Teachers Get a Tech Lesson

Peers help turn tech-challenged educators into wizards

By Kathy Ishizuka -- School Library Journal, 10/1/2004

Most teachers view computers as powerful learning tools, according to a recent survey, but few have enough training to use them effectively in the classroom. But that may soon change, if Microsoft has its way. The Seattle-based software giant has adopted a unique professional development model that aims to help K–12 educators better prepare their students for an increasingly digital world.

The Peer Coaching Program—part of Microsoft's new $35 million U.S. Partners in Learning project—will provide a national model for training teachers as "coaches" to help their colleagues use technology to strengthen classroom curricula and improve student learning.

In addition to peer coaching, the recently announced Partners in Learning program will establish an ed-tech framework to help educators foster 21st-century information skills and raise student achievement and graduation rates among at-risk kids. Partners in Learning will work with select states during the next five years to develop sustainable plans for digital learning, which can then be replicated in schools across the country.

Microsoft's first state partner, Washington, will help create a national blueprint for the Peer Coaching program. Based on the idea that most teachers look first to their colleagues when they need assistance with technology, Peer Coaching was inspired by the successful Washington-based Teaching + Technology Coaching Initiative (T2CI). Created by the Puget Sound Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology (PSC) (www.pugetsoundcenter.org), a nonprofit education organization, T2CI was launched, in 2001, at four Washington school districts (Seattle, Shoreline, Edmonds, and Mukilteo), which sent about 150 teachers, including several library media specialists, to train as peer coaches. After receiving lessons in improving digital skills and devising tech-rich learning activities, the coaches returned to their schools, ready to assist their peers.

Pat Matsuzawa, a teacher librarian at Kamiak High School in Mukilteo, trained as a peer coach in 2002 and returned to her campus to help teachers integrate technology into their lessons. "I absolutely loved it because it was so perfect for librarians," she says. "[Peer coaching] brought the library and the classroom together and made the lessons so much richer and more engaging for the students." T2CI was so successful that the Mukilteo district signed up all 17 of its media specialists to become coaches this past summer, she says. T2CI is now being offered statewide.

Les Foltos, PSC's K–12 director, agrees that peer coaching is a good fit with the role and responsibilities of school librarians, who are "natural leaders in this area," he says. So Foltos, who will oversee Microsoft's Peer Coaching, says a library media specialist model has been written into the program to encourage librarians' participation.

Foltos says they're in the final stages of creating online and print support materials for Peer Coaching, which Microsoft will post on its Web site by January 2005.

The need for professional development in technology was underscored in a June survey, sponsored by education technology provider CDW-G. While 93 percent of teachers surveyed believe computers are valuable to instruction, only 22 percent say they have had adequate training in how to best use computer technology in their classroom.