A Mind-Boggling Resource | Documenting Diversity |
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Learning: Bits & Bytes
A Mind-Boggling Resource

Each week a couple of Web sites from the warehouse site www.4Kids.org are featured in my Sunday funnies supplement. 4Kids has six major categories to choose from, each with several links to subjects of interest to kids and adults.

My favorite link that 4Kids has highlighted recently is a rich Web site on optical illusions, www.illusionworks.com/html/jump_page.html. The site includes lots of links to interactive experiments with illusions, as well as information about artists such as M.C. Escher.

Carolyn Stanley
Technology teacher
Bethany, Connecticut
Telariond@aol.com

Wish There Were Two of You?
I teach six classes for all fifth, sixth, and eighth grade students in a 30- station computer lab. I use my computer, a microphone, VCR, and televisions to present all my lessons. I videotape each lesson each day and play the lesson back to each class.

This lets me move around the room, working as my own aide to help students with the assignment.

I’m able to keep all my classes together as to what they’re learning, and students who are absent can keep up with their assignments by watching the taped class.

Randall Surline
Computer lab instructor
West Branch, Michigan
surliner@i-star.com

See One, Do One, Teach One
My students work in small groups at the beginning of the year to design a class Web site on paper. Each group shares its design with the class, and we vote on the best one.

I instruct students in the winning group in FrontPage Web authoring software. After they complete and upload their page, they teach the next group, and so on.

This saves me time, and students enjoy communicating our classroom accomplishments via the Web.

Theresa Bowen
Sixth grade teacher
Defiance, Ohio
theesajb@defnet.com

E-mail Partnering
Gaggle.net is a super E-mail service for students. It’s safe and free. Every E-mail that my students send through this service is “carbon copied” to me immediately. I can proof students’ messages and monitor their communications.

I use Gaggle.net E-mail to pair a remedial student with a student who needs a challenge. Students are not allowed to divulge who they are—or even to hint at which student with whom they are paired. The pairs complete projects together via E-mail.

Our first project is to write a story together. One student E-mails the first five sentences of a story to his or her partner, who then adds five sentences to it and E-mails it back. This continues until the story is completed.

All finished stories are published on the Web and printed in booklet form.

This project has really motivated my students. It’s great for self-esteem. Not being able to “see” the friends who have helped them certainly has created bonds for students who are not readily accepted into certain circles.

Betsy Norris
Middle school English teacher
Shelbyville, Tennessee
Norrisb@k12tn.net

Have a nifty classroom tip or lesson plan that uses technology? E-mail a description (under 200 words, please!) to wiredclassroom@list.nea.org.

Is there a Web site, CD-ROM, or piece of software you can't live without? E-mail your favorites--and why you love them--to myfavoritetech@list.nea.org.

Or send your responses by regular mail to NEA Today, or by Fax to 202/822-7206, or through the Web at www.nea.org/cet.

Those published here will receive a sparkling NEA Today mug!

Documenting Diversity

We're not in Kansas anymore. Norm Conard helps kids explore new worlds through video production.

Through documentary film-making, rural Kansas students learn lessons in multiculturalism and tolerance.

Who:
Norman Conard, social studies and video production teacher, Uniontown High School, Uniontown, Kansas

E-mail:
Nconard@prodigy.net

Inspiration:

“We should teach tolerance in our school system. Students need to be exposed to diversity whether or not it exists in their community,” explains Conard. “And teachers are the facilitators of this process.”

Conard’s students design multicultural research projects that are a perfect marriage of technology and social studies curriculum. To produce documentaries and performances for Conard’s classes, students must master film-making and research techniques.

“Hardware and software are cold,” Conard says. “We have to tie them in with issues of sensitivity.”

