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Teaching tech?

Durango school district adapting to ways of kids

In Needham Elementary School on Thursday morning, a class of fifth-graders was preparing presentations about social ills as part of the International Baccalaureate program – immersed in computer screens.

One set of girls was investigating animal abuse.

Progress stalled when, in Microsoft Word, a girl’s cursor became stuck at the bottom of a vibrantly colored pie chart.

She didn’t call the teacher over for help. With a few unperturbed clicks, the problem was solved and she was again editing text.

Technology has long been the simple litmus test of generational divide. Whereas common models of TV remote controls fell the most modern of parents, their children navigate them with the native fluency of Moses speaking to the burning bush.

This has never been truer than of kids today, who connect to the world by a technological umbilical cord that, educators anticipate, will likely never be severed.

At a different desk, Connor Fitzpatrick was on his MacBook Air, which he brought from home, to work on a report about land pollution, “specifically, litter,” he said.

He explained he was using Google Drive to automatically save his document, and that he was working on only small portions of the master document – sections he had cut and pasted into another document – so his partner could continue to work in the master document.

“Technology has definitely become a big part of our lives,” said Connor, who loves advanced math because “it’s by far the most logical thing to do.”

When asked for his parents’ home phone number, Connor said he didn’t know it – but, not to worry – he was pretty sure it was in his friend Lorien Hoshall’s iPhone.

Studies have long bemoaned the stupefying effects of American children’s television habits.

But according to a Kaiser Family Foundation study, beyond the two hours that kids aged 8 to 18 spend texting and calling on their cellphones every day, they now spend more than 7½ hours a day using a smartphone, computer, television or other electronic device.

The ‘m’ is silent

To many of today’s iPhone-wielding youths, the “m” in “maps” is silent. Durango School District 9-R is trying to harness the power of technology. In 2010, district residents approved ballot issue 3A, a mill levy that allocates money annually to improving outdated technologies in Durango schools.

In community meetings, Superintendent Dan Snowberger frequently plays a film to underline to parents the technological generation gap: Whereas the average student will spend 5.5 hours gaming, 16.5 watching TV and 2 hours reading a book a week, 63 percent of teachers never let their students create something using technology.

In board meetings, Snowberger has been insistent that kids’ education must be conducted on the terms of kids’ technology-rich world.

By this, he doesn’t mean students should be taking computer classes.

He means technology should be in every class: There should be tablets in social studies, laptops in math, videos in English and “apps” in modern languages.

Mobile technology labs

District 9-R spokeswoman Julie Popp said the district’s efforts to integrate technology into students’ education will culminate next year, when every district school gets two new “mobile technology labs” – large carts filled with 30 self-charging laptops.

Popp said the mobile technology labs will not only be “great for the classroom and other student activities. They’re a necessity, both in terms of 21st century learning skills, and in terms of state assessments.”

The mobile technology labs mark a key battle strategy as the district takes on PARCC – Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers – a new cluster of state exams that will replace TCAP in measuring students’ performance.

For years, the TCAP, and its predecessor, CSAP, have been single tests administered at the end of the year, with data about students’ performance released by the Colorado Department of Education months later.

With mobile technology labs, Popp said teachers will assess students’ mastery more frequently through various kinds of online tests, and the results will be known immediately, so teachers can adjust instruction on the fly.

Popp said this model departs from the one many parents are used to, of “multiple choice, fill-in-the-bubble tests. In this model, there’ll be six different ways to assess students, because not everyone’s great at taking tests.”

The district is confident the mobile technology labs will improve instruction, making it easier to identify teaching strategies that work, and passively improve student test scores, as students will no longer find the conditions in which they take state assessments unfamiliar.

To this end, while the district is blazing new technological paths in the classroom, it’s also following in some parents’ footsteps.

At Needham, when fifth-grader Lorien Hoshall whipped out her iPhone to find Fitzpatrick’s parents’ number, fellow fifth grader Logan Moore noticed that unlike his father’s iPad, her phone didn’t have any games on it.

“My mom doesn’t exactly trust me,” she said, “because sometimes, when I’m supposed to be working I play games. So I’m only allowed educational programs – things to teach me French, Spanish, German and Mandarin.”

cmcallister@durangoherald.com

On the Net

A Vision of K-12 Students Today: Watch a four-minute video about technology in learning at http://bit.ly/4qGYKf.



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