Paper and Pencil = Stone Tablet and Chisel – The New Tools: Blog, Thumb Drives, and

Paper and Pencil = Stone Tablet and Chisel The New Tools: Blogs, Thumb Drives, and Digital Cameras

-24- As the curve of technological advances becomes ever steeper, and innovations are born with increasing frequency, the tools available to teachers and students are growing exponentially. These tools can be tremendous assets, particularly when teaching students language arts. Isn’t language arts the study of written and oral communication? Doesn’t this crucial subject area focus on sending and receiving messages? Today’s world is filled with a dizzying array of media, and messages are sent and received in many different ways. We are no longer simply preparing students to read and write letters, newspaper articles, and traditional texts. Consider the amount and variety of modern forms of communication: emails, text messages, websites, television, instant messaging, blogs, and wikis. Traditional texts are still an important part of modern media, but are we adequately preparing students to create and cope with the many forms of communication that they encounter in the average day?

Undoubtedly, a language arts curriculum should be grounded in solid reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills. Students can certainly practice and develop these skills through the use of pencils, paper, and books, but shouldn’t they also be interacting with more modern forms of communication?

My grade four team at Thai-Chinese International School (TCIS) discussed these types of questions at great length. We asked ourselves what we could do to better equip our students for the fu ture. We realized that we needed to get our kids creating content for the web. Normally, students were creating written works for an audience that included their teachers, classmates, and parents. My team understood that publishing student work online could grant students a wider audience, and in turn, students might begin to place more value on their written work.

After scouring the internet for student-based resources, we discovered the perfect website: www.think.com. The website is offered by the Oracle Education Foundation and is a free, pass word-protected, safe website that allows students to create their own web pages. Only teachers and students have access to the site, which aids in keeping the web spaces safe. There are no advertisements and all obscene words (in multiple languages) are automatically blocked. Students must receive parental permission to use the site, and nearly all of our students did receive approval from their parents.

Students are able to create their own personalized web pages that include text, photos, video, and multimedia. They are able to create “votes” allowing visitors to their page to vote on a question generated by the student such as “what is your favorite subject?” or “what food do you like best?” Students and teachers can leave messages and comments for each other—I sometimes receive mes sages asking for clarification about assignments or asking me how I’m doing during the weekend. Schools around the world are using www.think.com connecting our students to students in countries across the globe. Students often excitedly come in to class in the morning to announce that they’ve received messages from India, Australia, the United States, England, China, or countless other nations.

A few years ago, our lower school director, John Jenkes asked our team to read an article about portfolios in order to start a dis cussion about our use of portfolios. The article included a section related to the concept of eportfolios that really intrigued our team. We liked the idea of students storing their writing electronically, making it much easier to share. A discussion developed about the idea of storing our eportfolios online using Think.com. We realized that if students kept their pieces of writing on their websites, then they could be easily accessed from home and at school. Parents would be able to view their work anytime along with their grandparents in Taiwan (if students shared their usernames and passwords with them).

Another benefit of students’ publishing/storing their writing online was that it would expose their writing to a much larger au dience. Occasionally, I’d been disheartened to see a student take a paper they’d written, one that I’d graded and returned, and throw that paper into the garbage without bothering to share it with their parents. I realized that some students placed little value on their writing. My team hoped that publishing their work online for the world to read would help them to find the worth in their work. The idea worked! Students began to put more time and effort into their writing in hopes of attracting positive comments from other teachers and students around the world. Their writing suddenly obtained a much greater sense of worth. Students stopped putting their writing in the garbage can, and started putting it on the World Wide Web instead.

The grade four teachers requested that students purchase por table “thumb drives” to store and transport their works in progress from one computer to another. Students proudly wore these to school and compared their drives with their friends. It was incredible the amount of enthusiasm that they displayed by using this new tool. By our second year, the cost of thumb drives were half as much as the previous year while the storage was double. Students carried around their thumb drives, which they filled with music, documents, and videos. When I used educational songs in class,

they asked me to place a copy on their thumb drives, so they could enjoy them at home.

The next step for the modernization of our curriculum was to consider the idea of students generating multimedia such as vid eos and narrated slide shows. We paired students together and had them write biographies about each other. Next, each student was asked to bring at least ten photos of themselves into school on their thumb drives. Lessons were given on the use of Windows Movie Maker, a free video-editing program. Students used the program to create a narrated video slide show of their partner. Their written biographies became a script that they read into a microphone and they inserted the photos of their partners to accompany the narration. Their finished videos were then posted on their www.think. com websites for parents and students around the world to enjoy.

Our program continues to evolve and improve, and we are seeking more ways to integrate modern technological tools into our language arts curriculum. This year, we are pairing with a school in Texas to create a cultural exchange between our school in Thailand and their school in the United States. We are planning on linking our students together in a kind of online pen pal format. Instead of waiting weeks and weeks for letters to be delivered to the opposite side of the globe, our students will have access to messages that are delivered instantly. Instead of communicating with our partner school once or twice a year, our students will be able to interact weekly or even daily if they choose. The potential for the sharing of two very different cultures is truly thrilling. If all goes well, we may even create assignments for our students to collaborate with their “cyber partners.”

Technological tools are getting faster and cheaper, and the storage is growing. The prices of notebook computers are drop ping, and even cheap cell phones are now able to access the internet. Within a few years, every student in our class will have the internet in their pocket. Are we ready for that day?

Scott Stier Grade 4 Teacher Thai-Chinese International School, Thailand

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