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WELCOME TO THE 2003-04 NATIONAL TEACHER TRAINING INSTITUTE

This Web site is your guide to the implementation and utilization of video and the Internet in the classroom in all areas of the curriculum. As a participant in the National Teacher Training Institute (NTTI), you are joining a growing network of trained educators throughout the country who are using instructional video and technology in their teaching.

The NTTI staff and master teachers have carefully developed resources that will assist you in producing your own media-rich lesson plans, as well as in planning your own NTTI workshop in your school. We have also included media-rich lesson plans for you to use, get ideas from or share with other educators.

The NTTI materials are valuable teaching tools for your classroom, as well as a resource to be shared widely with your colleagues. We want you to suggest NTTI ideas to other teachers and to become an advocate for using educational television effectively and efficiently in the classroom. The NTTI information you share will act as a catalyst, initiating and inspiring the expansion of television and technology in the classroom.

The 2004-05 National Teacher Training Institute (NTTI)

Project Summary

America's schools are on a critical path to integrate technologies into classroom instruction and curricula as quickly as possible. States, districts and individual schools are increasingly making media and technology in the classroom a priority. Though more and more technologies are finally making their way into schools, few teachers have received the training needed to successfully integrate these resources in their instruction. In the scramble to capitalize upon the educational power of media and technology, teachers have too often been left out of the mix.

National Teacher Training Institute (NTTI) Fills National Need

Now in its 14th year, the National Teacher Training Institute is the largest and most distinguished national professional development program developed and sustained by public broadcasting. Created by Thirteen/WNET in New York City, NTTI remains in the vanguard of public television's efforts to help teachers harness the power of technology and use it as a tool to teach more effectively. The project has continued to expand to respond to education reform initiatives, new technologies, emerging media and national teaching standards in all curriculum areas. To date, NTTI has trained over 150,000 teachers and impacted millions of students nationwide. For 2003-04, NTTI will directly train over 5,000 K-12 teachers in the methodology of NTTI, and indirectly, through turnkey training, reach another 50,000 teachers with the interactive pedagogy.

Project Summary

The Model - NTTI is a collaborative professional development project partnering public television, education and business in an effort to provide teachers with the strategies and resources they need to strategically integrate television and technology into curricula. At sites across America, public television stations conduct training Institutes where locally recruited master teachers model the use of video and Internet technologies within the context of a variety of engaging lessons. During its year-long program, NTTI provides a constellation of resources at workshops on site at individual schools, at district learning centers and at PBS studios nationwide, reaching hundreds of teachers at each of the participating public television sites' Institutes. Participants are given opportunities to work in small, cooperative learning groups, engage in hands-on activities and experience teaching strategies they are encouraged to utilize in their classrooms to enhance student participation and performance.

NTTI advances an interactive teaching methodology in which video and telecommunications merge with hands-on activities to enhance critical thinking, motivate student learning and sharpen students' perceptual skills. Public television's wealth of educational programming provides students with vivid demonstrations of content from all curriculum areas. Tied to real-world settings and contexts, video and Internet resources help make the connection between curricula and students' own lives and futures. Video is also adept at presenting students with a range of diverse role models working in these fields.

The NTTI model is based on teachers teaching teachers. Locally recruited "master teachers" develop media-rich lesson plans with hands-on classroom activities based on their various curricula. These master teachers then go on to conduct hands-on training at each Institute, modeling strategies for effectively weaving technology into substantive and student-driven curricula. The high caliber of NTTI's master teachers is demonstrated by the awards and recognition that many of them receive in their school districts, states and nationally - including State Teacher of the Year Awards and Presidential Teacher of the Year designations.

Standards-Based - The Institute follows the K-12 standards set by such groups as the United States Department of Education, the National Academy of Sciences, the International Society for Technology in Education, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, the National Council of Teachers of English and the National Center for History in the Schools. It is critical to prepare teachers in the effective use of technology to support reform-minded teaching objectives such as interdisciplinary learning and real-world problem-solving. NTTI's master teachers work with their core state and local curricula at each grade level, starting with the basics and moving through advanced levels of study. NTTI participants learn to use video and Internet resources to explain, motivate, reinforce and reach students' different learning styles as they grapple with various curriculum concepts.

Partnerships - NTTI also emphasizes the importance of partnerships between the public television station and the educational leadership in its state and community. Many NTTI sites have created strong partnerships with their state departments of higher education, with colleges of education at local universities in their regions and with local or state chapters of teacher professional organizations.

Turnkey Training is also a cornerstone of the project. Each Institute's participants graduate from their local NTTI armed with a new methodology and NTTI resources full of lesson plans created by master teachers, as well as other technology resource materials. Many NTTI graduates continue to serve as liaisons between their local station and area educators by returning to their schools and districts to train colleagues, exponentially impacting many more educators. Beyond the thousands of educators attending these NTTI workshops, the project reaches thousands of additional teachers through a range of projects and services.

Results - A multi-instrument evaluation designed by Columbia University's Teachers College has been an important part of an ongoing analysis of the Institute's effectiveness. Consistent evaluation findings show that NTTI's methodology increases students' interest and performance and attending teachers' professionalism:

  • 90 percent of the teachers said their students learned and retained more when video was used in the lesson.
  • 85 percent found that students were more engaged in subjects when instructional television was part of the curriculum.
  • 80 percent believed the Institute's methods have significantly improved their classroom instruction.
  • In keeping with the project's turnkey training mission, 94 percent of Institute participants shared information and materials with other teachers while 70 percent went on to formally conduct hands-on training in their schools and districts.

Reaching Thousands of Teachers Nationwide - To reach as many educators as possible, NTTI has developed a range of training tools to support program graduates and those teachers unable to attend an Institute. These include: a professional development CD-ROM, lesson compilation books and NTTI Online at http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/ntti, providing information about the project, its sites, services, strategies and a searchable lesson database of over 200 K-12 lessons.

Thanks to NTTI's ongoing efforts, thousands of educators across the country are using video and technology to transport their students into the 21st century. Teachers are using video as a magic carpet out of the classroom into the middle of a rain forest to learn about biomes, into a computer animation to illustrate cosines and onto a rocket ship to the moon to teach the physics of thrust and gravity. As one master teacher put it, "Unless students are plugged into appropriate uses of technology, they will be unplugged from their futures."