A Model Program for Retraining Elementary and Middle School Teachers to Use Computers Effectively in the Classroom

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The main goals of the project are to provide, over a three year period to fifty elementary and middle school teachers, five graduate level computer courses to establish a firm base of computer knowledge; and to apply the didactical structures to enable the teachers to become computer specialists in their respective schools and districts. A model has been developed by the principal investigators to retrain teachers at the grade levels k-9. An aspect of this proposal is to explore the efficacy of the model. The model includes, in addition to the content and methodology courses, seminars for elementary and middle school principals; seminars for the presidents of the home and school associations; establishment of a teacher network for the exchange and dissemination of ideas and materials; designing assessment criteria, evaluation instruments, and questionnaires for acquiring formative data; and assessing the extent to which aptitude, attitude, and previous experience are useful as predictors of performance. The main programming languages integral to the program are Logo and BASIC. The work is a cooperative effort by the departments of computer science and educational Psychology at Temple University in close collaboration with Philadelphia School District. Participants for this project are teachers at the elementary and middle school levels selected from the School District of Philadelphia. An announcement is sent to each of the schools in Philadelphia with information on how to apply. Teachers are selected based upon their motivation to work with computers, their professional plans when they finish the program especially how they might apply the results of the program to their schools as resource teachers. The courses offered fall into five categories: Application programs and how to use them; Introduction to problem solving with Logo; Problem solving with advanced Logo; Problem solving using structured BASIC; and Software evaluation and effective uses of computers for teaching. These courses are to be distributed over the 3 years of the project as the model dictates. There is a considerable cost sharing provided by Temple University. The University has committed $216,740 to the project. At a request from National Science Foundation (NSF) of $357,042, the University's rate is 216,740/357,042 or over 60% of the amount requested from NSF.