Manuscript prepared for the AECT 2003 Proceedings

Student Teachers And Filmmaking: Representing Understandings Through Multiple Literacies

Michele Jacobsen, dmjacobs@ucalgary.ca
Assistant Professor, Educational Technology
Faculty of Education
University of Calgary
1102 Education Tower
2500 University Drive NW
Calgary, Alberta CANADA
T2N 1N4
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~dmjacobs

Susan Crichton, crichtos@ucalgary.ca
Assistant Professor, Educational Technology
Faculty of Education
University of Calgary
1102 Education Tower
2500 University Drive NW
Calgary, Alberta CANADA
T2N 1N4
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~crichtos

Student Teachers And Filmmaking: Representing Understandings Through Multiple Literacies

Michele Jacobsen and Susan Crichton
University of Calgary

Abstract

This paper reports on the creation of meaningful learning environments on campus in which student teachers employ digital filmmaking techniques to amplify their learning, represent their understandings and communicate in new ways. Constructivist learning conditions were created whereby novice teachers learned in the same ways they must teach today’s media savvy children.  Ill structured problems provided the context for designing diverse solutions using technology. The social construction of knowledge was emphasized as student teachers worked collaboratively to design and produce their ideas using film. Diversity was not only valued but became essential for completing filmmaking tasks and helping novice teachers to begin to break the “teaching the way we were taught” cycle.  

Student teachers:  Once we completed the project we began to realize that the project wasn’t really about technology at all; technology was simply the means to an end.

Introduction

As we shift from an industrial to a knowledge-based economy, there are major implications for how children learn in schools and how new teachers must be prepared on campus. Beginning teachers enter classrooms populated by tech-savvy students who interact skillfully and fluently with technology and information in ways that are different from those of the teacher’s generation.  These third generation students (Norton & Wiburg, 1998) use and interpret technology in very different ways. Student teachers need to experience the same type of inquiry-based, technology-rich learning experiences on campus that they will be expected to create for children in their classrooms (Jacobsen, Clifford & Friesen, 2002; Jacobsen & Goldman, 2001). Workshops on how to operate the computer fail to provide sufficient time or opportunity for teachers to reflect on their beliefs and practices and to explore how technology can be woven into a meaningful learning environment (Sprague, Kopfman & de Levante Dorsey, 1998). Student teachers need intentional mentoring and support in the use of technology-enhanced, inquiry-based learning methods on campus and in their field experiences in order to resist the urge to “teach the way they were taught” as they encounter the many daily stressors and ill structured problems that characterize teaching as they begin their professional careers.
A key challenge for faculties of education is to graduate new teachers who can embrace pedagogical and technological change and respond fluidly when presented with multidimensional, ill-structured problems (Jonassen, 1997). In this paper, we report on the creation of meaningful learning environments on campus in which student teachers employ digital filmmaking techniques to represent their understandings. Filmmaking experiences provide opportunities for student teachers to wrestle with authentic, meaningful and challenging instructional problems from which they can then learn how to design diverse instructional interventions for their own students. We believe that it is through lived experiences designing with technology that novice teachers can begin to adopt changed dispositions toward teaching and learning and begin to integrate innovative approaches to problem solving with technology in their work with children.  
Our assertion, that faculties of education must graduate teachers who can respond and be sensitive to the myriad of complex and diverse perspectives and emerging technologies that they will face as they invite increasingly tech-savvy students to learn with them in expanding and distributed learning environments, is well supported by research (Palloff & Pratt, 2001; Willis & Mehlinger, 1996). Our second assertion, based on research and experiences teaching with technology on campus (Jacobsen, et al., 2002, Jacobsen & Lock, 2003) and our experiences supervising student teachers in the field, is that intentional mentoring and support does enable novice teachers to implement technology-enhanced inquiry projects for learning in spite of the many challenges inherent in this pedagogical approach.  

