Online Learning Earns a Net Gain
SACRAMENTO, Calif. _ Dylan Holcomb’s 10th-grade English students shouted the names of Shakespeare’s plays as they identified them while watching a YouTube clip of “Jeopardy!”
Earlier, Holcomb used Google Earth to show his Del Oro High School students the distance between Venice and Cyprus, where the play “Othello” is set, and had them calculate the distance.
“When you use a YouTube clip of a guy doing Shakespeare in England, they’re impressed,” Holcomb said. “It speaks to them a little more because that’s their generation. They live in that world. They live in the Internet.”
Holcomb is among a growing number of teachers using Internet tools, programs and Web sites to enhance curriculum. The trend is being noticed by Internet companies, such as Google, which makes its products readily available to educators.
“There is definitely a trend in the educational community at large of using the Internet in the classroom,” said Bart O’Brien, superintendent of the Placer Union High School District.
Teachers at a number of California districts are increasingly using Internet tools, such as Google Earth, to enhance lessons.
Holcomb uses instant messaging to answer homework questions. He assigns blogs for homework. And he has students use Google’s simplified design program SketchUp to recreate demolished buildings from descriptions in John Hersey’s “Hiroshima.”
Considered a trendsetter in O’Brien’s district for incorporating his cyber-savviness in the classroom, Holcomb taught a workshop last month to colleagues during the district’s annual one-day conference.
Teachers packed a classroom at Colfax High School, nodding as Holcomb described Internet tools, from sites to help generate surveys to free podcasts by professors at UC Berkeley and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Jessie Weinberger, an English resource teacher at Del Oro High School, said she will have students use Google Earth as part of a project based on the book “Night” by Elie Wiesel _ an idea she got from Holcomb.
“They have to create a scrapbook for a fictional character and pick a city and country where that person would have been from,” Weinberger said. “Now I can bring that into a realm of reality. … It’s brilliant.”
Seeing an upswing in use of its products in the classroom, Google launched a site for educators in October. The site has tutorials on how to use products, tools for the classroom and a discussion group for educators. The company also launched Google Teacher Academy, a free one-day program for K-12 educators who want to get hands-on experience with Google’s technology.
The products are free, and Google officials say they are providing them simply to make it easier for teachers to use the tools to improve lessons and curriculum.
“It’s really kind of magical to watch the work that we’re doing and the products that we’re creating used in schools,” said Cristin Frodella, manager of Google’s education outreach programs. “We’re hearing that kids are really psyched about using the tools in, and outside of, class.”
To protect students, Placer Union High School District has set up multiple firewalls and filters to block inappropriate Web sites, and has designed classrooms so teachers can see all computer screens at any given time, Superintendent O’Brien said.
The district also is reviewing software, Edline, that would allow teachers, students and parents to access records, grades and assignments and to communicate with one another outside the classroom.
The software offers a layer of protection because users must be “invited” to enter the portal, which is restricted from view by the Internet community at large.
The district hopes to have the system in place by the 2007-08 school year, O’Brien said.
The Edline program is being used in Folsom Cordova Unified School District and getting great reviews from all involved, said Kelly Calhoun, director of educational technology and information systems for the district.
“The parents love it,” Calhoun said, adding that the system is automatically updated with attendance records and grades.
Joanna DeFranco, a professor in the computer and information sciences department at Cabrini College in Radnor, Pa., said using Internet technology in the classroom has two benefits.
Students tend to be more reflective and use better problem-solving skills, she said, and those who tend not to talk in class might feel more comfortable posting their reaction to a lesson online.
“Students are going to have to be familiar with this type of learning and technology sooner rather than later,” she said.
Students in Holcomb’s class enjoy the marriage of Internet and traditional curriculum.
Aaron Brand, a 16-year-old sophomore, said Holcomb’s use of sites such as YouTube make tough lessons more accessible.
“It definitely helps,” Brand said. “We have visual references that make it easier to remember. … I wish the other classes would post things on the Internet.”
But using the Internet in the classroom should be done in moderation and not replace traditional reading from books or writing short essays by hand, Holcomb said.
“It’s a double-edged sword because I believe in the old-fashioned way, too,” he said.
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