Sidonie Smith

The GTC+Digital Media Teacher Certificate Program (http://www.crlt.umich.edu/cert/dm) is designed to structure and document professional development for University of Michigan graduate students who are already pursuing or have completed the Rackham Graduate School–CRLT (Center for Research and Learning on Teaching) graduate teacher certificate. The GTC+ program adds to the certificate a focus on integrating digital media into college instruction, providing structured opportunities to engage with current scholarly conversations about the ways digital environments shape our thinking and practice as teachers and learners. This program is designed in part to help prepare students for a competitive academic job market. Students who complete the GTC+ will be well equipped to enter and lead conversations not only about effective teaching practices but also about the complex interactions between those practices and new media.

The program’s primary focus is not on using tools to make teaching more efficient and effective. Rather, this program invites participants to think critically about technology tools and digital environments. How do digital media shape, facilitate, or limit the ways teachers and students access information, represent data, develop and communicate ideas, collaborate on intellectual projects, and define scholarship?