Teacher Educator Technology Integration (TETI)

The Teacher Educator Technology Integration (TETI) initiative focuses on supporting teacher educators to gain expertise modeling pedagogy and lesson planning in ways that prepare teacher candidates to develop student-centered and adaptive pedagogies they can enact in their own PreK-12 classrooms. This professional development program responds to the technology integration goals of each licensure program area and focuses on developing flexible mindsets, and allowing teacher educators to better prepare our teacher candidates for whatever new technologies come their way over the course of their careers. A key focus of the TETI program is to support teacher educators as they model innovative technology integration practices in their work with teacher candidates. Our goal is that all University of Minnesota teacher education graduates will leave the CEHD teacher preparation program with effective technology integration experiences as both teachers and learners.

TETI works with all initial licensure teacher education programs in CEHD and our partner colleges within the U of M. This includes 13 programs with 115 instructors and approximately 300 teacher candidates (programs listed below).

Ag Ed & WBL 5-12
Arts in Education
Early Childhood Ed
Elementary Ed K-6
English Ed 5-12
Math Ed 5-12
Multiple Pathways: DLI-L Elementary K-6
Multiple Pathways: MNGOT Elementary K-6
Music Ed K-12
Science Ed
Second Languages Ed K-12 ILP
Social Studies Ed 5-12
Special Ed (ABS UG/Grad, DHH, EBD, ECSE)

Achievements

In the 2020-2021 academic year, the percent of Teacher Educators who viewed themselves as competent or better improved in many areas, including:

Facilitate opportunities for Teacher Candidates to practice teaching with technology (grew from 14% to 78%)
Use technology to assess teacher candidates’ competence and knowledge (grew from 21% to 85%)
Model online and blended learning methods and strategies (grew from 14% to 92%)

Data was generated from a TETI end of year survey completed by Teacher Educators participating in the program.

In 2020-2021 program areas used technology to enhance the learning in their classrooms in many ways. Here are a few highlights:

Math Ed – Focused on capturing different processes and ways of thinking by using Google Slides in an interactive manner. Teacher candidates would often “look in” on their peers’ slides during work time to see a variety of approaches to a problem.
Arts in Ed – Explored how relationships with space and distance from the camera could be used to communicate in a distance setting. Teacher educators also saw the unique benefits of moving a live performance monologue project into a video format allowing teacher candidates to be creative with aesthetic elements like lighting, camera angles, and form.
Multiple Pathways – Experimented with podcasting as a multi-modal option for teacher candidates to provide reflections. This experience allowed teacher candidates to provide more context and created a closer connection with the audience.
Multiple programs – Google Jamboard was explicitly mentioned by nearly every program. It gives teacher candidates a place to collaborate and interact with each other and the teacher educator. Its ubiquitous implementation shows that collaboration was a priority across disciplines.