An Inquiry-based Teacher Preparation Program

Unlike well-structured textbook problems, the ill-structured, real-world problems of professional practice are not pre-defined but emergent (Jonassen, 1997).  In 1996, the Faculty of Education at the University of Calgary dismantled its textbook and course-based approach to teacher preparation in favour of an inquiry-based, field oriented and student centered program. The majority of teacher candidates who are accepted into this Calgary, Alberta program have completed a three or four year bachelor’s degree.  The Master of Teaching (MT) program at the University of Calgary is a two-year professional teaching program leading to a bachelor of education degree. The MT Program philosophy is based on thinking differently about teaching practice. The MT Program was conceptualized on the understanding that teaching is largely a non-rationalized practice that resists step-by-step methods and solutions. From this view, teaching certainly requires content knowledge and skills; however, it is not simply defined as the application of a predefined set of skills and discrete disciplinary knowledge to achieve curriculum objectives.  Student teachers participate in case, field and professional seminars, in which they interrogate curriculum and contexts, learners and learning, teachers and teaching, and explore the ethical, social and political contexts that frame the teaching profession. 

Integrating Technology Across the Curriculum

The context for inquiry in this case study is a second year, semester four special topics seminar, entitled “Integrating Technology Across the Curriculum.” The two of us team taught this seminar to thirty-five students. No longer do we cycle students through a course on computer applications, as is the perceived need and design in many conventional four-year bachelor of education programs. A technology survey revealed that we were working with a more experienced and technology savvy population of undergraduate students who already have experience using email, word processing and conducting research using the Internet (Jacobsen & Clark, 1999, 2000). Instead, learning with technology is incorporated into field, case and professional seminars and is offered as an elective during the final semester.  In Winter 2002 and 2003 we immersed student teachers in a culture of inquiry focused on technology integration across the curriculum (Jacobsen, et al., 2002). We created constructivist learning conditions whereby novice teachers learned in exactly the ways they must teach today’s media savvy children. The five interdependent attributes of meaningful learning, described by Jonassen, Peck, and Wilson (1999) as intentional, active, constructive, authentic and cooperative, characterized the learning environment we felt was critical for student teacher learning and professional awareness. 
The social construction of knowledge was emphasized; student teachers worked collaboratively in groups to complete focused technology tasks designed for school children, and then built upon this understanding to develop rich, instructional plans for teaching. A theoretical framework and rationale for required group work is provided by Vygotsky (1986), who argued “… the true direction of the development of thinking is not from the individual to the social, but from the social to the individual” (p. 36). Filmmaking requires students to draw upon a diverse range of talents and skills. “What the child can do in cooperation today he can do alone tomorrow.  Therefore the only good kind of instruction is that which marches ahead of development and leads it” (Vygotsky, 1986, p. 188).  We deliberately required student teachers to work together on complex problems that are difficult for one person to solve to promote the idea of professional practice being an ongoing conversation that occurs in a community of inquiry. 
Filmmaking tasks were designed to be meaningful, challenging and authentic. Tasks were inclusive; no matter what the technological starting point, all students had a role and made a contribution to the final outcome. We structured the task to give both clear guidance and flexibility in order to honor student ownership in the execution of the final product. Students were cast as members of a film team whose current assignment was to create a new 3-minute video of a well known story (i.e., legend, myth, or fairy tale) that could be shared on the internet. Students assigned each other roles, made decisions, booked equipment and human resources, identified and solved problems, and sought out additional skills and expertise when needed. Assessment rubrics were designed such that students were evaluated using a range of multi-disciplinary outcomes. A premium was placed on the clarity and elegance of student products.  Recognizing that the work is never quite finished is at the heart of a meaningful inquiry project. We observed high student engagement and investment in the filmmaking tasks. Student teachers cared deeply about the quality of their work because it would be celebrated publicly with their peers, not just privately with their teachers. 
In a reflection on the creation of “Icarasaurus”, a film retelling of the ancient myth about Icarus, McKie, Smith, Milner, and Green (2002) describe how their group had a variety of opportunities to create projects and learn about technology through constructivism. The four member team drew upon the group’s diverse strengths, from acting to technology fluency to set design to planning, in order to achieve their goal of a three minute movie published online. They researched and compared two published versions of the Icarus myth, created storyboards of these existing stories, wrote their unique version of the myth, created a production storyboard and shot lists, designed an elaborate set and cast a main character (i.e., plastic dinosaur), and began shooting raw video. The group published  photo evidence of their filming and editing process online with the final video version of their story. The following is an excerpt from an online reflection about the learning process (McKie, Smith, Milner, and Green, 2002). 

