AUSTIN, Texas — Three professors from The University of Texas at Austin are recipients of the Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers to Use Technology (PT3) grants from the U.S. Department of Education announced last week by President Bill Clinton.
Professors Paul E. Resta, Jere Confrey and Anthony Petrosino of the College of Education have received a three-year, $800,000 PT3 grant for INSITE, Inventing New Strategies for Integrating Technology in Teacher Education. INSITE is a collaborative project between the College of Education, the College of Natural Sciences and the Austin Independent School District.
The goal of the project is to develop a scalable model for technology-infused educational preparation for the next generation of middle and high school teachers of mathematics and science.
By facilitating collaboration among the three strands of pre-service education — the content major, the professional teacher preparation sequence and field experiences — and providing expertise in the integration of technologies for learning, INSITE will strengthen the nationally acclaimed and rapidly growing UTeach Project. UTeach is a collaborative teacher preparation program between the colleges of Natural Sciences and Education.
A steering committee comprised of faculty, master teachers and school district personnel — supplemented by technology education faculty — will guide the project toward its goals of increased use of technological tools in content majors, the professional sequence and in the field-placement classrooms.
Resta is the director of the Learning Technology Center and a professor of instructional technology in the department of curriculum & instruction. Confrey is director of the systemic research collaborative for education in math, science and technology (SYRCE). Both Confrey and Petrosino are professors in science and mathematics education in the department of curriculum & instruction.
