Today's teachers must use technology if students are to gain 21st-century skills.

When Sandy Armstrong was studying to become a teacher, technology instruction was limited to learning how to use an overhead projector or run a reel-to-reel movie over a player’s spindle. This was 1989. Computers and advanced technology just weren’t part of the vocabulary or the curriculum in Armstrong’s pre-service program at Auburn University in Alabama.

Fast-forward 20 years and Armstrong is now the technology guru for the Auburn Early Education Center, a public kindergarten that is held up as an example of a 21st-century school, where gadgets and sophisticated software are abundant and seem to truly improve the classroom experience. In addition to other cutting-edge technological tools, a SMART Board–an electronic, interactive whiteboard on which text and images can be drawn, manipulated, and moved, then saved and formatted for eMail distribution–is set up in every classroom.

It’s Armstrong’s job to make sure the school’s teachers know how to use the technology. And that’s where she has a flashback, like she’s living in 1989: More often than not, the teachers who come to her school–fresh from pre-service programs in Alabama and nationwide–don’t know how to use and make the most of technologies like SMART Boards.

This lack of training might not seem to matter much if the teachers go to work in school districts that can’t afford high-tech tools. But the reality is that an increasing number of schools–large and small, wealthy and less so–are integrating technology into their classrooms. And the disconnect between the technology that exists in schools today and the training that pre-service teachers often receive “does the teachers and their classrooms a great disservice,” Armstrong said.

“Teachers are not prepared to use the technology,” she said. “It still amazes me so much, because the push is technology–but not at the universities where people learn to become teachers.”

In response to this trend, and the ever-more technically sophisticated classroom of the 21st century, some education schools are stepping up their efforts to train the next generation of teachers to be ready to integrate new technologies in the classroom.

“We can, and we should, prepare teachers how to use interactive technologies and Web 2.0 applications,” said Bret Gensburg, adjunct faculty member in the College of Educational Foundations and Leadership at the University of Akron, and founder of instructional tech company Eagle Technology Integrations. “In addition to those skills, we need to ensure that today’s pre-service teachers are ready and open to the technological changes that will occur in their professional careers.”

Because the fact is, technology is part of K-12 student life outside the classroom and is increasingly proving to be beneficial inside the classroom, said Tom Greaves, chairman of the Greaves Group, a strategic educational consulting company.

“Cutting-edge technology is essential,” he said. “It is widely accepted that an individualized or personalized education experience is the key to dramatic improvements in student performance. It is also generally accepted that full personalization is impossible in the current model of a teacher standing in front of the classroom lecturing and students limited to using textbooks. Full personalization requires the use of digital media.”

(Click here to see how the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education is preparing teachers for 21st-century classrooms.)

K-12 schools and districts are catching on to this idea and are boosting their spending in response, with technology expenditures expected to hit $21.9 billion by 2013–a 30-percent jump from $16.8 billion in 2008, according to Stephanie Atkinson, an analyst with Compass Intelligence. “The Obama administration is putting an emphasis on education spending, especially around technologies,” she said.

One of the more popular technology tools for the classroom is the interactive whiteboard. According to “America’s Digital Schools 2008,” a comprehensive report from the Greaves Group, the boards can help increase students’ motivation and participation, improve their social skills, reduce the need for note-taking, accommodate different learning styles, and increase students’ self-confidence.