This was an invaluable experience because we were able to design units and activities that we could use in our own classrooms (in the near future), as well as experiencing what it is like for students to create and learn with the infusion of technology. We were expecting to learn a lot about technology and the process of integrating technology in meaningful ways. What we didn’t expect was to have our outlook on teaching and learning change based on what we discovered when technology and constructivism collide.

The first revelation that we had was how much fun this project was. The guidelines put forth in the storytelling (filmmaking) focused task allowed for a lot of choice while working within a set framework that had clearly defined expectations. Choice and freedom within a clear set of guidelines allowed for our creativity to bloom as we were not concerned with unknown expectations. 

The entire process was one of creation (from choosing literature to designing sets for the movie) where we were allowed to take the project as far as we wanted to go, and of representation by using the digital media tools we thought would represent our story in the most powerful and meaningful ways. While we were learning about the technology and how to project our vision, each of us also saw the amazing potential for our own classroom with the high level of engagement and links to the curriculum. Filming Icarusaurus together was so much fun because we were exploring what it truly means to learn in a constructivist classroom and we wouldn’t have learned half as much without completing the focused task ourselves. 

The second realization was that group work could be an enlightening learning experience where we could learn from and teach one another. This project was created in a learning environment where we were expected to learn, plan and problem solve as a team, using skills and technology that were new to many of us. This allowed each of us in our diverse group to showcase our talents and expertise while feeling comfortable enough to take risks in learning and grow tremendously as both learners and future teachers. Project-based learning is often more open-ended and has the potential to appeal to all types of learners so that success and confidence follows in its wake. This was evident within our group where each of the members’ interests, background knowledge and learning styles were honored and explored throughout the planning, filming and editing stages. This helped us to see the potential for group-work in our own classrooms where students learn both from and with one another, and diversity is a necessary ingredient for group success. 

Finally, we truly began to understand how exciting technology could be when infused with meaningful and challenging learning. Once we completed the project we began to realize that the project wasn’t really about technology at all; technology was simply the means to an end. Utilizing technology in telling a story allowed us to be much more than writers and storytellers; it allowed us to be planners, organizers, set designers, puppeteers, camera people, artists, directors, editors and problem solvers- real life skills that will serve us well in future projects. We had to negotiate individual expectations, make complex decisions, use technology to communicate and exchange files, and meet often as a group. 

In closing, this project was an amazing first step on the journey that we took in the ICT Special Topics seminar that helped to guide our understanding of the role that technology should be playing in schools and learning today. By becoming students again and experiencing the power of constructivism through meaningful collaborative work with a multi-disciplinary focus, we began to see how learning could be enhanced by integrating technology, rather than by teaching technology for the sake of technology. 

