Media Contact:

Dr. Carol Pope, 919/515-1776 or carol_pope@ncsu.edu
Dr. Hiller Spires, 919/515-6286 or hiller@poe.coe.ncsu.edu
Mick Kulikowski, News Services, 919/515-8387 or mick_kulikowski@ncsu.edu

Jan. 19, 2001

Partnership, Grant Infuse Technology -- and Twain -- in the Classroom

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn knew rafting the Mississippi, not surfing the Web.

But a new collaboration by educators at North Carolina State University and the University of Virginia is using technology -- in this case, historical archives posted on the Web -- to help bring the life and times of Mark Twain and his characters to life for students today.

The aim of the partnership is to use technology to increase teacher and student proficiency in subjects like language arts and social studies. It is supported by a $2 million U.S. Department of Education catalyst grant.

"The fact that we’re using technology to increase proficiency in humanities and social sciences sets us apart from most technology-based grants and initiatives, which focus primarily on math and science instruction," said Dr. Carol Pope, associate professor of curriculum and instruction at NC State’s College of Education and Psychology.

An undergraduate class taught by Pope recently traveled to Charlottesville, Va., to meet with University of Virginia professor Dr. Stephen Railton and learn more about the Twain digital archives. Those archives contain, in part, historical advertisements promoting Twain’s books, reviews contemporary to the release of the books, and even the entire books themselves.

Pope’s students created lesson plans that give teachers ideas on how to incorporate digital archive material into classroom lessons. Those lesson plans will soon be available on a Web site for anyone looking for fresh ideas on teaching Mark Twain.

The NC State-Virginia partnership -- formally called an Intercollegiate Partnership in Technology and Teacher Education -- is an example of "using technology as a means for teaching and not having technology use us," Pope said. Through it, undergraduates in middle school language arts and social sciences education discover how technology can make them more effective future teachers, she says.

"Technology is such a huge force in our society today that it’s important for educators to be at the forefront of creating critical applications with technology," added Dr. Hiller Spires, professor of curriculum and instruction at NC State. Studying how technology affects the teaching and learning processes will yield effective use of technology in the classroom, Spires says.

The $2 million catalyst grant that supports the partnership interlocks with an earlier $1.1 million implementation grant the U.S. Department of Education gave to NC State’s College of Education and Psychology for preparing tomorrow’s teachers to use technology. Other institutions benefitting from the grant include Meredith College and Shaw University -- which, together with NC State, graduate an average of 200 new elementary, middle and high school teachers annually -- as well as the Franklin, Johnston and Wake County school systems. Together, the institutions have formed a consortium called MentorNet.

The goal of MentorNet is to help teachers understand the uses of instructional technology. To do this, the consortium works to improve the proficiency and understanding of instructional technology by all who instruct pre-service teachers. It also is working to help pre-service teachers gain experience in the development and use of emerging technology in low income and/or rural schools.

MentorNet also aims to assist teacher assistants and alternative entry teachers seeking their initial N.C. teaching licenses, by developing and delivering Web-based courses in instructional technology, and through the lending of technology supplies for learning in the classroom.

"Getting a handle on what the consequences are for learning with this technology is a huge challenge before us," Spires said. "We don’t have a real clear picture of what the consequences for learning are because the technology is constantly changing, so it’s an ongoing process."

The digital Mark Twain archives are at http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/railton/index2.html. The MentorNet Web site is at http://www2.ncsu.edu/ncsu/cep/mentornet/index.html.

The Web portal that will include the Twain archives lesson plans created by the NC State education students will be connected to the University of Virginia’s Web site, Pope says. The tentative plan is to call it Portal to English Language Arts and Teacher Education (PLATE): Exemplars and Lesson Plans.

- kulikowski -

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