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Whole Story
Give us the background of your technology project.
About two years ago our superintendent, who is a true technology leader, and we don’t see many of those, brought to the district as he came here the handheld computer. And he wanted to look at educational uses of the handheld computer his first year. He did write a grant to get handheld computers in the school system with teacher, but that grant was not funded. But worked with < superintendent> and they came up with a way to do it anyhow in which teachers and, I believe, there were 11teachers and administrators that got Palm handheld computers mostly at the high school level, a few junior high teachers. And we worked with the university in not only training but also looking at how the handheld computer might be used in the classroom. So that was our first year. That year, I wrote a continuous improvement grant in order to get handheld computers for special needs students as part of assistive technology to use within the classroom for them to take with them and that was funded. So that first year 10 of my students did have handheld computers. It was kind of neat that year, because Hand In Education which is a national magazine did come and feature our superintendent and then my students and classroom with their use of the handheld computers. It was kind of a neat experience. Then the next year I wrote a grant again to try and get handheld computers in the English classroom because we felt that there were a lot of things we could do in the English classroom with the Palm but it would be a really good place to start. Plus, I knew that the senior level English teacher would be a good person to work with on a project like this; she’s very creative, and so I knew she would be a very good person to do this. And we did not get the grants that we did not get. But through some foundations and partners in educations, some local funds, we got enough, and through district funding, we got enough to do one class of one Palm handheld computers, which we called E-Comp or electronic composition. And the E-comp class then is a totally electronic class; we eliminated all paper and pencil from the class. We use the Palm handheld computers. The first year we used the Palm 3C’s and those then went out of production after the first year that we used them although we all used then. Then this year we did get a few more handheld computers so that we have all of the seniors, which is four classes, and that was paid a lot by the district. There was some other funds, but the district did pay a good hunk of that. Also with the handheld computers the students either have Go-Type keyboards, which are a very sturdy keyboard, or, for those that have larger fingers or hands, the Go-Type is not a full size keyboard so they have the Palm handheld computer keyboard that’s the collapsible keyboard. So all of our seniors who are in advanced comp have that opportunity. I work with the high school English teacher in inclusive classrooms, which means there are special needs students working with regular students in a regular education classroom. And I do help a lot with the technology end of the Palm with the teacher. It seems like sometimes it takes two. We do all the writing, all the novels and short stories on the Palm. We do all, by writing I mean essays. We also do the grammar handbook on the Palm. The teacher completed a grammar handbook, things that she thought that the students needed to know about grammar and we downloaded that onto the Palm. We read novels like “All Quiet on the Western Front”, “1984” several short stories, “The Sniper,” all of those on the Palm. What we found then was that when we downloaded, for example “1984” from the Internet or works that aren’t copyrighted from the Internet that it was really exciting because we could edit the text. In order to give kids more kids about what they were reading. For example, if there’s a vocabulary word coming up that might be difficult to read, we can define that word for the student just right there beside it. So it doesn’t interrupt their reading to think about what that word means. We can also give clues as to what things they should be looking for when reading a section. For my special needs students too, if it’s a very long section, I might summarize it to shorten it so they can still get all the information that all the other students have but not be held back by poor reading skills. So we edit the text as we go through so as their reading it, as one of the students said, “our teacher talks to us.” So the writing is really exciting on the Palm handheld computer, I think, because it is electronic text. The teacher gives the assignment, which is beamed to the students on the Palm, and then the students work on the assignment on the Palm handheld computer. Then we have the ELMO, which is a projection piece that goes into the projector, and we put the Palm down and everybody can see from the overhead what’s happening. So we might do a guided writing assignment, where we all kind of write together and give ideas together and show good ways to do the writing process or we might give an outline and give ideas about what might be in the paragraph and then they go write it on their own or how to support different things in the paragraph. Students often bring their Palm up and have a question they have to answer and they showed what their answer is and how the supported it in the text. And they do that all on the Palm. And we use the search button so that everybody can be on the page at the same time. And I remember several times when I’d been in classes when we’re reading “Huckleberry Finn” and we all try to get on the same page, page 34, well somebody heard 43 and by the time we are all on page 34 finally we can’t remember if it’s the first full paragraph we started counting, 1,2,3 down or the second, but it’s instantaneous because usually there’s a unique sentence or a unique phrase and we can search and we can find everything immediately. So it’s been really powerful for discussion as well as for reading. As far as writing, and the English teacher does the six-trait writing, as far as writing goes, when the students write and they turn in the paper either through a beam or they save it to our network drive, which is F drive and the teacher