The “Icarasaurus” project (McKie, Smith, Milner, and Green, 2002) exemplifies the type of work we encouraged students to engage in and commit to during the seminar. Members of this group transferred the experience and energy created in this project to subsequent, more complex filmmaking projects that they completed with other peers during the seminar. We have had the good fortune to continue our work with two of these beginning teachers, and have observed how they carried the experiences of the focus tasks and integrated units of study into their actual practice with elementary children. We have observed how the beginning teacher’s awareness of instructional planning and differentiated instruction have matured as they confront the challenge of structuring filmmaking tasks that are inclusive of all students’ skills. The beginning teachers initially did not require the pre-planning and storyboarding, and just let the kids loose with the camera. Through experience and by assessing the students’ movie projects, these beginning teachers have learned with the children the importance of stressing process over product 
Jonassen’s (1997) model for solving ill-structured problems presents an approach to problem solving that provides an additional context for considering and understanding the intentional design of our focused tasks, including the storytelling and filmmaking task. His model includes various processes as follows: (1) Articulate problem space and contextual constraints; (2) Identify and clarify alternative opinions, positions, and perspectives of stakeholders; (3) Generate possible problem solutions; (4) Assess the viability of alternative solutions by constructing arguments and articulating beliefs; (5) Monitor the problem space and solution options; (6) Implement and monitor the solution; and (7) Adapt the solution (pp. 79-83). Jonassen’s first two steps correspond to problem formulation which is a prerequisite to problem solving. In the filmmaking task, we articulated the problem space and provided contextual constraints (i.e., you are part of a film team charged with the task of retelling an ancient myth in a three minute movie that is published on the web). The students were required to analyze the problem from the perspective of each group member, and generate possible solutions.  Students created storyboards of existing myths and legends prior to developing and pitching their own idea for a retelling. Based on peer feedback, the film team created the final production storyboard. Hence, students assessed the viability of alternate solutions by constructing arguments based on experience. Managing the filmmaking project required pre-planning, organization and active problem and project management. Shooting raw video and editing film were both part of implementing plans, altering plans and monitoring the outcome. Peer review required each group to reflect upon the film they created, and to consider ways to refine their work. 
Knowledge and experiences with technology cannot be given to students. We actively engaged our students in our own thinking and reflection on technology integration as they were doing with technology. We interrupted each other’s presentations to make explicit to the students key points that were made, recognizing that the “obvious” about constructivism isn’t so obvious to the novice (or to many experienced teachers).  We realized that we could only share stories from our experience, that we could not hand over our own experiences to our student teachers. Instead, we had to work together in an inquiry culture to build knowledge about technology, teaching and learning together. “Learning from teaching through inquiry assumes that beginning and experienced teachers need to engage in similar intellectual work.  Working together in communities, both new and more experienced teachers pose problems, identify discrepancies between theories and practices, challenge common routines, draw on the work of others for generative frameworks, and attempt to make visible much of that which is taken for granted about teaching and learning” (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2001). Filmmaking enabled us to entice students to engage in a deeper level in learning about learning with us. Through projects like Icarasaurus, student teachers learned first hand through experience, and deepened this understanding of instructional practice through reflection and dialogue in a community of inquiry. 

Practical Experience also shows that direct teaching of concepts is impossible and fruitless.  A teacher who tries to do this usually accomplishes nothing but empty verbalization, a parrotlike repetition of words by the child, simulating a knowledge of the corresponding concepts but actually covering up a vacuum (Vygotsky, 1986, p. 150).

