Sharon Smaldino

New Morgridge Chair focuses
on classroom technology

by Mark McGowan

For years, Sharon Smaldino was happy to follow her audiologist husband as his professional obligations moved them around to several different states.

Trained as a speech pathologist, she later would work with deaf children as a special education teacher. Then, believing she needed experience teaching regular children, she earned a degree in elementary education. She had opportunities to work in elementary classrooms as well as special programs.

But a move to Carbondale – and her treasured Apple IIe – would change everything.

Smaldino found a position working with socially and emotionally disturbed deaf adolescents who had been booted from regular schools and sent to a residential program.

“I realized I was in a little over my head and needed more education,” said Smaldino, NIU’s new LD and Ruth G. Morgridge Chair in Teacher Education and Preparation in the College of Education. “I ended up in a doctoral program which proved to be an opportunity to explore computer technology as it was beginning to enter into the classroom.”

There, as Smaldino witnessed the emerging popularity of personal computers, she began to ponder the most effective use of the new technology in classrooms. And, one morning, she loaded her Apple IIe in the car and lugged it to her classroom of “ornery” students. Their eyes shone with intrigue.

So she brought the computer again the next day, and the day after that, deciding to carry all of its heavy and assorted parts with her from home to school each morning and night.

“This was what captured their attention,” she said. “This was what made them want to study.”

After 16 years as a faculty member in educational technology at the University of Northern Iowa, Smaldino has come to DeKalb to lead the school-university partnership efforts in the College of Education. She replaces Donna Wiseman, who left NIU for the University of Maryland.

Smaldino’s focus, of course, is use of technology in the classroom.

“I want to make technology a fun thing for everyone,” she said. “I want them to see its value and worth and enjoy what they do with it. Technology should not be work, it should make work easier and more productive.”

Chris Sorensen, dean of the College of Education, has known Smaldino for more than a decade.

They first worked together on Iowa’s Star Schools Project, a multi-million dollar project designed to use technology to bring educational opportunities to the children of Iowa, and wrote much of the original grant that was funded. Their collaboration on the project continued several year, Smaldino responsible for pre-service teacher education components and Sorensen responsible for evaluating the statewide activities.

“What I loved about Sharon then – and now – was her energy, her passion and her vision for technology in education,” Sorensen said. “Sharon understands teacher preparation, and she understands technology in education. That’s a powerful combination, and just what I was looking for in filling the position.”

NIU’s College of Education has formal partnerships with eight Illinois schools or districts, including DeKalb, Glen Ellyn, Elgin, Kaneland, Machesney Park Harlem, Rochelle, West Chicago, and the Rockford Environmental Science Academy, and has initiated partnership agreements with Chicago and Rockford. The program aims to keep teacher education programs and school districts in perfect step so university faculty are aware of changes in elementary and secondary schools while school district teachers and administrators are aware of changes in the preparation of teachers.

The College of Education’s partnerships help to better prepare new teachers, provide professional development for experienced teachers, allow for joint research about the classroom and change the way teachers and children are taught.

The partnership program received $150,000 from Verizon Communications, most of which funded the purchase of technology as well as teacher stipends that encourage and reward their participation in learning to use technology to teach. The College of Education also created a tech environment on campus and worked to replicate it in the partner schools so teacher education students use the same equipment in both places.

Smaldino sees great potential for further integration of technology into the partnerships,
including the crucial task of helping children to harness their seemingly natural knowledge of computers as a tool for individual learning.

Pre-service teachers must “take what they know how to do with computers and then reverse that knowledge into thinking about how to use them to support learning,” she said.

“How do teachers help others? How do they help young people, moving them to the next level of thinking? They can help to channel those kids to use the resources, showing them how these things help them in their learning and how to use these tools to help themselves.”

For now, though, Smaldino’s goal is to meet the College of Education faculty, the department chairs and the participants in the partner schools to learn more about what is ongoing and what ideas and concerns they have for the future.

Afterward, she will interpret their messages, connect their ideas, set program goals and tie it all together with federal education goals to “keep NIU on the forefront.”

The university already is leading the way by making sure pre-service teachers have plenty of opportunities for the “meaningful experience” of working in schools, she said, which attracted her to DeKalb.

“That’s critical to keeping teacher education a viable aspect of not only the university life, but in the P-12, P-16 and P-20 environment. It’s very important to see the relationship of the scholarship and the university environment with how it applies to the P-12,” she said. “You get good teachers from good teacher preparation programs. You keep good teachers when you have good teacher education programs. I saw a place (NIU) where they ‘got it.’ They figured it out. They know what they were supposed to be doing, and the people here are vitalized and energized by that.”

Smaldino and her husband, Joseph, who has joined NIU’s Department of Communicative Disorders, are the parents of two adult sons.

9-2-03