Innovative strategies for teacher prep

This short piece on MSNBC news discusses the use of virtual classrooms to help prepare teachers. The program was developed at the University of Central Florida and one of our own, Dr. David Grant, is actually one of the stars in this 2 min. 23 sec. video. In addition to the points made about being able to give students classroom experience earlier in their curriculum, I think one of the real advantages is being able to present the developing teachers with specific classroom behaviors and challenges--with the opportunities to get formative feedback on handling them. Putting them in real classrooms, doesn't necessarily offer the chance to deal with particular kinds of situations while they are still in a position to get formative feedback (from education faculty, classmates, etc.). So students would get more practice, with a greater variety of situations/behaviors, earlier in their preparation!