Limestone Professor Dr. Shelly Meyers Invited To Event At White House

Limestone College Professor Dr. Shelly Meyers was invited to the White House in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Dec. 14, to participate in the “Innovators Briefing” sponsored by the United States Department of Education Office of Educational Technology.

Earlier this year, the Office of Educational Technology invited educator preparation providers to publicly commit to the four key principles identified in the 2016 National Educational Technology Plan for the use of educational technology in teacher preparation.

Dr. Meyers, who serves as Limestone’s Director of Teacher Education and is the Chair of the Division of Education and Physical Education, was selected to attend the “Innovator’s Briefing” that included a workshop hosted by the American Association of Colleges For Teacher Education on Tuesday, Dec. 13, and a visit to the White House on Wednesday, Dec. 14.

The event highlighted the forward-thinking work of innovators advancing principles of educational technology in teacher preparation. It also provided an opportunity for those in attendance to share ideas and success stories.

“The Limestone College Teacher Education Program has been implementing pieces of the four principles in various ways,” Dr. Meyers explained. “Being the first South Carolina institution and one of 74 institutions nation-wide to take the Educational Technology in Teacher Education Challenge gives us the opportunity to lead the way in South Carolina to meet the principles so that student learning is positively impacted.”

A group of innovators across multiple sectors within the education field participated in a summit in June 2016. In an effort led by the Department of Education, the event culminated in the creation of four guiding principles for the use of educational technology in teacher preparation:

• Focus on the active use of technology to enable learning and teaching through creation, production, and problem solving.
• Build sustainable, program-wide systems of professional learning for higher education instructors to strengthen and continually refresh capacity to use technological tools to enable transformative learning and teaching.
• Ensure preservice teacher experiences with educational technology are program-deep and program-wide rather than one-off courses separate from methods courses.
• Align efforts with research-based standards, frameworks, and credentials recognized across the field.

Since the summit in June, stakeholders across the teacher preparation field have made strides to better support pre-service teachers by giving them the skills necessary to meaningfully use technology in their classrooms and support student learning on their first day as an in-service educator.

“I was so proud to represent Limestone College at the White House,” Dr. Meyers said. “It was an honor to receive recognition for the work our talented faculty, teacher candidates, alumni, and school partners are doing. In the coming weeks and months, there will be opportunities to engage our local, state, and national partners to advance educational technology practices for the benefit of our K-12 students.”

The National Education Technology Plan is the flagship educational technology policy document for the United States. The 2016 Plan, “Future Ready Learning: Reimagining the Role of Technology in Education,” articulates a vision of equity, active use, and collaborative leadership to make everywhere, all-the-time learning possible. While acknowledging the continuing need to provide greater equity of access to technology itself, the plan goes further to call upon all involved in American education to ensure equity of access to transformational learning experiences enabled by technology. The principles and examples provided in the document align to the Activities to Support the Effective Use of Technology (Title IV A) of Every Student Succeeds Act as authorized by Congress in December 2015.