We resist the urge to lecture about constructivism and technology, choosing instead to interact meaningfully with our students. Our learning space was a studio rather than an instructor lead classroom modeling our understanding that the arts emphasize the creation of coherent structure, encourage multiple solutions to problems, prize innovation, rely on the use of judgment, and depend on the use of sensibility (Eisner, 1998). Our learning environment supported play, adventure and exploration with technology. We resisted the urge to lead whole class sessions on how to work the camera, or how to publish learning objects on the web. Instead, in response to needs that arose from students’ engagement in the projects, we did small group teaching. 
Students needed access to our thinking about constructivism, as well as first hand experiences in inquiry-based, technology enhanced learning environments, in order to create similar learning experiences for their own students. We reflected on the learning environment with them, helping them to make sense of their own learning experiences. We described our design so student teachers understood the type of instructional planning and dispositions that allowed this type of inquiry-based learning to happen. We facilitated professional conversations about how to understand and translate first hand experiences into personal models of informed practice. 
When student teachers grapple with the task of producing a short film of their ideas they are developing multiple literacies that go well beyond text and graphics.  Multiple literacies relate to the ability to construe meaning in dominant media forms used in a culture to create and convey meaning (Eisner, 1998). Because film is prevalent in our culture, learning how to read and create video is critical to informed citizenship in this century. Imagination is central to the process because we cannot know through language alone what we cannot imagine (Eisner, 1998). We designed the filmmaking tasks as ill-structured problems, or open-ended tasks, for which there are many possible “solutions” or responses. Ill-structured problems typically do not have a single “right” solution, but multiple possible solutions.  Jonassen (1997) argues that “since ill-structured problems typically do not have a single, best solution, a learner’s representation of it should assume the form of an argument… The ‘best solution’ is the one that is most viable, that is, most defensible, the one for which the learner can provide the most cogent argument” (p. 81). Filmmaking provide an opportunity for students to grapple with ill-structured, open ended problems, amplify their learning, represent their new understandings and communicate in ways that they have only been passive consumers.  Students become critical consumers of the messages and media images created by others and develop as connoisseurs and active creators of their culture through the design and production of their own messages. 

