nal Trainer?
this system is that it is labor intensive, and although the
results are excellent and teachers are able to sustain the use
of technology, one instructional technologist cannot meet
the demands of all 365 of our teachers.
Brainstorming a Solution
Searching for guidance, I met with my former
professor, David D. Carbonara, director of instruc-
tional technology for the Department of Instruction
and Leadership in Education at Duquesne University.
Carbonara had recently restructured the undergrad-
uate preservice teaching curriculum at the university
to include instructional technology practices. Students
graduating with a teaching degree now possess many of
the skills that students in the master’s of instructional tech-
nology degree program have.
Carbonara and I came up with a plan that eventually would become the Student Internship Program for
Instructional Technology. Carbonara would identify
students whose skills would match areas where teachers
needed support. In class, his students already were creating
technology-integrated lesson plans mapped to state and
national standards and were already well versed in how to
select appropriate instructional strategies. My role would
be to provide additional training on tools specific to our
district, match students to teacher needs, and provide
project management.
Reaping Rewards
During the first semester of the project, five
student interns volunteered in grades 1–5 in
various district schools. Here are some of the
things they accomplished:
• Robert Weiss, Lauren Ruffing, Stephanie Wolbert, and
Dana Barger taught second graders Microsoft Word
for note taking and net Trekker for conducting online
research. For their animal research projects, the elementary students used net Trekker to download pictures and
used its read-aloud feature to gather more information
from sites that they had difficulty reading on their own.
Students compiled this information and created multimedia reports using PowerPoint, which parents were invited to view during a presentation at the end of the year.
• While teaching Word, Robin Harding, Bethann Stone-back, and Julie Snyder noticed that students from three
classes were repeating similar mistakes. For example,
students would complete the steps to make changes in
font, text size, or color but became frustrated when the
changes didn’t appear because they had failed to highlight the text first. To reinforce the steps, Weiss created
an interactive game titled “Are You Smarter than Your
Computer?” based on the game show Are you Smarter
than a Fifth Grader? Students divided into teams and
answered quiz questions, such as: “If you want to change
the font on the paragraph you just wrote without using
the shortcut keys, what steps would you take?” or “If you
want to tell your computer to delete the sentence you
just wrote, what are three ways you can do this?”
• Weiss helped fifth graders at Markham Elementary make
podcasts for a Veterans’ Day website.
• Wolbert helped students in Hoover Elementary’s second
grade classrooms create reading fluency portfolios using
PowerPoint and Audacity software.
• Weiss created a skills center link for kindergarten
students at Hoover and Jefferson elementary schools.
• Ruffing and Wolbert provided a half-day districtwide in-service training to 15 teachers on how to use net Trekker.
The interns became so well regarded at Lincoln Elementary School that Marilyn Reinhard, the instructional support teacher, requested an intern to support 20 English language learners (ELL). Ruffing, a student intern in her junior
year, had just completed her first semester and agreed to
