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CURRENT
ISSUE: June 4, 2007
VOL.
45, NO. 11Oakland,
CA
‘Digital natives’ alter schools
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| In the fall, Bishop O’Dowd High students will be issued tablet computers. With a stylus, they can add notes to existing text and graphics and, using Blackboard software, share their work with their teachers and other students. |
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| One Bishop O’Dowd High student found geometric
shapes in her shoes and added this slide to her PowerPoint presentation
on geometry in everyday life GREG TARCZYNSKI PHOTOS |
This is not
Pythagoras’ geometry class. It’s not even your father’s
geometry class. It is a new angle on high school learning.
Secondary schools in the Oakland Diocese are adapting to an academic world
inhabited by what geometry teacher Romeo Baldeviso calls “digital
natives.”
To speak their language, schools are embracing technology that was unimaginable
in the days of graph paper and overhead projectors. They are issuing laptop
computers, expanding their curricula to include online classes and professing
by podcast and PowerPoint.
Baldeviso, who teaches at Oakland’s Bishop O’Dowd High School,
is ahead of the curve in implementing technology.
For their final project, Baldeviso said, he required his students to photograph
examples of geometric relationships in their everyday surroundings. The
teens had to create and give a PowerPoint presentation, using their downloaded
pictures and adding bullet points and summaries.
Geometric relationships were only part of the learning equation. Baldeviso’s
students also came to appreciate the relationship between technology and
learning.
“Using technology and the computer in math is very different than
doing math problems in my math book,” said freshman Brianne Parnow.
“I think it creates more depth in math and makes math feel more
connected to our lives.”
Katie Ring, another freshman, found the requisite
shapes for Baldeviso’s project in flowers and trees, and also found
a comfort level with PowerPoint and a flash drive. “These are skills
I think I will use over and over again throughout my life, so it’s
nice to learn them while I’m still pretty young,” she said.
In executing her project, 14-year-old Tenaya Izu knew how to think outside
the rhombus. “For one of the required shapes, a rhombus, I didn’t
have my digital camera with me when I found an example of it on a car,
so I used my camera phone,” she said.
Moreau Catholic High School’s Assistant Principal of Instruction
Simon Chiu wants all students to have access to this technology.
Starting this fall, the Hayward school will begin to phase in a laptop
computer program with all of its freshmen and sophomores. Eventually,
every student will have an Apple laptop to lease or purchase, and every
classroom will have Internet access, Chiu said.
The computers will allow students to produce assignments through podcasts,
video, PowerPoint, music and the spoken word, Chiu said.
“The idea is not to use them as a glorified typewriter,” he
said.
Bishop O’Dowd is taking the same direction. In addition to a laptop
program to begin in 2008, all teachers in the upcoming school year will
use the course-management software Blackboard.
According to the school’s director of instructional technology,
Joy Lopez, Blackboard provides computer-based ways for teachers and students
to interact for a classroom assignment.
For example, a Spanish teacher can post audio clips on Blackboard along
with assignment instructions. The students log on to Blackboard, download
the clips, record their version as assigned and return it to the teacher
using Blackboard.
“We’re going through a renaissance here at O’Dowd,”
Lopez said.
Students will be issued Gateway Tablet PCs, which function like written
notebooks
“Students can download the PowerPoint and can (electronically) write
notes directly on the presentation,” she said. “These notes
can be saved and referred to later… And the list goes on.”
Computers were the gateway to a larger curriculum in 2006-07 at Concord’s
Carondelet High School. Economics teacher Bob Rigor headed up an e-learning
program that for the first time offered online courses through Virtual
High School.
VHS’ curriculum includes interesting classes that Carondelet does
not offer, Rigor said.
The six students who participated this year took such classes as “101
Ways to Write a Short Story” and “Employability Skills,”
he said. Also included in VHS’ 271-course catalog are subjects like
“Peacemaking” and “Nuclear Physics.”
Rigor, Carondelet’s liaison with the Massachusetts-based VHS, explained
the mechanics of the virtual classroom -- VHS teachers, who might be anywhere
in the world, post weekly assignments, links to resource materials and
tests. Students, in turn, post completed work online.
Rigor said students can share and discuss work within their assigned VHS
virtual classroom, or communicate directly with the teacher through “private
threads.”
“The classes are not live or in real time,” he said, so students
can set their own work schedule, day or night.
That kind of flexibility can be a blessing or a curse. Rigor observed
that some students have difficulty with self-motivation. “It’s
not easy to discipline oneself…without someone standing there,”
he said.
So, Carondelet set aside a study period, which Rigor monitored, solely
for participants to work on their VHS courses. Rigor said all six Carondelet
students passed their classes.
Next year, 25 students will participate, he said.
Carondelet limits its students to one VHS course per semester. Because
some colleges will not recognize online courses, Carondelet treats VHS
courses as electives, Rigor said.
Students pay nothing for the online courses, Rigor said. Carondelet pays
a participation fee, and in exchange for additional spots for Carondelet
students, Rigor taught “Entrepreneurship” for VHS this year.
Rigor feels that online coursework provides technology skills that prepare
students for college. “It builds their confidence,” he said.
“All universities are using full-blown or adjunct Internet learning
now.”
One VHS alumna, 17-year-old Jenni Clark of Carondelet, took “Employability
Skills.” She said, “That one caught my eye because I’m
going to college and I want to be able to write a resume and do a solid
interview.”
In addition to learning those skills, Clark studied how to conduct job
searches and how to dress for success.
Clark said she learned a lot about finding a job, but would not take another
virtual course because it was too difficult to communicate with her out-of-state
teacher.
To remedy such frustrations, at least one school is taking online in-house.
Baldeviso is creating his own “hybrid” geometry course at
Bishop O’Dowd this summer, which will combine online coursework
with class meetings, he said.
Other high schools in the diocese permit limited online coursework—mostly
make-up classes—through such institutions as Stanford and Brigham
Young University.
