It’s not just pencils, pens and spiral-bound notebooks anymore.

Back-to-school sales regularly include laptop computers, flash drives, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and DVD spindles – all evidence that technology is very much a part of the learning process in classrooms across the country.

Realizing that future teachers will have to know how to use technology effectively and ethically, national and state governments have implemented technology standards for teachers. To introduce their teacher-licensure students to these standards, professors in Maryville College’s Division of Education offer EDU302: Educational Technology.

“Teachers need to be ready to meet the needs of this tech-savvy generation by preparing themselves to use and understand various classroom technologies,” says Dr. Rebecca Lucas, associate professor of education, who is teaching the course during the College’s Summer Institute.

Meeting in a campus classroom equipped with a projector, projection screen, DVD/VCR player and a touch-screen digital tablet/monitor called “Sympodium,” Lucas and her students discuss how to successfully integrate instructional technology into the students’ future classes.

“In the last year, our focus has centered on using blogs, pods, Wikis, and other Web 2.0 tools to enhance instruction and productivity,” says Lucas. “With each tool introduced, we examine the utility for teachers and for students.”

Although the type of technology used in the classroom changes with the grade level of students, it almost always enhances their learning by engaging a variety of senses and cognitive skills.

“Learning theorists suggest that learning is more meaningful and retained longer when students are engaged on multiple levels,” says Lucas.

She and students also discuss the options made available by technology that benefit mainly teachers: online journal subscriptions to aid in professional development, electronic gradebooks, web-based applications that help manage students’ attendance and completed assignments.

One assignment that Lucas gives her students is creating an electronic teacher portfolio, or “efolio.”

“Licensure students are required to complete an efolio – a comprehensive collection of electronic work samples that demonstrate specific mastery of each Tennessee Teacher Licensure Standard,” Lucas says. (For an example, visit www.jessicamathisefolio.weebly.com.)

After taking EDU302, students are expected to refine their efolios each semester and submit them while they complete their student teaching.

Although the technologies that students learn about and use in EDU302 are certainly important, there is no question that they are subject to change. Technological tools and equipment eventually become obsolete and are replaced by newer products.

“The technologies my students will encounter when they have their own classrooms will be very different from the technologies we study and use now in EDU302,” the professor admits.

Because of this, she says she seeks to encourage “a philosophy of technology” among students.

“I am trying to encourage a philosophy of technology that reflects a willingness to try new things, the courage to fail, a creative approach to engaging students and a mindset that technology is only as good as the forward-thinking teacher who takes a risk and explores the possibilities available to him/her,” she says.