one of our students has accessed the website for materials and discussions

The process of preparing course materials for our first online course, began early last fall. Faculty members met to discuss the objectives and the best ways of delivering the content of the course. After months of work in carefully planning this course, we now have over 25 course related documents available for students to review Many of these files are hyperlinked directly to the syllabus or a due dates page. It’s an accomplishment our faculty members can be proud of.

Daniel Ryan, Rob Bowe and Paula Neville, of the PT3 Program, attended the Association of Teacher Educators (ATE) conference in New Orleans and shared experiences with the PT3 grant with other PT3 grant recipients attending the conference. The conference coincided with Mardi Gras celebrations. Paula shared a little Mardi Gras with the elementary and secondary cohorts upon her return to Milwaukee by dressing in a bright red wig and tossing Mardi Gras beads to the class.