The Compelling Nature Of Film

The decision to offer our student teachers an opportunity to engage in filmmaking was intentional.  We had experienced the excitement and value of engaging high school students in filmmaking using Apple Computer’s iMovie software. We knew from extensive work with children and technology that authentic learning experiences that allow students to develop meaningful products that can be shared with an audience beyond the teacher (Cohen & Riel, 1989) not only capture students’ imaginations but can also change students’ lives.  For example, our work with at risk youth helped us to understand the power of visual media to entice these students back into formal learning and empower them to tell their important stories in non-text ways.  Designing and producing ideas using digital media liberates all students from conventional school structures that tend to still privilege reading, writing and mathematics. 
From our experiences with emancipated learners, we knew that filmmaking would draw on a broad skill set as it requires “… a collaborative process that brings together talent and energy of many artists from a variety of … backgrounds” (Theodosakis, 2001, p. 92) to complete a project.  The need for collaboration becomes obvious to students as they take on filmmaking rather than having to be imposed by the teacher. Filmmaking requires students to articulate individual talents and interests and then pool their diverse skills in order to make good choices as group members. Roles are not arbitrary.  While one member might be able to envision the project and pitch it well, another member may have the graphic skills required for set design, etc. None of the tasks are hypothetical or contrived as all are essential for the completion of the final product. While one may initially think only of the roles of editor, set designer and cameraperson, Theodosaskis (2001) suggests five distinct roles in each of the five phases of film development.  These roles should support a range of learning styles, assuming the task has been structured in such a way to encourage and value collaboration.
	Engaging students in learning activities such as filmmaking allows them to begin to understand 
the “… processes that experts use to handle complex tasks,” (Collins, Brown, and Newman, 1989, p. 457) and to join that community of expertise by attempting to solve ill-structured problems as the expert might. Lave and Wenger (1991) extend that sense of expert practice, suggesting that a novice’s “… ability to understand the master’s performance depends on engaging in the performance in congruent ways, suggesting “… if learning is about increased access to performance, then the way to maximize learning is to perform, not to talk about it” (p. 21). The distinct roles, identified by Theodosakis (2001), and supported by pre-filming activities, such as brainstorming and storyboarding, help students to understand the complex nature of professional filmmaking and to become more critical consumers of the medium.  
Further, it has been our experience that filmmaking is both an invitation to join the community of filmmakers and a guide for the engagement in authentic tasks that constitute the process of making movies. Filmmaking has the potential to support the social construction of knowledge stressed in the literature (Vygotsky, 1978; Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1993) because it requires the diverse skills suggested above and it encourages meaningful group work and authentic collaboration.
We view film as “… a powerful tool for sharing, understanding, educating, documenting, indoctrinating, and entertaining” (Crichton, in Press) and we recognize that  “Until recently, film has been a passive experience for the majority of us.  We went to movies and watched them; few of us considered actually making them” (Crichton, in Press). We regard iMovie as an enabling piece of software with high usability. Students of all ages can quickly understand the conceptual design of iMovie and begin editing raw video within an hour or two. However, student authoring using iMovie requires that educators recognize that multimedia projects such as film are as real and important demonstrations of understanding as text can be.
Based on observations of children using Apple Computer’s iMovie software to create powerful representations of ideas important to them, we decided to make this experience available to future teachers. iMovie is a powerful desktop filmmaking tool that supports the development of multiple literacies, imagination, creativity and thinking. The usability of this ergonomically elegant videoediting tool enabled us to realize the benefits of filmmaking for student teachers. It is not that other digital filmmaking tools do not exist. They do. However, novice users can understand and use the iMovie interface and firewire data transfer quickly and easily, and then the tool fades into the background as the filmmaking process itself becomes central. 
Because of the demands iMovie places on the hardware, it forces an elegance of thought and design.  Two to three minute movies become the standard as considerable amounts of hard drive memory are consumed for storage of the data and the editing features (adding sound, titles, transitions, etc.).  This shift from quantity to edited quality, encourages the filmmaker distill his/her thoughts and to engage in meaningful inquiry as to what is important in the message, both forcing and encouraging wise editing.  Eisner (1998) writes eloquently of the importance of the editing process, explaining  “… there is nothing so slippery as a thought. … Working with a form of representation [text, video] provides the opportunity to stabilize what is ephemeral and fleeting.  It gives students an opportunity to hold onto their thinking” (p. 27).  Further he suggests “editing allows one to refine one’s thinking, to make it clearer, more powerful, and, not least, to appreciate the happy results of creativity.  It allows one to confer a personal signature to a public product” (p. 27).  We know that digital editing lets the filmmaker revise, edit, modify the images, allowing her/him to take an idea further and to incorporate other digital media to support the project.  
We have observed that filmmaking allows for the power and spirit of play to come forward.  The original footage is available, so one can plan and experiment with images, both graphic and auditory, until the desired results are achieved.  These images can be shared, collaboratively editing and modified, with the original filmmaker retaining access to the initial footage (Crichton, 2003).  This allows one to manipulate the original content extensively, even to the point of throwing the work away as the original footage is safe on the tape in the camera that filmed it, allowing the filmmaker to start all over again with the editing process.
 	However, we cannot emphasize strongly enough the importance of meaningful instructional tasks that focus on complex, ill-structured problems with multiple possible solutions. Jacobsen, et al (2002), have noted that typically  “… task[s] involving technology tend to involve a fairly low level of thinking and research, focusing heavily on the presentation of final products rather than on thinking differently, rigorously and effectively at every stage …” (p. 2). Simply adopting iMovie as a neat new gadget in the classroom tool set will not in itself promote innovative learning. Instead, sound instructional tasks designed to incorporate the process of filmmaking and the type of ill-structured problems encountered by teachers can get beyond those low level skills by encouraging students to engage in the personal construction of meaningful learning and supporting the range of multiple intelligences and learning needs suggested by Gardner (2000).
Filmmaking honors process over product, especially if the tasks that it supports are tied to sound learning outcomes.  We note that filmmaking using iMovie supports the “just in time” approach to learning with technology that is consistent with our view of technology integration as it does not require extensive workshops or training.  Rather, we have found that students learn the specific skills required to make their films as they engage in the project design itself. However, we did ensure that rich, just in time resources and support were available.  We recognize that challenging students to work through problems is one thing, but that we cannot risk frustrating them with either faulty equipment or missing pieces of critical how-to information.  Therefore, we knew that books, manuals, support documents, and human resources were available to the students.

