Project BackPac levels playing field for student teachers

Today's student teachers embrace new technology to enhance classroom instruction, but many school districts have little to no access to the latest tools. Enter Miami University's Project BackPac.

Doug Brooks, Miami University professor of teacher education, knows that classroom technology, properly used, helps K-12 students acquire the skills needed for a complex, knowledge-based economy. He developed Project BackPac to give Miami’s student teachers equal access to integrating what they have learned about technology at Miami as they go to their assigned schools, which may have little or no access to tools such as smart boards, digital video recorders or laptops.

Brooks, who has supervised student teachers for almost 40 years, came up with the concept of a backpack three years ago, equipped with an assortment of technological tools capable of transferring the most under-equipped classroom into a place where students Skype, Google information and create digital video and podcast projects.

Then he put together start-up funding from a variety of internal sources, including Carine Feyten, dean of the School of Education, Health and Society, and a student technology fee fund.

Project BackPac also creates a synergy between student teacher and supervising teacher. As always, student teachers learn to teach from their mentors, but now technologically competent undergrads sometime shape the technological skills of experienced teachers, Brooks said.

Eleven BackPacs, which cost about $3,000 each, are in use each semester in schools in southwest Ohio, Chicago and Belize. The BackPacs are often shared by multiple student teachers assigned to the same building. The BackPacs include a laptop, a projector, a digital video recorder, an e-Beam (works with any digital projector to turn any flat, rigid surface into an interactive, shared whiteboard), a smart pen (that allows students to record while taking notes) and eInstruction (Student Response Systems with digital mobile pad that lets the teacher move about the room while they use the interactive white board).

“The digital BackPac transformed my student teaching experience,” said a student assigned to a Cincinnati inner-city elementary school. She used an e-Beam, which can transform an ordinary whiteboard, to create a geography unit utilizing Google Earth. Students in her class also created a video pen-pal project with another class, providing opportunities to write stories, skits and poems.

Wendy New, who supervises six student teachers, has seen the impact of the project first hand. Last spring, one of her students was assigned to a school that had no technological tools available other than an overhead projector. The BackPac program allowed the teacher to be more creative and resulted in lessons plans that were much more engaging for her first graders, according to New.

Ultimately, an additional 20 BackPacs are needed to meet the demand, says Brooks. He is pursuing grant opportunities and other funding options.