Number of 21st century rooms is set to grow next school year
By Anthony V. Coppola, Staff Writer
EAST WINDSOR The future of learning is now for students at the Melvin H. Kreps Middle School.
Since January, four teachers of math, science, history and language arts have been operating in a 21st century classroom complete with an interactive whiteboard, laptops and electronic touch pads on students’ desks to instantly convey their answers.
These environments escape the norm of educating a large group of kids on one topic, and allow a teacher to focus on individual learning needs, if need be, by using multiple technological learning tools.
Natasha Jones, a third-year language arts teacher, said the new system makes the presentation of certain aspects of her curriculum a lot easier for the students to understand.
“It’s a lot more engaging to the children and allows me to get feedback a lot quicker,” she added.
Ms. Jones gets feedback from her eighth-grade students through a program that evaluates the work of the children.
“Students type their essays then go onto an Internet program, which will grade them almost immediately,” she said. “I will then sit down with the student, talk about it, and go over their writing. It’s much more efficient.”
Each 21st century class is equipped with 10 laptops and wireless Internet connections that link to the teacher’s main operating system.
”It allows the kids to take more ownership of what they do and allows them to be more independent and work at their own pace” Ms. Jones added. “Some kids may be on their fifth essay while others are on their third.”
Ms. Jones thinks the new teaching style is perfect for students because they already live in a technological world.
“Kids are really technologically proficient these days, so it’s nice to keep that,” she added. “They are able to get a lot more done now than when it was solely teacher-directed because some kids just move faster than others.”
The students agree.
Sara Abelson, an eighth-grader, said the new tools have made a big difference.
“The day goes by a lot faster; you don’t even notice it,” she said. ”It’s definitely a different kind of experience and it helps us learn.”
Her classmate, Tim Herlihy, said it makes the material more interesting.
“You’re learning a bunch of stuff rather than one thing,” he said. “I might be working on a laptop today and in a group activity tomorrow.”
Maree Griffin, supervisor of social studies and science, handles educational technology at the middle school. She instructs the four staff members with 20 hours of training with the new tools.
“The technology … takes the place of a second instructor by giving the instant feedback,” she said.
A large SMART Board, which is both touch-sensitive and has a projector, takes the place of a traditional chalkboard and allows the teacher to bring interactive exercises and menus up on a projection screen. Students can complete tasks just by touching the screen and manipulating different information. One day this week Ms. Jones’ students were pulling word fragments into boxes labeled prefixes and suffixes to match the correct pairings.
The response system electronic pads used by students to answer questions asked by the teacher allows the instructor to gauge how well children are grasping a particular topic. Teachers can gather data from the class as a whole, seeing what percentage answered and answered correctly, or view each child’s individual answer. Students also learn very quickly if they answered correctly.
“The students love knowing if they got it right or not, right away,” Ms. Griffin said. “If you wait too long, the kids don’t care anymore so I think the instant feedback for them is a big perk.”
Ms. Griffin said the response system also allows students with different abilities to answer questions without fear of ridicule for choosing the wrong answer.
“You always get kids when you throw out a question to the group who will not answer the question directly,” she added. “They’ll wait for another kid to answer and be relieved they avoided the situation. With the responders there’s nowhere to hide.”
Sixth-grader Danielle Solomon said using the response system in science class is fun.
”We use the responders to study for our tests,” she added. “Our teacher was seeing if we were getting the answers right and basing that on the review she made for our test.”
Classmate Sean Megee likes the responder system.
“Instead of just using paper and calculators this lets us have everything in one,” he said. “It’s really neat. I had no idea how cool it would be until we actually started using them.”
Sixth-year science teacher Joanna Friedland said the transition from traditional teaching to the 21st century class has been enjoyable for her and the students.
“It’s much more fun,” she said. “The students love the responders and they really help me. If more than half the class is getting the material right, I know we’re on the right track. If they’re all over the place I know I need to go back and redo that.”
In Eugene Gray’s history class this week, students were using computers to look up facts from a particular battle and dictating them to the teacher who would jot them down on the SMART board.
And for Mr. Gray, who has been teaching in the district 31 years, the crossover has gone quite well.
“The students do all the investigating and let me know what they think is important,” he added. “It’s amazing how 99 percent of the information they come up with is what I wanted them to know.”
Mr. Gray said the students take notes from information on the SMART board, discuss them, and determine the most important points.
As for math, seventh-grader Michelle Berliner said the 21st century technology has changed class in a positive way.
“Now we get to interact on the SMART Board and it gives students a chance to see things differently than they would in a textbook,” she said.
In Cynthia Gerrits’ math class, students use the SMART Board to determine the best way to solve an equation. After choosing a number, the software dictates the answer to the equation based on that choice. Students then recheck their work based on whether they gave the correct answer. This allowed students to show other students different ways of determining an answer.
Ms. Gerritt, a third-year teacher, said the new technology really helps in math.
“When we do geometry the students can go up to the SMART Board, see the shapes, and move them around,” she added. “Just in terms of sparking them and keeping them interested it’s made a big difference.”
Assistant Superintendent Michael Dzwonar said the 21st century setup costs $20,000 per classroom, which includes 10 wireless laptops, four desktop computers, the SMART Board and 25 responders.
Ms. Griffin said Kreps hopes to add at least four more 21st century classes next year.
“Our hope is by adding these classrooms other teachers will see it and want to give students a similar learning experience,” she said. “We’ve hit a home run with the four teachers we have now. But it’s more for the students than the teachers.”
She added the high school plans to implement three to four 21st century classes by the start of the 2008-2009 school year as well.
“The plan there is to install it and have the staff trained so they are ready by day one next year,” Ms Griffin said. “The high school wants maximum use of the technology. They will take a bank of teachers and train them so a 21st century class is always in use.”
According to Ms. Griffin, this is what allowed the middle school to utilize the equipment first.
”Installing the hardware for single teacher at the high school might involve several classroom installations,” she said. “Teachers change classes often and do not teach in the same room all day. In the middle school, the 21st century teachers are in one room all day and all hardware and peripheral resources are installed in that room.”