grades it from there. When she receives it she edits it first of all. And she said prior to using the Palm handheld computers she had almost given up on editing because kids were doing such lower level editing and it was almost like, “what good is this doing? All their doing is changing a comma or spelling” they weren’t getting to the deeper things that need to be edited. And she said with this new thing and the first time that we did this we had goose bumps because kids were asking higher-level questions. She edits it and in brackets and usually in a different color she puts what needs to happen whether it’s spelling, and she usually just spells the word for the student and they just have to retype it again. Or it might be the parallel structure. It could be within the text they’re getting off the subject and they might need to delete something or explain something further. All of that’s within brackets and what the students have to do in order to get their grade is to correct those brackets and she copies and makes a copy and paste so she has the original that she edited and the students that they change and so she has something to compare with and then she grades the edited paper. And we’ve found with this that there has been a lot of growth in higher level editing. Then it got to the time of the year; this is the second year of using the Palms, that we were getting ready to do research papers. And when you think of research papers you think of file cards, you think of all these sources and they’re all copied and everything and the teacher has to go through and find each one of them. And we had told ourselves that we were going to go whole hog on this. So when it got time to that we can’t do all that paper and pencil stuff because we’re doing electronic. So we came up with an electronic research paper. So they use the desktop and the Palm in conjunction. So they’re given a topic, and it’s a collaborative project with social studies and English, and at that time they have to look through sources to find. Then they’re copying and pasting ten sources and source information onto a Word document. So what they’re doing at the very beginning is creating their bibliography. And their second step is their note-taking step where we use a lot of cut and paste. And then we check it before they go on. We do APA style. Because we felt that the APA for electronic sources was easier to understand. We have our references page before we do the research, granted that we may need to go back and add to our resource list, but we have most of it done. The second step is note taking, and they have to come up with four perspectives after looking at the sources briefly, what are four issues? And that becomes the four areas that they note take. As they note take, they go into source number one, and they copy and paste what they think is relevant information for those four perspectives. And behind that, they put source number 1. Underneath that is their paraphrasing or their summarizing. The whole process has to be okay-ed. But at that point they are almost done. They are doing a PowerPoint, and those four perspectives become their four main slides and they do bullets and pictures, or if it’s going to be a research paper, then all they have to do is introductions and transitions and a conclusion and their reference page is already done. So really it is an exciting process. As we thought through all this and came up with it, found that this is so much of a better process and if we hadn’t had the Palms we’d still be doing things the same way that we’ve always done them. Simply because that’s the way it’s done. So we’ve seen a lot of growth not only in ourselves but in students with the handheld technology.
Did you run into any problems?
Yes, just this year we had a new security system on our computers, and as we found out that security system was interfering with the Palms, and it took us a little time to realize that, there was a lot of frustration figuring that out. We’re finally over that, but when things work really well it’s great, with technology there’s always going to be something.
Were there district standards set up with the introduction of the handheld computers?
The superintendent did set those up as part of writing of a grant and as part of brainstorming, but I don’t think they’ve become part of district policy or anything although technology is one of our goals.
How many students are at each desktop when you use those?
This would be in the media center, and each student has their own [desktop]. They all hot-sync to one computer, then that becomes their computer and that’s how we work that out.
So what’s your role when they are doing the research paper?
I team-teach with the English teacher. So it would be helping students just as she is helping students. Keeping a really good eye on students with special needs and making sure they are ok.
So the student is being a researcher…creator
Yes, and what we’ve found is that it was kind of a role change as the other teacher likes to perform and is a veteran teacher and likes that and it’s a change, because we do a lot of teaming. So it was a change for her to take the focus off of her and turn the class’ focus to the teams. They answer each other’s questions. And we become facilitators. So it was a change in our role.
Is there anything else that you’ve learned that you’d pass on to a teacher wanting to try this?
I think a couple of things, it was helpful to have two of us working on this because you never know…we’ve piloted this because we didn’t have anyplace else to go to look at a program doing what we’re doing. Since it was new it was nice to bounce ideas off one another. It’s nice that those two people are open with one another. I don’t have to step widely. If I feel something, I can say it and she knows the same thing about me. So we’ve developed a working relationship. And this would be hard to work in a team if you didn’t have that. And the teaming among the students is very important too. And it’s difficult because the students fight working with one another sometimes. It’s difficult to develop team skills and you have to work on it all year long. So I think that’s really important too, to use each other’s expertise. If somebody does well in technology, then use his or her strengths.
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