BACK-TO-SCHOOL COMMENTARY
A powerful tool kit for learning
Published: Thursday, Aug 14, 2008
By DIANE ZIMMERMAN
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Black and white thinking about technology often whipsaws educators and stalls honest attempts to move forward.
Either technology is the greatest approach to education since sliced bread, or it is a waste of money. Instead of taking extreme sides, we would be better served to explore how digital tools can enhance learning and create engaging, interactive classrooms.
A simple example of a technology that can aid student learning is word processing. Research shows that it helps students pay closer attention to sentence structure and organizational flow. Students enjoy cutting and pasting and playing with words when the finished copy is just a click away.
Now that the word processor has become the tool of choice for adults, why are we not making it possible for our students to have increasing opportunities to use word processing beginning as early as fourth grade?
The Web is soon to be indispensable for the study of science and social studies. Using SMART Board technology, students in the Old Adobe Union School District have been able to travel via Google Earth to a classmate’s soon-to-be new home in Mexico, visit volcanoes from around the world and view live footage of eruptions while mapping the “ring of fire.”
Fifth-graders at Old Adobe Elementary School watched animation films demonstrating how foods impact the pancreas, kidney and liver. One student remarked, “I get confused when I just read about it, but watching moving pictures makes it easy for me to remember.”
With the advent of the worldwide Web, the learning opportunities have expanded exponentially. With the recent development of MySpace, Facebook and blogging, youth are adding unprecedented information to the Internet. In classrooms, digital science projects are linking students with scientists to collect information on weather and the flora and fauna of a region.
Did you know that a group of young boys identified a new habitat for an endangered species of frog? It turned out that this particular frog preferred well-watered back yards over the drainage ditch a few blocks away and was not as endangered as the scientists once thought. Students in Minneapolis use probes and spreadsheets to collect data from the surrounding lakes and help to monitor the ecological health of the region.
This fall, the Old Adobe schools will be using the Envision Mathematics program, and all of the materials are available online, including the text book. Parents will never have to drive back to a school to get that forgotten math book!
Every lesson starts with a visual animation, online games reinforce concepts and assessment tools help teachers monitor student performance. Envision Mathematics can stand alone without the technology. However, the question we all need to ask is: Why wouldn’t we add the technology if we could, and it would help our students learn?
Another powerful tool kit for learning is YouTube. Using video clips from YouTube, my niece learned advanced knitting, a friend figured out a plumbing problem and a teacher learned a difficult song for his guitar. In Old Adobe, we are searching TeacherTube to seek novel and engaging ways to engage our children.
These short, often homemade videos are usually only three to five minutes long and can greatly enhance student learning and understanding. It used to be said that a picture was worth a thousand words; our new mantra in Old Adobe is, “A few YouTube videos are worth an entire book!”
In Old Adobe, we have embarked on an ambitious project to have technology stations in every classroom, labs in every school and the projection technology needed to enhance our mathematics instruction. Through the priority setting of the board of trustees during these tough financial times and the extra support of Enrich and Educate, the Petaluma Education Foundation and Aruba Networks, we will be over halfway to our goal by November.
With the blessings and support of the community, Bay Area businesses and our students’ parents, we plan to make this our most successful year yet and be able to provide 21st century classrooms for all of our students by year’s end. For more information about how to join our crusade, e-mail dzimmerman@oldadobe.org.
(Diane Zimmerman is the superintendent of the Old Adobe Union School District.)