Discussion

We believe that in order for more school children to experience learning as knowledge building in technology enabled environments, their teachers need to experience and understand learning in these ways. Student teachers and their experienced colleagues need learning experiences that model the cultural shift from being passive receivers of information to becoming active builders of knowledge. So, based on this reasoning, we offer these three reasons for why student teachers require the type of authentic and meaningful learning experiences that are provided by filmmaking. First, as future professionals, novice teachers need opportunities to analyze and solve ill-structured problems that draw upon their diversity, their creativity and their imagination. Teaching is not a step-by-step, well-structured problem domain, nor is it a solitary endeavor. Second, new teachers will be working with media savvy students who are creating, and can create, in this medium. Beginning teachers need to be media literate and author using multiple media in order to be a scholarly guide to their students. Third, and most important, new teachers can provide leadership and champion innovative practices in the field. We have shared two stories about new teachers who transferred their filmmaking experiences into reformed practice for elementary students. In one case, a student teacher actually carried the computer and digital video camera into the grade one classroom to demonstrate with the children how filmmaking was possible in the very early grades. The partner teacher, who was initially uncertain about whether filmmaking would be accessible to the students, was able to learn from her protégé. In many cases, student teachers cannot simply model and mimic their partner teacher’s practices with technology because many experienced teachers are grappling with meaningful integration themselves. Instead, student teachers who have experienced meaningful technology design and development, like those who completed filmmaking and other focused tasks in our seminar, bring value and innovative practice to the table and can make an immediate contribution to changed practice by championing innovation in the classroom.
Filmmaking enabled our students to discover for themselves the importance of diversity – in terms of learners’ tasks, skills, and experiences.  And this understanding is essential for breaking the “teaching the way we were taught” cycle.  In our ongoing work with our second year teachers we have had the privilege to observe how they have made filmmaking their own.  They can clearly articulate the importance and power of engaging their students the types of tasks we value.  They place premium on creativity and imagination, linking both to authentic demonstrations of knowledge and questioning professionally what is worth knowing and understanding.  They have demonstrated to us, and more importantly to their students and colleagues, that movie making is an exciting entry point for technology integration, recognizing that “The starting place is where … [a person is] at the moment …” (Jacobsen, et al, 2002, p. 11) and that the diversity of the starting point is “… not a problem to overcome but a strength to draw on …” (p. 11).
Based on the outcomes of our work with student teachers, and the transfer we have seen to first and second year teaching practice, we believe we have developed a sustainable model for educational reform. One teacher at a time, one classroom at a time, we can make a difference in the rich learning opportunities that are available to children. 

It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again after they said no,
it starts when you say We
and know who you mean, and each
day you mean one more.

Marge Piercy, “Low Road”, cited in Palmer (1998)

We live our work with beginning teachers, one at a time, in authentic mentoring relationships that are cultivated in a culture of inquiry. We see our work as intentionally transforming the learning opportunities available to today’s children. We continue to work with graduates who are now teaching and conducting research on integrating technology across the curriculum. We are working with a second year elementary teacher on classroom-based research projects that engage elementary school children in multiple forms of literacy by exploring authoring and media. We have worked with a student teacher who made filmmaking the focus for her final semester inquiry project and felt empowered enough to champion its use in a school that had not used it before.  She read Theodasakis’ (2001) book, The Director in the Classroom, and borrowed filmmaking equipment to take to the school. She studied the impact of filmmaking on primary students’ learning and engagement. As we move forward with this approach to technology integration in teacher preparation, we see each interaction and each project as a possible ripple that will extend outward. Who knows how far it will go.

Future Research

	New teachers enter the profession filled with hope and expectation. However, too many new teachers find themselves isolated in classrooms surrounded by colleagues who may not have the necessary time, skills or dispositions to support or encourage new colleagues for continued growth or innovative technology practices. The induction of new teachers into the profession should not be left to chance. While student teachers may experience inquiry-based, technology-enhanced learning on campus, they need ongoing support as new teachers to implement these approaches in the classroom. The next stage of our research is to investigate the nature of onsite and online mentoring and support which enables first and second year teachers to implement inquiry-based, technology rich learning experiences with today's students. 

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