| Integrating Technology into the Elementary Curriculum: A Hypermedia (I-TECH) Learning Environment for Preservice Teachers is an interactive multimedia instructional package for teacher education. I-TECH profits from the flexibility and power of hypertext learning environments to create an information-rich context for examination, discussion, and evaluation of actual technology-enhanced classroom practice by elementary classroom teachers.; Development followed a recursive, reflective instructional design model based on constructivist theory (Willis, 1995) and other models that emphasize situated cognition, anchored instruction, and cognitive flexibility theory. During the design and development of I-TECH, a team of contributors provided input with a focused, insightful perspective that helped shape the final objectives of the product. Members of the collaborative team provided timely feedback on the feasibility of the product, the effectiveness of the interface, and the instructional value of the video-cases. The purpose of the recursive design, which depended on formative evaluation throughout the entire process, was to delineate, obtain, and provide information for making informed decisions about the product. In this study, formative evaluation was project-specific. It allowed the designer of I-TECH, from the early stages of development, to increase the likelihood that the final product would achieve its goals (Flagg, 1990). Further, by using formative evaluation, the investigator designed and developed a product that satisfied the stated need of stakeholders and future users.; The interactive learning environment contains a CD-ROM which holds a collection of digitized video-cases that illustrate technology-mediated lessons conducted by an elementary classroom teacher working in multicultural urban contexts. The video database is supported by a software interface that controls the video source and provides an easy-to-use, intuitive interface. The collection of videos is a naturalistic representation of one very diverse urban classroom. Those video-cases show a technology-rich elementary school environment in which the members of the group create multimedia presentations for different audiences. The students, the teacher, and the technology play numerous roles. The elementary classroom's culture, dynamics, and interactions provide shared contexts for discussion during large group method classroom instruction, self-paced learning, individual exploration, and independent investigation. |
