In 2016 – 2017, under the leadership of Natasha Boskic, Senior Manager, ETS, and Yvonne Dawydiak, Faculty-wide Programs Instructional Specialist, PDCE, a team consisting of students, staff and faculty* worked to help Teacher Candidates across the Bachelor of Education Program develop their digital competencies.
- The project was funded through the Teaching Learning Enhancement Fund at UBC in May 2016
- Full details including a final project report can be found on the UBC TLEF website.
- Project reflection written by Yvonne Dawydiak, Project coordinator and Faculty-wide Programs Instructional Specialist
- Testimonials, photo gallery and reflections from project partners, students and team members (more coming soon)
*UBC Teaching Learning Enhancement Fund Grant
Principal-investigator Dr. Natasha Boskic, Educational Technology Support
Co-investigators Dr. Elizabeth Jordan, Educational & Counselling Psychology
Dr. Kedrick James, Language and Literacy Education
Dr. Marina Milner-Bolotin, Dept of Curriculum and Pedagogy
Dr. Wendy Carr, Teacher Education Program
Dr. Mark Edwards, Prof Develop./Community Engagement
Yvonne Dawydiak, Teacher Education Program
Jo-Anne Naslund, Education Library
Year 2016-17
Total Funds $84,315
Overview:
The purpose of this project was to create an integrated and sustainable way to support teacher candidates and faculty members in selecting, evaluating, and implementing digital media technologies in their practice. We put in place a mentoring system accompanied by pedagogical scaffolding that provided comprehensive online resources to teacher candidates.
The project team successfully collaborated with instructors to redesign assignments and foster student engagement in order to provide opportunities for teacher candidates to “demonstrate fluency in technology systems and the transfer of current knowledge to new technologies and situations” (ISTE Standards, 2008).
The focus was on digital media and technologies that supported the following activities in:
- LLED 361, Literacy Practices and Assessment, Secondary – immersive experiences across subject areas. (The initial proposal was to work with LLED 360, Classroom Discourses, but was replaced by LLED 361 at the start of the project)
- EDCP 357, Secondary Physics Methods course – student classroom engagement and simulations, and
- EPSE 317, Development and Exceptionality in the Regular Classroom – communication with students with exceptionalities 600 students in the Teacher Education program take at least one of these three courses.
Thanks to strategic planning and the careful management, allocation and use of resources, we were able to extend the original scope and reach of this project. Included in the broad term ‘resources’, are the highly capable students we hired and our ability to leverage each of their particular strengths to positive effect. In addition, the higher profile of this project and its wide publicity among faculty and staff, including presentations at the Faculty Orientation sessions in August 2016 & 2017, as well as posts in the “This Week in Education” newsletter, led to engagements with courses beyond those originally proposed. Instructors impacted by the project also promoted and shared the resources created. For example, one instructor shared the Scarfe Digital Sandbox Blog in their graduate courses (ETEC 565A and EDUC 490) and others shared them with their school district contacts.
Integral to the project was the redesign and development of the Scarfe Digital Sandbox (https://scarfedigitalsandbox.teach.educ.ubc.ca), a blog and online repository of resources meant to support teaching and learning in today’s classrooms. In addition, co-planning with instructors, co-teaching, in class workshops and just-in-time support provided by our Technology Integration Mentor, graduate academic assistants and co-op students helped increase awareness of and the development of digital competencies.
The Scarfe Digital Sandbox has grown since its initial release in September 2013 and now, thanks in large part to this project, has a large selection of well-organized, curated online resources available for teacher candidates and instructors. The resources can be sorted by subject area, grade levels and resource type. In addition, each resource has a brief overview of what it is, its relevance and how to use it. On the Scarfe Digital Sandbox there is also a blog that provides users with reflections on previous workshops and posts linking making the link between pedagogical, content and technological knowledge. These posts are used as digital handouts to follow in class seminars.
Students have also now begun to share examples of their own lesson plans and digital technology integration as resources on the Scarfe Digital Sandbox. We hope to build this aspect over the next few years. The website also highlights upcoming events and provides opportunities for users to register and learn more about digital technology integration and resources.
In addition to the Scarfe Digital Sandbox, our team members made themselves available to TC’s who wished to explore further. We conducted many workshops and drop-in information sessions in Scarfe 155 in the Education Library. Through this open space, teacher candidates had the opportunity to explore new technologies, work together and foster new relationships with their peers as their developed the digital competencies they had identified . In addition, TC’s had the chance to voice their opinions and share their experiences and teaching practices with others. During these workshops, our team encouraged questions, discussions and stressed the importance of developing digital competencies(based on the ISTE standards and The BC Digital Literacy Framework) as a part of their professional development and role as instructors who model digital citizenship. We received frequent informal feedback from teacher candidates engaged in workshops, classes, tutorials showed that they recognized growth in their digital competencies and pedagogical approaches. Formal feedback forms were collected for most every workshop session. Overall, feedback was very positive and critical feedback helped us to improve delivery in subsequent sessions.
Follow
We began by addressing the importance of technology in the language classroom and the various ways in which it can facilitate language learning and student growth. Furthermore, we argued that technology can provide a window to the outside world exposing students to the various cultures of the target language. Kramsch (2013) argues that: 
Liza Navarro, the project coordinator, was granted a Research Fellowship by the
The TCs relished in this opportunity and learned a great deal about how Skype in the Classroom and other virtual learning experiences can bring people together from around the world in support of cultural exchange and language learning.
the opportunity to come into a few French teacher candidate classes to discuss the purposeful integration of technology as well as digital literacies. 