For a moment, forget the more than 100 state and national awards his students have won for their projects. The real impact lies in the stories they tell:

• Elizabeth Eckford, one of the Little Rock Nine. Conard’s students were the catalysts for a reunion between Eckford and a white schoolmate who had befriended her 40 years earlier.
• Irena Sendler, a Polish woman who helped prevent 2,500 children in the Warsaw Ghetto from going to Nazi death camps.
• Bill Moore, a white civil rights activist who lost his life in 1963 during a protest walk across Alabama. Conard’s students contacted Moore’s widow, who pieced together information that the students developed into a performance.

“My students gain a lot from researching, writing, and producing multicultural projects,” says Conard. “But the greatest value is their increased awareness of other cultures, ethnicities, and world events—and their place in the middle of them.”

Lesson:
Students begin their projects with research—searching the Internet, reading newspaper and magazine articles, and gathering information from organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center. Then, like any good reporter, they catch a lead. Two lines here, a mention of a name, and their creativity begins to flow.

Thanks to grants, the classroom contains PCs and Macs, a standard Panasonic video camera, and a digital editing system. Videoconferencing technology lets students interview experts in other states and countries, without the time and expense of travel.

“The difference in our classroom is not the technology—it’s how we use it,” Conard explains. “But while it’s key to our work, technology only speeds up the research process.”

That may be so, but the creative process can’t be rushed.

“Making a film or writing a performance takes an enormous amount of time,” says Conard—about 200 hours for a 10-minute documentary. “Students spend a majority of their time outside the classroom completing their projects.”

Click:
Still, the time spent is worth the perspective students gain on life outside Uniontown. Conard encourages educators to develop their own open-ended multicultural research projects.

“These projects cross disciplines, meet national standards, and develop critical thought,” he says. “But they also change lives and bring a new view of tolerance.”

“Our class motto, to paraphrase the Talmud, is ‘He who changes one person, changes the world entire,’” Conard adds. “I don’t do it, my students do.”

—Erik Komendant

Tech Tools

• A wide variety of professional development opportunities are listed on LycosZone. Continuing education courses, seminars, and mentor programs are among the offerings.

• Looking for a free site to host your class Web page? At the Free Web Page Provider Review you'll find a guide to free Web page providers around the world.

• Need help with that grant proposal? A guidebook for educators from Lucent Technologies has tips on project planning, grantmaker research, and proposal development.

• Teachers on the Internet by NEA member Kim Mitchell is designed for the educator who is new to using the World Wide Web in the classroom. The book features chapters on acceptable use policies, using search engines, and finding lesson plans—or designing your own. $9.95 from Instructional Fair, 800/443-2976.

Bytes for Beginners

My students are trying to convince me that its safe to make online purchases. Is this true?

You should buy what your students are selling you! Shopping the Net is as safe asand in some cases safer thanbuying something via the phone.

In both cases, you’re “transmitting” personal information (name, phone, and credit card numbers) to someone you don’t know.

On the phone, we use intuition to help us decide whether or not to divulge personal information. On the Net, only a secure connection guarantees that no one is “listening in” on your purchase—intercepting your data as they move from your computer to the online store’s.

How do you know if and when your connection is secure? Many Web sites use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology to encrypt the information that you send over the Internet. If the Web address on the page that asks for your credit card information begins with "https" instead of "http," then SSL is in place.

Other ways you can tell if a Web site uses security software? Your browser will display one of these icons:

• a locked padlock at the bottom of the screen (Netscape Navigator 4.0 and higher)
• an unbroken key at the bottom of the screen (earlier versions of Netscape Navigator)
• a lock on the status bar (Microsoft Internet Explorer).

Have comments or questions about technology? Go to www.nea.org/cet, or E-mail your questions to webeditor@dear.nea.org.

My Favorite...

Web Site:
“MySchoolWork has helped me communicate more with parents. Parents can access their child’s grades, homework, and school news from anywhere in the world.”

Anna Lilly
High school algebra teacher
Lavergne, Tennessee

Software:
“Internet Typing Challenge (South Western, 800/ 354-9706) is a fun way to improve keyboarding skills. After taking the tests and posting them on the Web, students can compare results with students around the nation.”

JoAnn Santillo
High school business teacher
Canfield, Ohio