Big changes lie ahead for Oregon students as new computer-based testing goes into effect later this year.  All students, elementary through high school, will be taking the new tests on a common platform in their own schools despite the wide variance in technology infrastructure and support from school to school.

Preparing teacher candidates to handle the landscape of the 21rst century classroom is one of the many tasks in front of UP’s Dr. John Watzke, Dean of the School of Education.  Dr. Watzke talked with us about the gaps that exist in schools and current efforts to address them.
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There’s such a technological divide between the every day of many children and what they experience. And I think even as adults, we see that as well. And there maybe are ways that we can use technology that just hasn’t filtered into our classroom. And it ought to…It seems as though we often talk more about teacher development at the K-12 level, and it’s not always integrative of how does that take advantage of what the students know and do already. The challenge is how do you try to address those gaps?   How do we serve the teachers out there?

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A complete transcript of our conversation in PDF format

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