MacBook Is the LIFE of
Preservice Teacher Training
Profiles in Success: University of Texas
at Austin College of Education
Apple Notebooks Drive Technology Adoption
The prominent role of the Apple notebooks in the COE has even spread to the public school classrooms where the preservice courses are taught. Along with the wireless environment established throughout the COE building, AirPort Extreme Base Stations have been installed in the K-12 school sites. This has enabled course professors to monitor the progress of the teachers in training, and provide the types of feedback needed to reinforce or modify classroom techniques.
Says Fulton, “iChat AV has been really great for us. A supervisor can do remote observations of the student-teacher experiences, and quickly get in touch with the preservice teachers in different schools whenever advice is needed. Also, students can hook up a digital camcorder to their Mac and record the teaching episode. Then later the instructor and student can watch the video together, and do a critique. This is a powerful way for students to enhance their teaching practices.”
“When everyone has a MacBook, the possibilities are endless.”
— Chad Fulton, Coordinator,
Laptop Initiative for
Future Educators
Ryan Baldwin, manager of network and technical services in UT’s Learning Technology Center, says the Apple notebooks provide a number of advantages in both deployment and servicing. “Apple’s computer administration tools allow us to easily troubleshoot, backup, and restore the computers,” Baldwin says. “Also, NetBoot on Mac OS X Server helps us easily deploy images for our computer labs and laptop fleets. And, with Mac OS X we don’t have to deal with incompatibility issues between systems: It’s simple for us to transfer systems from an iBook to a MacBook, or from a desktop computer to a notebook.”
Next Page: Apple Trainers Instill Core Competencies
