The
Digital Hub
in
Teacher Education Project

In the fall of 2016, the Faculty of Education began piloting an initiative meant to support the development of students' emergent professional digital presence. Called The Digital Hub Strategy, the initiative is informed by current research on digital literacies teaching and learning (e.g.,Leu, Kinzer, Coiro, Castek & Henry, 2013), particularly among pre-service teachers (e.g., Carpenter, Tur & Marin, 2016; Colwell & Gregory, 2016, Hundley & Holbrook, 2013). It is also informed by accreditation standards set by the Ontario College of Teachers, and by the general understanding of UOttawa Teacher Education Faculty that our pre-service teacher candidates would benefit from an opportunity to build a positive professional digital presence for themselves, with support, during their initial professional preparation program. 

Some scholars call this type of project Domain of One's Own. Others call it an ePortfolio. We like the idea of a Digital Hub because the metaphor of the wheel fits with foundational frameworks of continual professional inquiry and reflection that are central to our innovative teacher education program. For us, the pre-service teacher candidate is the hub of the wheel. The spokes are the experiences, the work, the digital spaces that our candidates create, and choose to inhabit as they build their professional identities. In a single online space, each candidate curates a unique collection of spokes (i.e., web pages, blog posts, social media feeds, course projects) that represent who they are and what they can do as a professional teacher. 

During the 2016-2017 academic year we gathered information from graduating pre-service teacher candidates who created and curated digital hubs for themselves. Those findings, shared in the presentation below, were presented to the Faculty in spring of 2017 and informed a range of revisions to the project. 

Key take-aways included: 

• • Self-promotion vs. Developing Professional Literacies: Although one goal of the initiative is to equip students with fundamental professional digital literacies skills that will serve them well during their entire career, some students interpreted the digital hub as an exercise in self-promotion for the acquisition of permanent employment rather than as an opportunity to reflect, over time, on one's growth and development as teacher or as an opportunity to build digital skills for professional purposes

  • Guidance: Some students wanted more guidance and a recipe to follow, others wanted freedome to create a unique portfolio that represented who they were becoming as a professional teacher

  • Social Media: Students had many questions about social media, whether to use it, how to use it, why to use it

  • Vulnerability: Students often felt nervous "putting themselves out there" as they developed new skills while also developing a new identity as a teacher 

Based on what our graduating teacher candidates told us, we revised the strategy. The Digital Hub has grown to become a programmatic expectation for all candidates that is currently associated with their PED 3150 and PED 3151 courses.  

All teacher candidates beginning their professional preparation program are introduced to the digital hub early in their first semester.  During the first year, teacher candidates build the architecture of their digital hub and begin to populate it with artifacts that represent who they are becoming as a teacher.  By the end of the second year, all Year 2 students present their digital hub  to at least one Faculty member and receive an evaluation on their presentation of their work. For Y2 students, the digital hub is used as a final portfolio of work that is used as evidence in relation to programmatic learning objectives. 

Along the way, Faculty support students' questions and concerns by creating open spaces for dialogue and authentic resolution of questions such as: 

• • Should I have a professional social media account? 

  • How do I document my learning process without feeling like I'm a shameless self-promoter, or without fear that I'm somehow compromising the identities of the children and school communities I serve? 

  • What rules should I impose on my digital presence so that I can model integration of digital tools effectively for my students, but also protect myself from the potential down-sides of being a (digitally) public professional?

At its core, the Digital Hub project gives students the opportunity to grapple with the complexities of digital systems in their lives as teachers. It raises important questions about how to use digital systems to create meaningful, multimodal objects that reflect who we are and what we care about. It raises important questions about the boundaries we must set as digitally networked educators. It also creates an important opportunity for celebrating all that has been learned. 

We recognize that every teacher candidate will find his/her/their own value in this work. Every candidate will develop something a little different and indeed, we HOPE this is the case. This should be authentic work that allows every candidate to acquire new understandings of the complexities of digital literacies, digital citizenship, digital leadership so that they can THEN model and mentor digital skills, strategies, habits and mindsets for children, adolescents and adults in their careers as professional educators. 

This website has been designed to support students' development of their digital hubs -- no matter where they are in the program, and no matter how "techie" they believe themselves to be.

References

Carpenter, J. P., Tur, G., & Marin, V. I. (2016). What do U.S. and Spanish pre-service teachers think about educational and professional use of Twitter? A comparative study. Teaching and Teacher Education, 60, 131–143. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2016.08.011

Colwell, J., & Gregory, K. (2016). Exploring How Secondary Pre-Service Teachers ’ Use Online Social Bookmarking to Envision Literacy in the Disciplines. Reading Horizons, 55(3), 62–97.

Hundley, M., & Holbrook, T. (2013). Set in stone or set in motion? Multimodal and digital writing with preservice english teachers. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 56(6), 500–509. http://doi.org/10.1002/JAAL.171

Leu, D. J., Kinzer, C. K., Coiro, J., Castek, J., & Henry, L. A. (2013). New literacies: A dual-level theory of the changing nature of literacy, instruction, and assessment. In D. Alvermann, N. Unrau, & R B. Ruddell (Eds.), Theoretical models and processes of reading (6th ed., pp. 1150-1181). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.