Random Indiana Earthquake

So I woke up this morning to go for a run and at 5:37am, I felt a huge gust of wind shaking the house - like a washing machine off-kilter gone crazy! I thought the house was done for. This lasted for only about 5 seconds, but I could still feel a less significant shaking for about 10-15 seconds. My running buddy (who's from the West coast) called me and asked - "Did you just feel that? That was an earthquake!" I was completely shocked! An earthquake? In Indiana? But it's true. Evidently, we're on a fault line. The USGS Earthquake Hazards website keeps a record of the earthquakes recently reported in this area.

My parents (who live in the Detroit area) said they did not feel it themselves, but they were outside with their dog who ran back to the porch at that exact time like something horrible had happened. Now he won't set foot on the grass outside.

The interesting thing is I tried to fit this within my own schema. I attributed it to a strong wind, or the fact that I had taken cold medicine the night before and my head could have been a bit foggy. I never even thought of an earthquake until my friend called me. Even though I know about earthquakes from a geological perspective, it never crossed my mind as a possibility for this area. This instance shows me that we need to keep reminding ourselves to push the envelope of thinking...to look beyond the typical explainations we are comfortable with and find the truth. Hmmmm.... How does this relate to research? :)

Random Indiana Earthquake

Leveraging Educational Technology to Keep America Competitive

In October 2007, I was part of the Indiana University team with the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy (CEEP) that received a 3.1 million dollar contract from the Office of Education Technology in the Department of Education titled Leveraging Educational Technology to Keep America Competitive. This project focuses on examining how current and emerging technologies are being used in classrooms and how to prepare new teachers to best use these tools. Myself and Dr. Tom Brush are working on two main areas. The first area is a national study of preservice teacher education programs studying how they to prepare their gradautes use technology in their future K-12 classrooms. We are employing a three-phase mixed-methods study to answer the following questions:

1. What technology experiences are included in pre-service teacher education programs, and how do these compare to technology experiences supported by the research literature?
2. What technology experiences do teachers (a) find relevant and meaningful to their teaching and learning practices, and (b) integrate into their teaching and learning practices?
3. What are the similarities and differences between the technology experiences included in teacher education programs and the technology experiences teachers (a) find relevant and meaningful to their teaching and learning practices, and (b) integrate into their teaching and learning practices?

We have been documenting our efforts on our Levergaing Technology website. You can also visit AECT's Teacher Education Division Blog to listen to our discussion of the project online. Please note that there have been several changes in our research plan, but it might be interesting to see how it has evolved with all the feedback from experts and the Department of Education Ofice of Educational Technology. Before we begin our study, we need to get OMB approval. This takes at least 4 months so we plan on launching our study in September.

The second aspect of this contract is A Parent's Guide to the Internet. We are still working on this and I'll post a recent version of this in my next post. This project will be updating the 1997 version as quite a bit has changed since then...

Leveraging Educational Technology to Keep America Competitive