For tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.
ó African ProverbBy Kathy Chaffin
kchaffin@salisburypost.com
The more advanced the technology, the more excited students become about learning.
That’s what the Rowan-Salisbury School System’s first six 21st Century Classroom Teachers reported Thursday in multimedia presentations at the second annual Education Summit.
“If you could see their faces …” Joy Jenkins said about the way her third-graders at Cleveland Elementary School respond to iPod lessons.
Instead of listening to her go through a lesson one time, Jenkins’ students can replay her instructions, back up, go forward or start over at any time. This allows them to learn at their own pace, she said, while maintaining their independence.
Jenkins showed the estimated 500 educators and others gathered for the summit at The Event Center on Cornerstone Church’s Webb Road campus a video of how she uses podcasts to give students spelling tests, demonstrate cursive writing and tutor on the multiplication grid.
For the spelling tests, she changed her voice to sound like an animated character.
Students also create their own podcasts, Jenkins said, with such special effects as music, enhanced voices, sound effects, digital pictures, slides and/or movie clips.
April Williamson’s presentation showed how her third-graders at China Grove Elementary use Active Votes, which look like egg-shaped remote controls, to answer questions on the Promethean Planet interactive whiteboard. The results show up on the whiteboard in color-coded bar graphs, which can be converted to a pie chart.
Though Williamson can see how individual students respond to the questions, they can only see the group totals. “It’s completely anonymous,” she said.
The more advanced Active Expressions, which look like cell phones, allow students to answer multiple choice questions; yes or no questions; true or false questions; and text opinions, summaries and open-ended questions. As with the Active Votes, they can see the results on a bar graph or pie chart on the whiteboard as the answers come in.
Williamson said this allows students to answer questions without the fear of embarrassment some experience when they are selected to answer questions verbally in front of the whole class.
Amy Shorter, who teaches eighth-graders at Corriher-Lipe Middle School, demonstrated a Prometheon whiteboard.
For one thing, they’re interactive, she said. Students can still write on the whiteboard in front of the classroom or at their desks, individual work can be saved and slides can be printed for students who are absent or need more time to study them.
Shorter said teachers can also create automatic links to Web sites that provide information on the subject being studied.
Students love the new technology, she said. When she tells them class is over, Shorter said they respond, ” ‘Class is over? It’s been 55 minutes?’ They don’t even realize time has gone by, they’re so engrossed in what they’re doing.”
Holly Lowder, a seventh-grade teacher at Southeast Middle School, said technology enhances the learning process for students. When her class was reading “Journey to Topaz,” a story of the American-Japanese evacuation during World War II, for example, students could log onto online study guides and find out more information about the Japanese internment camps in the United States.
Lowder said one student said all the online resources were so much better than just reading the story from a book.
She agreed students enjoy the lessons more when technology is involved. “Some, when I say it’s time to go, they don’t want to go,” Lowder said.
Students are also able to journal through Gaggle Network, a protected e-mail site which allows them to interact with teachers. Lowder said students can also read together, talk and work on collaborative projects via iChat.
“The one thing I have learned this year is to step outside of the box,” she said.
Nancy Killian, who teaches fourth grade at North Rowan Elementary School, said new technology helps keep students engaged in lessons with such Promethean capabilities as focusing in on certain words on the whiteboard.
A document camera that projects the image on the whiteboard can also enhance lessons. In one class, Killian said she put a praying mantis under the camera and zoomed in on it. After the class went outside and found a cricket, she said students were able to watch the praying mantis eating the cricket on the whiteboard.
Other students passing by the class came in to watch. “They were saying, ‘Next year, I want to be in that room,’ ” she said.
When Killian was selected as one of the school system’s first 21st Century Classroom Teachers, she worried about learning how to use all the new technology.
But she did learn, she said, along with her students. “We just need more 21st Century Teachers in our classrooms.”
Kathryn Steen, a 10th-grade English and creative writing teacher at Jesse Carson High School, presented a multimedia presentation of local people in different professions talking about how they use technology in their jobs.
The students in the 21st Century classrooms will be able to use the technology they have learned, she said, when they get out in the real world.
“I feel so blessed because my students are able to do so many wonderful things,” Steen said. “These children really are preparing for the global competitive world.”
Dr. Judy Grissom, superintendent of the Rowan-Salisbury School System, said in introducing the first six, “We’re extremely proud of these teachers and what they are able to do in their classrooms every single day.”
Pete Teague, who chairs Rowan Partners for Education, which presented the summit, said nine more 21st Century Classroom Teachers have been selected for the 2009-2010 school year.
Sponsors of the Education Summit included the Salisbury Community Foundation, Duke Energy, Miller Davis, Cornerstone and Food Lion. Teague said the Community Bank of Rowan and Cheerwine provided refreshments.
Contact Kathy Chaffin at 704-797-4249.